He spun to face me, catching me by the wrist. The movement was impossibly fast, marked by shadows with a faint glint of starlight within them. I snatched my wrist away, darkness trailing behind.
“I see your powers are back. You should be happier now, at least,” I observed.
For a moment, he looked confused. Then he glanced down, noting the shadows as they rolled off his body. “I’ve lived with these shadows for centuries. They’re a part of me, but they aren’t a source of my happiness.”
“Youhavea source of happiness, then? What is it?”
He scowled, turning to face what he had called the Nocturne, and my face began to heat with a surprising amount of regret. We had just relived a deep, vicious trauma from his childhood, and here I was interrogating his happiness. Of course he wasn’t happy. How could he be?
“I’m sorry, Bringer. I didn’t mean—”
“Enough,” he muttered. “I’ve heard enough for the moment.”
Glimpses of color and light began to shimmer within the Nocturne. If I focused on a particular area, the color and light sharpened, briefly taking shape. In one section, I saw a moonlit house with a family embracing on the porch. In another, a girl walking through dry sands, white pillars, and winged statues. Then a woman smiling by a field of shining crops. A man riding a horse down a narrow road with a cave at its end.
“What are those things in the water?”
“Dreams. The Nocturne contains them all. Weaver-crafted dreams and the ordinary kind.” He pulled his gaze from the waves and settled iton me. “What do you know of the Dream Realm? Its configuration and how it functions.”
“Well, there are—orwere—seven Dream Weavers.” I counted them on my fingers. “Somnus, Xander, Theia. They control dreams of the past, present, and future. Then there are the elemental Weavers: Fenrir, Nephthys, Ceres, Lelantos. Fire, water, earth, and air.”
“And where do they reside in the Realm?”
“They each have a territory. They’re like miniature worlds or kingdoms in the Dream Realm.”
He nodded. “They call their lands—which include any permanent acolytes—domains. And all domains border the Nocturne. The nearness is important since that’s how the Weavers access their intended dreamers. It’s an anomaly that my domain is so close to the Nocturne; at this rate, it will soon be consumed by the sea.” He pointed at the Nocturne’s tumultuous waters. “Over there. Notice the mountains? The barest hint of clouds? Lelantos’s domain.” Sure enough, there was a faint mountain range in the distance. He pointed in another direction, toward a darker sky and shimmering line of emerald. “Ceres’s forest. Nephthys’s domain is next—you can tell by how it glitters. She thoroughly enjoys her jewels.”
“Are the Weavers there, right now? In their domains?” I had to ask.
He considered the question, thinking. Remembering. “In a sense. Their souls manifest within the dreams of the Nocturne, perpetually monitoring humanity’s dreams. But the Weavers themselves could be anywhere. Feasting and drinking with kings and queens on earth, creating pretty things within their domains in the Dream Realm, or persuading dreamers to following them as acolytes.”
“Five hundred years ago, perhaps. None of that exists in the present,” I noted.
For a moment, genuine concern flickered in his eyes. Then it faded, quick as smoke. “So you have claimed.” He made a dismissive gesture. “I don’t know what happened to the Weavers after I was banished. It isdifficult to watch the world when you’re confined to the company of demons and darkness.”
I shivered. I couldn’t help it. It was madness—madness—to even imagine his existence.
Let us out, let us out, let us out!
How many times had he borne witness to those hellish screams? That he was even capable of a smile, or a coherent sentence, was a testament to his strength.
The Bringer ran a gauntleted hand through his hair, unaware of where my thoughts had turned. He continued: “Next to Nephthys, you cannot tell from here, but there’s the most foolish-looking palace. Fenrir’s. He—” The Bringer finally noticed me watching him instead of looking wherever he was pointing. “What?”
“Nothing.” I managed a smile, much to the Bringer’s irritation. For all his supposed hatred of the Weavers, there was no mistaking the genuine interest in his explanation. And if he knew each of these details, his memory must have returned, too. Or at least in part. “Carry on, please. I’m learning quite a lot.”
“Are you, now? I don’t see how you’re learning anything at all by watchingme.”
I suppressed a laugh, instead motioning toward the massive tower at the Nocturne’s center. It was a colossal, beautiful thing, glowing through its various spires and archways, and as the waves dipped, several bridges were revealed, spanning out like the spokes of a wheel. “Whose domain is that?”
The Bringer’s eyes darkened a shade. “That is Citadel Evernight.”
Evernight.I knew that name. “In the demon’s stomach, your younger self asked if I was from there.” I’d read about it in his books, too, but I wasn’t about to let him know I’d been searching through his things. “And Somnus”—I searched for the right word.Invited? Called? Coerced?I settled on the first—“invited you to it.”
“Invited?” Apparently, I’d chosen the wrong word. “I was notinvitedtoEvernight,” the Bringer continued. “I wasforcedto Evernight. After years of neglect, Somnus cornered me at my weakest. If it weren’t for him, perhaps my fate would have differed.” For a moment, a smile ghosted his lips. “You know, it was once considered an honor to be chosen as a permanent dreamer of the Realm. To be summoned by a Weaver to hone your dreaming talents at Evernight as a student. Ascholar. You’d even have your family generously compensated in return.” He spun to me, suddenly asking, “Do you want to know how my parents died? Or how they were in life?”
The voices of his mother and father, shrieking at a young Erebus through the walls of their decaying home, came rushing back.
A son would not make his parents choose between their lives and the life of their child.
