He lifted my hair with a brush of his hand, fingers briefly grazing the nape of my neck. His clawed gauntlets were perpetually cold, and his unexpected touch felt electric.
Get ahold of yourself.He was moving my hair because it was in his way. Not because he wanted to touchme.
“What doyoudefine as amusing, Esmer Havenfall?”
“I’m not sure. Reading? Daydreaming? What most girls my age would qualify asamusinghasn’t happened yet.”
A pause. “What’s that?” He dared me to go on.
“I’ve never had a lover.” I hated how exposed I felt around him, howrightit felt for his hand to be threaded in my hair. “And if our souls really do become lost at the end of this, that means I’ll die before having experienced all that life has to offer. Just as you’ll die without having experienced freedom outside the Dream Realm in centuries. It’s terrible. And wretchedly inconvenient for someone who has never even been kissed.”
“You would desire such a thing?”
“Well, of course,” I said with a laugh, turning to face him. “Doesn’t everyone?”
His gaze dropped to my lips, a silent and shocking question. I hadn’t expected for our conversation to turnthisway. Hadn’t imagined that he’d even consider doing what his expression now suggested. But his lips were slightly parted, and his helm had broken away just enough around his mouth and jaw to make it possible.
I nodded yes before the moment could be ripped away.
He brought his lips to mine. The kiss was soft, slow, and achingly tender. Just a graze of his sensuous mouth. But where his lips were soft, the rest of him was firm, rigid, and unyielding—a man encased in obsidian armor from his feet to his brow. The top of his helm felt cool against my forehead, his nose a mere suggestion in the shape of the metal. Still, while his mouth was pressed against mine, I scarcely noticed. Warmth surged through my limbs, pooling pleasantly in my stomach.
He leaned away too soon.
“There,” he murmured, voice a shade darker than I’d ever heard it. “A first for both of us. Perhaps now our spirits will be less discontent after we perish.”
“Perhaps so,” I agreed.
I ached to kiss him again. To kiss him backfully.
I wanted to lift his helm from his face and thread my fingers through his moon-white hair. To arch into his chest as his arms pulled me closer. To explore more of him, chasing that warm, tingling feeling as he explored more of me, too. I wondered what more skin might feel like. Maybe it would feel safe. A comforting nearness that would push away everything terrible and cruel about the world.
But it could feel like betrayal, too. Like blinding, teeth-gnashing guilt.
I turned back around, my nonexistent heart racing at a steady, frantic pace in my chest.
The second dream began with a starlit sky. Floating, untethered,free.
And then we plummeted like stones, crashing into a floor of black marble. I gingerly untangled myself from the Shadow Bringer’s long limbs, trying not to think about our kiss. We had fallen asleep in close proximity, his mouth near my ear, his gauntleted hand atop my waist, and his armored legs a close shadow around mine. But he never touched me in a way that wasn’t strictly necessary. Never crossed that unspoken line.
“Where are we now?” I asked, reeling from the splendor surrounding us.
Vast and domed, the dimly lit chamber was adorned with painted murals depicting strange dreamscapes, celestial beings, and dreamers in various states of sleep. A long line of people, clad in nightclothes, stood in front of the murals as they waited to reach a circular dais draped in blue velvet. At the center was a willow tree, its long, slender branches slipping into a pool of starry water that encircled the dais and poured backward out of the chamber. There were two figures in front of the tree. One sat in a throne-like chair; the other stood at his side.
“Welcome to the Evernight Dream Temple,” the Shadow Bringerannounced, helping me up. Hazy stars, almost as if they were pulled from the sky beyond, drifted into the chamber from the missing wall, casting ever-changing patterns on the floor. Several began spinning in slow circles around us, and he gently parted them with his hands. “Here the dreamers visit the kingdom’s esteemed dream interpreters. All from the convenience of dreamers’ mortal beds.”
“It’s beautiful,” I breathed. “I would have done anything to visit a place like this if I knew I could.”
“It used to be common. Dreamers would visit if they were struggling to make sense of their dreams, which happened often, or if a Weaver felt a dreamer was following a self-destructive path and needed clarity. For the dreamers who sought the temple willingly, most simply wished to know whether their dreams were Maker-sent, Weaver-sent, or figments of their own twisted minds.”
“Are we here to get our dreams interpreted, then?”
He nodded grimly. “Yes. And hopefully we can speak with the interpreter before the demon appears. I can feel it lurking.”
I shuddered. I didn’t see the red-eyed demon anywhere, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t hiding in the shadows.
“Keep in mind that the first dream was, for the most part, a singular dream. A distorted nightmare of sorts.Thisis a memory of a collective dream. We can only participate here as much as the Maker wills.”
An older man wearing a long robe and feathered slippers pushed into me.
