“I hope not.” Otherwise, Clayton was going to die from a heart attack before the year was out.
Naerith joined them. “If he’s a nightmare, then that should be one of his original forms. I wouldn’t worry about it too much if I were you. Even if he’d vanished back at Astraea’s tree, he would have been fine after regaining some energy.”
“How do you know this?” So little was known about nightmares, likely due to the kill-on-sight order passed down from the Guard.
“We get a lot of nightmares coming through here looking for sanctuary,” Naerith responded.
“I beg your pardon, you what?!” Clayton was so loud that his voice cracked.
Elena covered Clayton’s mouth and gave him a sharp glare. “Don’t go making our job harder than it should be until your mate returns. I’d rather stay on his good side, thank you.”
Clayton pushed her hand away. “My apologies, but seriously, you get a lot of nightmares coming to the fae realm? For sanctuary?”
Naerith snorted. “Should we turn them away because their home shunned them? Because the Guard arbitrarily decidedthat one specific brand of monster was entirely evil and unredeemable?”
Clayton’s jaw dropped. “Are you suggesting that nightmares, literal embodiments of fear, aren’t inherently evil?”
“Is the fear of fire evil? Or is it a healthy reaction to keep us safe?” Naerith asked with a smile on his lips. It wasn’t mocking, but instead friendly, like he was happily sharing information with a child who still had much to learn about the world.
“Well, I…” Clayton gulped several times but couldn’t formulate a response.
Naerith put a hand on his shoulder. “Kid, none of the nightmares who come to us are the mindless creatures you fear. Those are either killed by the Guard or make their way to the demon realm. The ones here are simply trying to survive and make sense of their own existence.
Clayton’s jaw dropped. “Are you telling me that you have actual nightmares living here freely? What do they do?”
Elena laughed softly and patted his other shoulder. “Not whatever that look on your face is suggesting. They do whatever they want to do. If that ends up being dangerous for the public, then our government deals with them the way they do all criminals, though nightmares aren’t more likely to hurt people than any other race here. Less, in fact. A lot of them tend to go into public service fields. They like to work with people.”
Before Clayton had a chance to process that, Naerith followed up, saying, “My mind healer is a nightmare whose origins come from PTSD. She’s a leader in her field.”
“Excuse me… I think I need to have a mental crisis for a moment.”
Elena stroked Clayton’s hair soothingly and said, “You do that, sweetheart. We’ll keep a lookout until your mate returns.”
“Mal,” Clayton said absently. “His name is Mal.”
The couple gave him twin looks of pity, and Elena said, “You’re taking all of this really well. The fact that you didn’t side with the dreamwalker when you learned of Mal’s race speaks volumes of your love for him.”
“Love?” Clayton whispered. It was less a question than it was a muffled, hysterical sob.
“Can anything other than love win against a lifetime of social conditioning in only a few moments?” Elena asked.
Clayton didn’t respond.
If what Elena and Naerith said about nightmares was true, did Clayton even deserve to love Mal? If nightmares were capable of forming rational sentience and developing enough empathy to become safe members of society, then what the Guard was doing was nothing short of genocide.
And Clayton worked for them.
“What else do nightmares do here?” Clayton’s mind had developed a fantastic coping mechanism to deal with all the bullshit life threw at him. When in doubt, study, research, and learn.
If Clayton flooded his brain with enough information, it would be forced to sort through it all before it self-destructed. By the time it finished, it usually calmed down. Sometimes it even presented Clayton with a solution to his problem, and Mal was a problem with a capital P. One Clayton didn’t think he could live without anymore.
He’d only had Mal back in his life for a day, but he’d occupied Clayton’s thoughts nonstop since they’d parted that day in Boston Below. It was high time he faced what that meant.
“There’s a nightmare in our capital city who deals with all the wild magical beasts. He’s able to control them because his origin is the fear of the forest. There hasn’t been a need for a public animal hunt since he arrived. He keeps the beasts away from the people and advocates to make sure they have preserveswhere they’re safe. He’s saved hundreds of lives since taking the job.”
“Wow. Just… wow. It never even occurred to me that this could be possible. I don’t think anyone in my realm knows about this. They couldn’t…” Clayton trailed off, unsure if he believed that. “So you don’t think it’s weird for Mal to be my, um, mate?”
Elena shrugged. “A sentient creature is a sentient creature. We don’t judge as long as consent can be given.”
