Xia distracted herself with shaping the water into sea creatures as she thought of her mystery man. It was funny how someone could be such a stranger while being so intimately familiar.
She had firsthand experience with strangers being too familiar. Each time her body was exposed on a stage or sold to a patron for the right amount of cash, she was all too aware of how familiar men could get.
But Brooks… It was something else entirely. She felt like she’d known him all her life. Their banter was effortless and the safety net he cast around their space was as shelter she never wanted to leave.
When they were in the dream together, though? Something came over him that was so unfamiliar.
Could it be that he was a daemon like her? It was odd for someone like her, someone that the humans claimed as their gods, to be stuck in the human world so helplessly out of control.
Come to think of it, she couldn’t even be sure the human world was where he resided. Their night in the infirmary was the first time they’d ever met in person. Well, as in person as you could get inside a dream.
Xia let her thoughts drift to daydreams as she wove chaos, the term her kind used for magic, through her bathwater. Tiny seahorses roamed in herds around her feet as pods of dolphins dove over the bubbles she kept blooming to the rim.
She knew it was a poor use of her magic, but replicating the intricate details of the sea life kept her restless mind busy. It would be another rough night. The Lord of Nightmares was expecting her.
Xia scrounged whatever lurking courage she could find and took a deep, stabilizing breath.
It was no small feat to lift her head from the porcelain tub. She knew she should stand up. Knew she should drain the water and don the armor that would get her through the night. Steam no longer rose from the cooling water and her skin wrinkled like a newborn babe, and yet Xia remained.
It was no puzzle as to why. The sooner she stood, the sooner she would meet the handmaiden in her bed chambers. After she was groomed for him there would be no turning back. She halfheartedly wondered what he would do with her. At least she would have new memories of Brooks to carry her through the night.
A soft knock on the door pulled Xia from her thoughts as a meek voice carried through the barrier. “Mistress, Xia? The Lord grows anxious. He wishes me to bring you to him.”
Xia closed her eyes and rested her head on the tub again. She used to feel anxious when the handmaiden would come. Her body would shake, sobs wracking her rigid frame as she prayed desperately for a Hercules who would never come. That was long ago, though. Life had to flow through you in order to feel anxiety. Xia was naught but a shell, resignation and emptiness the only inhabitants inside her soul.
She thought vaguely about the strength she felt when she was standing on that black beach soaked in the blood of her victims. She tried to draw on that strength, to place it in her heart and light that blazing fire that left her soaring.
Each night with the Oneiroi Lord, however, she lost a piece of herself to the darkness making it e’er harder to draw on that strength. But, that was to be the curse of the Siren. A spark of humanity to burn brightly within, only to be dampened and withered by darkness.
“Even the brightest of stars burn out,” she said to the empty room.
“What was that?” the handmaiden asked from outside the chamber.
“I’ll be out shortly. Please have my things ready and tell the Lord to expect my arrival within the next hour.”
“I must insist you move with haste, as he’s waited–”
“He will wait as long as I please,” Xia snapped.
She forced steel into her voice in hopes the handmaiden would leave her be, but she didn’t feel the forced bravado. Xia wondered if the handmaiden could tell just how far her spirit had fallen, maybe even pitied her.
A small shuffle sounded at the door, a temporary reprieve, just before a sharp pain crossed her temple. She pressed her fingers to the ache and gritted her teeth.
A rhythmicdrip, drip, drip, echoed and her blood ran colder than the bathwater. She opened her eyes and watched as small tendrils of ruby red fell into the water, each drop unfurling uniquely as it thinned. Xia touched her nose and, when her fingers came back bloodied, dread spread like rot in her gut.
The spear of pain in her temple sharpened, and she understood it for what it was– a man made of nightmares prodding her mind, weeding around for an entry point that she so desperately tried to deny. But what was a Siren compared to the Bogeyman, manipulator of dreams and realities?
“What a bold little Siren to keep me waiting,”a male voice scraped against her senses.“Maybe the pretty little handmaiden will take your place tonight.”
Another shuffle outside the door and a small feminine whimper made Xia’s head snap up. Anxiety gripped her chest tighter than her fingers clawing at the porcelain lip of the tub.
“Don’t!” she said out loud. “I’m coming, I swear it.”
Xia stood quickly, the splash of water drowning out the pounding of her heart. The handmaiden was nothing but a human stolen from her world. She would never survive a night with the Lord of Nightmares.
The Oneiroi were daemon born of the void between stars. Long after the Titan Chaos fell into a restless sleep, creatures slithered out of his darkness. They were no longer bound by the chaotic magic holding them captive. The Olympians didn’t know how daemon like the Oneiroi came to be, only that those born of Chaos were no better than Pegasus shit on their heels. Zeus was fine to turn a blind eye as they pilfered and plundered their way through the darkest corners of Olympia, as long as they didn’t dare to step foot near Olympus.
Xia stepped from the tub and donned a silk bathrobe, not bothering to dry herself with the rough cotton towel she’d thrown aside. In three strides she reached the door and jerked it open. Lying on her bed was a man in black leather pants with silken wings of leather cast carelessly off the side. His blonde, shoulder length hair was mussed like he couldn’t bother to run a brush through it and he had forgotten his shirt. He was laid back, hands propping his head in a show of carelessness. Xia knew not to be fooled by his lackadaisical posture.
