Did you enjoy the show, Moirthalen?
I squeeze my eyes shut. His voice had been so clear. As though he’d been standing right beside me, his mouth close to my ear.
Forty-four.
Nella shifts beside me, and the mattress dips with the movement, chasing away the last traces of the dream. She stayed the whole night.
I should be grateful. I should feel safe. Instead, all I feel ishim.
I can still smell the blood. Copper and salt, thick at the back of my throat. I swallow against it, yet the sensation doesn’t fade. My hands remember the weight of the poker, the way it fit in mygrip, the slight burn of the iron against my skin. And my ears remember the sounds Cowen made when?—
I curl onto my side, pressing my face into the pillow, breathing through my mouth until the nausea passes.
It wasn’t real.
I lie very still. It was a nightmare. My mind does that sometimes. Takes whatever fears I carry in daylight and twists them into something worse while I sleep. After my mother died, I dreamed for months about being the one to find her body. How she was lying in her bed, eyes open and staring. But I wasn’t the one who found her. And I had to remind myself night after night that it was just a dream.
This is the same thing. I saw the cages at the Dell, the trophies, and the way the huntmaster smiled, and my sleeping brain spun it into violence.
That’s all.
My throat hurts, and I swallow against the soreness. The slight pain brings back the memory of my screaming—how it tore out of me before I was fully awake, how I couldn’t stop. The guards’ faces in the doorway. The way their hands went to their swords before they realized there was no intruder, just a princess who couldn’t tell the difference between dreams and waking.
Nella stirs behind me.
“How are you feeling?” Her voice is still thick with sleep.
I should turn over and look at her. Give her something reassuring. Instead, I keep staring at the hunting scene above me, and try to find words that aren’t lies.
“Tired.”
The mattress dips as she sits up. “I’ve never heard you make sounds like that.”
I haven’t either. Even during the worst of it—when Cairnhad his hand around my throat, when I thought I was going to die—I don’t think I screamed like that.
“It felt real. It felt …” I don’t know how to finish that sentence.
Nella’s hand finds mine. “Do you want to talk about it?”
My stomach lurches. I breathe through it. “No. I don’t remember it all now. Just how it felt.”
I roll onto my back and look at her. Her hair is a mess, half-escaped from its braid, and there are shadows under her eyes.
“I’m sorry I woke you.”
“Don’t be silly.” She climbs out of bed. “I will arrange breakfast. You need to eat something.”
I don’t argue, and she walks to the door, and stops a passing servant. When she returns, she crosses to the hearth, and crouches to stir the embers, coaxing the fire back to life.
It isn’t long before a servant arrives with a tray laden high with bread, honey, sliced fruit, and tea. She gives me a curtsey.
“The king would like to see you once you’ve eaten, my lady.”
“Thank you.”
She leaves, and I force myself to eat something because Nella is watching, while my mind replays what happened in the great hall. The words that came out of my mouth. The silence that followed.
“Father must be furious.”
