“What if we pair her with Eridanus?” she suggests, drawing her proposed spell on a blank sheet of parchment. “That’s the river, but it also represents dreams, hope, and purification.” She slides her proposed spell over to Odette.
Odette stares at it for a long time, tracing it with her finger and mumbling unintelligibly to herself. Minutes pass until finally, she nods and smiles. “This is it. This is perfect. Now we just need to write the linguistic counterpart.”
“I can help,” Cassius says, taking a seat next to Claudia. She leans against his shoulder and smiles at him.
He’s so beautiful. And he’s more advanced at linguistic magic than Claudia and Odette combined. If he writes the poem to accompany the constellations, it will be even better. Stronger. Smarter.
This is going to work.
Cassius takes his journal into the nearby study and closes the door while he works.
“Alistair.” Odette turns to him. “You go brew up everything we need. Definitely something to make us immune from Marcherie’s call, and then anything else you can think of.”
“On it.” He motions for Angel to follow him into the kitchen.
The group reunites an hour later. Alistair and Angel carry armfuls of potions in tiny jars. Marcherie’s voice is thoroughly warmed up, and her eyes are wet and wide since she briefly communed with Dolericym to give her strength. Cassius presents his proposal for the stellinguistic spell:
Like Cassiopeia, your body will hang upside down
As punishment for your murder, rage, and pride
Here, with this lake as our Eridanus, you will drown
In the fervent dreams of those who refused to die
It’s perfect. Claudia and Odette combine their blood to write the spell.
When it’s done, they lay the spell on the table and the six of them hover over it. Wordlessly, they shoot glances at one another. Angel, anxious; Alistair, impressed; Marcherie, proud; Cassius, unsure; Odette, roguish. And Claudia, unafraid.
“This will work,” she says. She squeezes Cassius’s hand, but his face doesn’t change.
“Cas, are you okay?” Alistair asks.
Odette’s nostrils flare. She glares at him. “Don’t tell me you’re sad about killing Triche.”
“He’s allowed to be,” Marcherie says. “Triche is like family to him.”
“No, he’s not,” Cassius murmurs. He looks at Claudia. “You are my family.” He looks around the room. “All of you are.” He takes Claudia’s hands. “And I’ll kill for us. I’ll do anything for you.” He chews on his lip. “But I fear we’re acting too sure about this. We don’t truly know if it will work.”
A tense silence chills the room.
“But we can,” Alistair says brightly. “Angel can calculate the chances of anything. Darling, what are the odds that Triche dies tonight?”
Angel’s face lights up. “Right.” He fumbles through the messy papers until he finds a blank one and reaches for a quill. Odette picks up the stellinguistic spell as Marcherie clears the table for him.
The five of them stand around and stare intensely while he works. It takes him about ten minutes and two more sheets of paper to come up with an answer, and it’s not a good one. Eyes wide, he looks up at them and says, “Thirty-seven percent.”
“It could be worse,” Alistair says.
“It could be a whole lot better,” Angel counters.
“It’s the best we’re going to get,” Odette snaps. “Are you ready to bring him here, Cas?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be. I’ll open the Doorway outside, close to the lake.” He starts toward the front door, and the rest follow silently, spells and potions in hand.
Outside, this is the first time Claudia sees Starlake without poison blurring her vision. She recognizes it immediately as the place where she and Cassius danced in her dreams. It’s more beautiful now that she’s experiencing it awake—not just the glittering white estate, not just the milky, misty lavender lake, but the entire world around them. It’s soft with early-morning light, still hazy and dreamlike.
She can’t believe she’s only just now realizing where they are. “This is the Realm of Dreams, isn’t it?”
