His concern was sweet. “Not really,” I lied.
“Where are you? I’m coming to get you right now.”
I shook my head. “I’m not sure. But I’m afraid if you come to me, then she’ll kill you. That’s what she really wants. Going through the portal is just her backup plan.”
“Lorelei,” Zane growled. “There’s no way I’m just going to leave you with that monster. If she’s draining—”
I lifted my fingers to his mouth to stop him. As touched as I was by his concern, we were running out of time. At any moment, one of us could wake.
The instant my fingertips brushed his lips, Zane fell silent, and his pupils dilated. I meant to speak, but as I stared into his blue-and-brown gaze, my heart skipped a beat, and my throat suddenly went dry.
Zane slowly reached up and took my hand. I licked my lips, and his gaze dropped to my mouth, heating with emotion.
Finding my words, I forced myself to slip my hand from his. “You need to get to the Spring Palace and rally with my mother. They think I’m just training with Queen Liliana. They don’t even know I’ve been kidnapped. My mother will bring in the royal guard, and once I’m free, we can destroy the curse.”
He nodded and ran a hand through his hair, clearly agitated. “Okay. I will. I’m coming for you, Lorelei.”
The way he said it, with such confident conviction, made me believe him. I relaxed a little, freeing up my mind for other things. “So, what’s the plan?”
He cocked his head in confusion.
“You know, the big plan to destroy the curse. The reason you’re in Faerie. There’s something we’re supposed to do together, right?”
“Oh, well, that’s … we’re not really sure,” he began, looking around the room as if searching for something.
I placed my hand on his arm, forcing him to meet my gaze. “I’m sorry, what? You aren’t sure? So there’s no plan?”
The shock of it made me feel sick. I’d hung everything on the belief that there was a way to destroy this curse.
“There is a plan. I have a note for you. It’s just not here.”
A note. From Dawn? Isolde? Of course, it wasn’t here. This wasn’t real. We were in a dream.
The tavern around us started to go hazy, alerting me that Zane was waking up.
“I have to go,” I said, beginning to back out of the room. But this time, Zane ran after me.
“No, not yet,” he begged as I stepped out of the door.
Trying to follow me, he slammed against an invisible barrier, wincing in pain. Only a dream walker could cross through there.
I wanted to stay and study the lines of his concerned face, but even as I watched, the dream around him started to dissolve until Zane disappeared as well.
Chapter Seven
Zane
Ibolted upright, my heart hammering in my chest like a war drum, a thin sheen of sweat coating my skin.
The dream. Lorelei. It was real.
The dream, as well as the one I’d struggled to remember the night before, came back to me with full clarity. Lorelei was a dream walker, and she’d been kidnapped by Dawn’s delusional mother. I had to rescue her.
I leaped out of bed and turned on the kerosene lamp, scouring the dark space for my boots. The sun had yet to rise, but that didn’t matter. I couldn’t stay here. I had to get to Lorelei.
A groan came from the other side of the room, and I glanced over to see Nellie asleep on the cot. I’d momentarily forgotten about her. Of course, I couldn’t just leave her here.
I went over to where she lay and shook her gently until her eyes opened to slits, and she stared up at me groggily.
