“It still could be,” Jesstin said. He found himself standing, going to her. She slid down from her giant’s chair and met him halfway, dried leaves crunching under their boots. “You have too many fucking years ahead of you to think all that’s left to you is what’s behind.”
The windows on the left rattled. Then the floor shuddered. Jesstin’s balance wobbled as he tried to adapt, but the shaking stopped after a couple of seconds. “That’s new,” he said, frowning.
“It’s me, isn’t it?” Elloven sounded contrite, but when he looked down at her, she was smiling.
“You tell me, Dream Elloven. Can you make groundquakes?”
“What’s a groundquake?”
“Who knows? I made it up,” he said, and they laughed together. He wanted to repeat it, just to hear the sound of her joy again, but the moment had passed.
“What are we doing here, Jesstin?”
“I wish I knew.”
“This feels real.”
“I know.”
“Yet also not at all.”
“I know.”
“Do you think the bond caused this?”
Jesstin was surprised he hadn’t thought of it. “That or... or your magic.”
Elloven wiggled her fingers in the air with an impish grin. “Or ooh... fate.”
Until she said the word fate, he’d forgotten how Rhiain and Asterin could share dreams. After Mathias had erased the Edevanes from their memories, dreams were how they found their way back to each other, against nearly insurmountable odds. Listening to them recount their dream adventures was the only time Jesstin didn’t roll his eyes when someone claimed “fate” was at the helm. He’d never met anyone who’d fought as hard for each other.
Being around Elloven did feel... inevitable. Destined. As he watched her, considering this, drinking in the sparkle in her untroubled eyes, his gaze lingered on her a moment longer than it should have. “If this is fate’s doing, it would be the first time it got a damn thing right for me.”
She lowered her arms with a troubled look. “What if I can’t come back?”
Jesstin didn’t know the answer, but she seemed so small in the shadow of her sadness, and he found another way to offer the truth. “I want you here. Maybe that’s enough.”
“I want to be here,” she said. “Maybe that’s enough too.”
He couldn’t even fathom either of them saying those words when awake. “I’m, uh, surprised it allowed you here at all, honestly.”
“Oh?”
“My head is one massively warped establishment. Even I don’t always want to be in it.”
“Maybe mine is just as warped?” Elloven covered her hand over his wrist, and the sensation raced through his entire body. “You can’t corrupt me, Jesstin. That horse left the barn years ago.”
“Is that a challenge?” His mouth may have said the words, but it was another part of him entirely that responded.
“Depends. Are you up for it?”
Oh, I’m up. All the way up. “You’ll just have to find out in the next act of Jesstin and Elloven’s Nocturnal Misadventures.”
“I’ll be thinking of nothing else.”
“You wouldn’t say—you wouldn’t mean that if you could really see what’s going on up here.” He tapped his temple.
“Jesstin. Nothing you say, you do, could surprise me or scandalize me or...” She inhaled sharply, and he saw she wasn’t playing anymore. “I won’t be reduced to the ideas others carry of me. If you take nothing else from this dream back to the real world, take that. Please. Be angry with me, be annoyed with me, be ready to hurl me into the sea and be done with me forever; I can take that, but please never reduce me to an idea. Not you. I’m so much more.”
