There was something it wanted me to see again, clearly, but I didn’t know how it expected me to get there if it was planning to toss me about like a piglet in a sack. I’d had more than enough of that for one day already.
Still, I knew there was no point in resisting it, so I let myself be bullied down a long corridor until I reached another of the seemingly infinite black doors and opened it as soon as the House was calm enough for me to turn the handle.
So, this was the sorcerer’s bedchamber, and apparently, he did sleep—or something like it. Like the throne room, it was near empty and bleak.
The only furniture was a large bed, rather like the one the House had provided for me, with black blankets and furs that had been kicked and tossed into a snarled heap along one side and were trailing onto the shining floor.
There was a haphazard tower of books on the other side of the bed, with a few open volumes scattered around it as if tossed aside in fury or frustration. There was the portrait I had seen hung on the wall of his workshop, leaning against one of the walls, with the sacking that had covered it half torn off.
And there was the sorcerer, naked but for a pair of black drawers with lacings down the sides that were probably supposed to tie at his knees but had been rucked up by his flailing to sit more at mid-thigh, exposing a cool, hard stretch of muscle in each leg. His chest was bare.
As I watched, trying not to blush, he kicked out his legs and sent yet more blanket sprawling onto the floor, and the House heaved again.
His eyes were tightly closed. He was asleep, then, and perhaps having a nightmare? I took a step back, intending to leave him to it rather than risk him waking to find me gawking at him, but then I saw him lash his head back and forth on the pillow, so violently that it looked like he might break his neck.
The House juddered and shuddered as if it were about to break apart, and I was relieved that it wasn’t made of bricks and mortar.
Was he having some sort of fit? I hesitated. If so, I couldn’t just leave him, loath as I was to go any closer and intensify the spell with my nearness to him ... and nearness to his half-naked body, and his bed, and everything that implied.
Was this why the House had practically pushed me through the door? To entangle me with the sorcerer and his spell even further? Or was it concerned for him?
They were connected, after all.
I blew out an exasperated sigh and stamped over to the bed as best I could through the House’s rocking, trying to keep myself feeling as practical and unromantic as possible. The fact that I was tired and grumpy helped, and I focused on that, trying to pretend I felt nothing but irritation, and not a fluttering of excitement and pleasure.
I was fearful that I would lose all control as I approached the bed and throw myself on his flailing body or something equally as mortifying, but the state of him soon shook me sober.
He had thrashed his head with such force that he had bitten clean through his bottom lip, and the blood welled from it in generous red bubbles, mixed with saliva. I could see the white of the fat through all the red, and it made my stomach turn.
He was in a bad way, every muscle of his body rigid and trembling, the cords standing out in his neck. His black hair was drenched with sweat, clinging to his skin in coils thick as rope. He grimaced as I leaned over him, his lips pulling back from his teeth in what seemed like an involuntary snarl. What with the blood from his cut lip, it was a grisly sight.
If I didn’t wake him, he could do more damage to himself. I took him by the shoulder as emotionlessly as I could, trying to ignore the spell, and shook him hard.
His response was immediate. His eyes snapped open, darker than I had ever seen them, with the pupils huge and staring. He flung out an arm at me, and although I was quick to dodge, my foot twisted under me, and I fell, sprawling onto the black tile. He leapt from the bed with animal speed and landed over me on all fours, his hands on either side of my head.
I froze. He stared at me with those great black eyes, panting open-mouthed like a dog, the blood from his almost-severed bottom lip dripping on me, stinging hot. I had forgotten how inhuman they could look, the magic-workers. He looked like something out of a children’s story, a monster made up to terrify the wee ones into good behavior.
He didn’t seem to recognize me. I wondered if he was going to rip out the rest of my heart at last or ravish me. Both options seemed utterly terrifying and, because of the spell, darkly enticing.
“Sylvester?” I said tentatively. It was the first time I had actually spoken his name to him, I realized. It sat oddly in my mouth. He blinked, and his dilated pupils shrank to a normal size. He brushed his hand along his jaw and stared at it when it came away, taking in the blood.
“Foss ...” he said, his voice trailing off. He looked more human now as he stared down at me. I could feel the heat coming off him. He looked about him, at the tangle of bedclothes. “Ah,” he said—an entirely inadequate syllable, in my opinion.
“You were having a nightmare,” I said. I would have been mortified to be discovered in his bedchamber if I weren’t so shaken by the state of him—and annoyed that he had knocked me on my arse, intentionally or no. “The House ...”Sent me?It seemed ridiculous to say.
He seemed to realize that he had me pinned, and he heaved himself off me and stood. I scrabbled on the floor, trying to right myself. There was a swishing sound, and I looked up to see the sorcerer extending a hand—he was clothed now, by magic means, and I suppose the noise I’d heard was the fabric slithering into existence and onto his body.
I gripped his hand and allowed him to lift me, surprised a little at his strength. The spell was still dizzying me, of course, but I fought to keep my face expressionless.
“Thanks,” I said grudgingly, once I was upright. I saw that the bed had tidied itself, too. I reached out to touch the pillow that had been such a bloody mess. It was dry, and the blood was gone, as if it had never existed—either magically evaporated or dissolved into the black fabric, I suppose. When I turned back, the sorcerer was looking at me, his mouth slightly open and his breath still a little ragged.
“Thank you for waking me,” he said after a long moment.
You’re welcomeseemed an altogether ridiculous thing to say. “Do you have those often?” I ventured. “The nightmares, I mean.”
“Yes.”
“And is it always ... like that?”
