by Jessa Lucas
The wind tumbled through the night, sweeping my hair into disarray. Jabari tucked his hands into his pockets and closed his eyes against the gentle drag of air.
“It is a beautiful thing to bear witness to, a person set free,” he mused. “It was perhaps easier then, for each of us to live like you were not ours alone to love.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Jabari smiled, eyes still closed. “When a person is in the midst of their becoming, it is very clear that they are no one’s but their own.”
“Did I reach the end of my journey, then?” I asked. “Or do I have to, like, become all over again?”
Jabari opened his eyes and considered me thoughtfully. “That is for you to decide, is it not?” After a moment, his eyes found those stars again, watching them as if the constellations spelled answers in the sky. “The tension we hold here, with you— with one another— that is a forgetfulness. We have forgotten that you were never a woman who needed saving, and our individual desires to find your answers for you may cause division.”
I guessed that made sense. “Well,” I sighed. “I’m definitely not eighteen anymore, even if I look it.” God, I hoped I didn’t.
“Whatever spell is on this tower stopped us from aging. Likely to preserve our virility.” Jabari flexed for me in jest, and I rolled a long “rrrr” in response. “You do look older to me, though,” he commented. “Perhaps the darkness of what you have endured...”
He looked over at me, observing me carefully as his words trailed off, and then he set a hand on my cheek, his thumb brushing across my face. There was a sweetness to it, an absence of intention that I found so ready in other men.
My brows tugged together as I studied him. Tan skin as dark as the evening sky, hair shaved close along his head, those light eyes singing radiant joy into a swarthy face. I added my hand to his, and turned my face to kiss his palm.
My heart sputtered. Things with Jabari were easy. Strangely innocent, immediately intimate. It wasn’t the same fire I had with Jude, but I began to wonder if it might be deeper. Bound in friendship.
“I think I’ll retreat to my room now,” I said, faintly bringing back my faux-princess demeanor.
Five men? This was about to get confusing as fuck.
“Sweet dreams, Princess,” Jabari said as he kissed the top of my hand, “and I hope you know I do not mean that lightly.”
“Of course not,” I smiled warmly back. “Night, Jabari.”
Just as I crossed over the threshold and back into the hall, Dash appeared and moved in front of me.
“Ah, just the little siren I was looking for.”
“Visiting hours are up, boys,” I called out, turning back to Dash, “especially for ones spreading little rumors about me.” I moved forward and jabbed at him.
Except, my hand didn’t leave even after the poking stopped. Instead, I flattened my palm against his abdomen, unable to help the instinct.
“I don’t remember you being quite so provocative on the ship, temptress.”
I raised my eyebrows slowly, picturing my fingertips on Dash’s thigh at dinner. It was unclear whether he’d appreciated the gesture or not. “I wouldn’t have guessed the werewolf had a thing for subtlety.”
“I don’t.”
“Then enjoy the provocation while it lasts,” I said, voice husky, “because I have some powers to hone. Perhaps you might even convince me to move faster than usual.”
In the timely span of two weeks would be great, thanks.
My fingers curled against the ripple of muscles underneath his shirt, and I reluctantly made to move my hand away. Dash grabbed my wrist.
Smoke curling into the air, hovering above his lips—
Smoke--
“Oh, would you prefer I leave my hand there? Or did you want it somewhere else?” I purred.
He swallowed thickly, his Adam’s apple bobbing, and I tried to hold back the gleeful smile of the repressed siren.
“You’ve got to show me this wild side of yours soon,” I whispered. “It’s got me all kinds of excited.”
“Deal,” he said quietly. He released my hand and I sauntered off.
“Temptress,” I heard him mutter as he sighed in the way of a defeated man.
I flashed Dash one last smile over my shoulder, and then snapped my teeth at him like a wolf who wanted a bite. Just for good measure.
I couldn’t sleep. Maybe it was that I’d had about six lifetime’s worth of power naps… or I was too stressed about, you know, a curse trapping me in unconsciousness forever, but even staying up all night was a welcome alternative to returning to nightmares of a father who’d apparently never existed.
So I lay in bed, contemplating the very interesting ceiling. Really, it was a far more interesting ceiling than the other one I’d spent my long nights contemplating. The one in my childhood room had had that popcorn texture, and in the dim glow of my nightlight, strange peppered shadows had hung above me. Instead of counting sheep, I’d looked for shapes in them the way a child would look up at clouds on a beautiful day.
This ceiling was tiered, and just like in the chamber I’d woken up in, there was a mural painted across it. Scattered all above me were endless types of plants and wildlife I didn’t recognize, and antiquated men and women with well-fed naked bodies wandering through the foliage. As the piece expanded from the middle, the shapes of leaves became birds, and birds became stars, until the edges of my room looked like a window to the universe. It seemed like a creation story I didn’t recognize, and it sent my mind whirring.
The process of unraveling the myth on the ceiling quickly turned sour, and I found myself waist deep in worry. There was so little I knew about this world. The beliefs, the politics, anything at all about magic. What kind of sovereign would I be, if I even made it to the throne alive?
I couldn’t break a curse, or rule a kingdom. I was a vagrant from a small town with dreams of making it to Los Angeles. Those dreams had been just fine; trying to find success in that city was enough to keep anyone busy for a lifetime, but it’d been everything to me. The idea of being free— even if life was hard— was everything.
Maybe if I couldn’t break the curse, it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe I could find a way to trick my mind out of giving me powers. Maybe. Now that I knew a dream was all it was.
But it wasn’t just my fate I would decide. These men had whole lives they’d left behind to guard me. And if the dream repeated, I’d just spiral further into an oblivion of reliving my demons.
Stop.
I obeyed. It was a voice in me that was stronger than my own, not the siren, not the vagabond. It was that interior voice of the woman who’d promised these men we’d escape. Maybe that princess was in me somewhere... maybe I would find her, and she would know what to do.
I sighed, and rose from bed. Surely there was a book in here to keep my mind occupied until light decided to dignify me with its presence. I made my way across my excessive chamber to the shelf by my bathing room. First glance, and already the books on it proved they wouldn’t be of much use or entertainment to me. They were all in some rune-like language which I obviously didn’t know. The farthest I’d gotten into a second language was third level Spanish, and I was pretty sure that wouldn’t end up being of much use to me, like, ever again.
I pulled a thick volume down and flipped through. Graphic etchings of blood and gore were printed on the pages, and though I wasn’t fluent in fantasyland runes, the message was clear enough. War, ruin, blah blah blah.
Guess this world’s fascination with violence didn’t differ from Earth that much after all, even if they did still use swords.
I exhaled as I flipped through more of the pages, driven by boredom and restlessness. More gruesome sketches of poetically beautiful people fighting tiny neanderthals. Somehow it looked like the neanderthals won.
I hefted the book shut with a thud and dust wafted out of its pages and into my face. I coughed as I replaced it and gazed over the
spines of the other books. Maybe one of them was a picture book with a child appropriate story or something.
I found one that looked mildly promising, but as I tipped it down, the whole shelf clicked and shuddered.
Um… seriously?
I narrowed my eyes. Not hiding your secrets behind bookshelves— like, page three in Secret Passages 101.
The dust on my fingertips seemed to indicate that it wasn’t often used, so maybe it had managed to stay secret after all. I pulled a candle from my nightstand and the knife from under my pillow, and slipped through the tight opening between the shelf and the stone wall only to be immediately greeted by sinewy cobwebs and moist air.
Well if this wasn’t lovely and horrific.
The dulled pad of my slippers against the stone floor was the only sound, but I could feel a cool draft of air funneling through. There was definitely something at the other end of this tunnel.
A few minutes and a couple millimeters of burned wick later, I came to an archway with a grated gate. The night sky was dark beyond and I let out a breath of relief, pushing open the unlocked gate.
Maybe— my heart thundered at the possibility— maybe the Reflection had been wrong. Maybe there was a way out after all—
I stepped out onto the terrace and was taken aback to find none other than Syrus sitting on the stair-stepped ledge of the turret, feet kicked up and a pipe hanging from his mouth.
“...Sy?” I asked, looking around for any other way he could’ve gotten up here aside from using the secret passage from my room.
He craned his head around, brows furrowed as he assessed me, and then he went back to looking out at the night as though I had only barely disrupted whatever un-obvious activity had him occupied.
“Come sit.”
I joined him, folding my arms over my chest. If I’d known I was going to stumble upon a man up here, I would’ve thought to put on more than my nightgown. Probably.
“What’re you doing up here?” I asked.
“Couldn’t sleep. You?”
“Found a secret passageway.”
“Mmm,” he grunted in acknowledgement, the pipe between his teeth. Well, that was an underwhelming response.
“So…” I said awkwardly into the prevailing silence, “since our last one-on-one, we’ve found out that we’re trapped, that my nightmare will become your reality, and that there’s a traitor lurking about. Tell me honestly, Sy— I probably won’t get murdered in my sleep, right?”
“The one to slay you would hang.”
“Hang,” I raised my eyebrows. “We’re pretty primordial here, aren’t we?”
No comment, but based on the number of candles we went around lighting at nightfall, the answer was yes.
“Anyway,” I sighed. “You really think I’m safe?”
“The Reflection is a mediator between us, Saylor, not a spy for Valtronya. We will know if the Crown makes a move. As for the watchmen… our oaths command us to protect you— together.”
“And protect the world from me.”
He was silent.
“I have eyes on the Reflection at all times. If the traitor returns, we’ll know.”
That would explain why Gilles had been lurking about when I’d exited. Though, I didn’t think I was the likely suspect.
“How do I know it wasn’t you?” I accused.
“You do not.”
Honest enough. I huffed. “How did you all get here? Manage to get your life ruined so badly that you got locked in a tower with a faulty siren-slash-princess?”
Sy’s eyes assessed me as a puff of smoke blew through his lips, a look that clearly asked why I frequently wore so few clothes around him. “That is a story for another time.”
I didn’t exactly understand how that made sense seeing as how we were stuck in a tower with nothing to do at the moment. Between the vague curse-breaking and the abstract defeating-evil-queen-ing, it didn’t seem unreasonable for him to just tell the story now.
“I don’t know how to break this curse,” I said quietly. Sy turned, his eyes meeting mine.
“Perhaps we should begin to familiarize ourselves with the nature of your dream if it is to become our reality.”
“At this point,” I sighed, “I think I’d rather be done than go back.”
“Was the world of your dream so unsalvageable?”
I frowned, his question awakening all the dark places I’d put behind me in order to forge even a shot at a future. Being locked up in a tower... well, even that had quickly become a better refuge than a bus heading towards a hopeful fate.
“It was pretty bad,” I said simply.
When he unfixed his gaze from me and looked back out at the stars, a ring of smoke issuing from between his lips, he said, “You asked if you had burned a house down.”
It wasn’t a question, but a statement. It was clear Sy would leave the answering part up to me. I reached a hand out and he stared at it confusedly until I motioned at his pipe. He finally relented and offered it to me, and I took a puff from it, trying to pretend like it was something I’d done a million times.
When the smoke lifted from my tongue and escaped into the night, I finally spoke. “I burned my house down with my father inside. So yeah, things weren’t great.”
I passed the pipe back before continuing. “On Earth— in the dream, whatever— I had abilities too. I got them at sixteen. My mom died before I was old enough to remember her, but my dad... well, he was a good dad until I got to the age that I needed a mom. He was a bit of a drinker, and one night when his best friend was over, my dad passed out on the couch leaving us alone. By that point, I already knew there was something wrong with me—”
Sy shook his head, “There is nothing wrong—”
“—and so I was usually really careful,” I barreled past his interruption. If I let Sy stop me, I would never get it out. “This particular friend of my father’s was like an uncle to me. I trusted him. I thought it was cool when he offered me a beer, but I didn’t understand how alcohol would affect my powers. With my inhibitions lowered, they woke and suddenly... I was seducing him. I was using them on this man who was thirty years older than me, who was basically family. By the time I got ahold of myself, he was too far gone. I stopped controlling him, but he still—”
I swallowed, not feeling like the story really needed the words to conclude it. After a few moments of silence to let it sink in with Sy and fade from my own mind, I continued to the hardest part of the story.
“My father refused to believe me. I think he must’ve and just didn’t want to admit it. He started drinking more, got pretty aggressive. And he kept bringing his friend around. I told my father I was going to the police, but he threatened to disown me. The thing is, my father’s friend hurt me, violated me... but my father—” I shook my head. I didn’t have these words either. “His own daughter, Sy.”
I took a steadying breath. “After two years of this— my father’s alcoholism and abuse, that monster I’d made of his friend— I couldn’t take it anymore. So the last time the guy showed up at my house, I burnt it to the ground and ran. My father was inside, too.”
Though my words weren’t empty of the heaviness I still carried, I had no tears left for either of those men. I stared off into the night, trying to forget all the things I’d just confessed.
It was strangely therapeutic to tell Sy. I’d never actually told someone before, seriously at least. I’d made scattered allusions here and there to fellow drifters, but usually they were too high (or had done far worse) to take me seriously.
I don’t know why I told him, when there was Jude. Jude, who’d wanted so badly to be there for me in these things. Perhaps it was because Sy didn’t care if he knew; he wouldn’t ask questions, and it was easier to pretend it wasn’t a big deal when he didn’t need me to tell him.
“Look,” I said quietly. “I know this thing right now— this is supposed to be real. But don’t bother telling me what I went through in my world, dream or
not, didn’t happen to me.”
“I would never dare.” Sy looked over at me. “What Dash said at breakfast— it was out of line, Saylor. The things we experience, whether in this life or another, form us. They do not have to live in the physical world to harm you, to influence your perception of life and who you are. What the Grimms did to your mind…” he shook his head, “to your heart, is abominable.”
I sighed, reaching out for another whiff of his pipe, hopefully this time with a little more swagger than before. “What about you? What’s the worst thing you’ve done?”
“I imagine it was stealing that puppy from the temple market when I was ten. I returned him not an hour later, riled with guilt.”
“What? You’re a goody two shoes,” I scoffed.
“Goody-two-what?”
“Shoes. Basically, you’re an excessively virtuous person.”
Sy laughed. Like, tilted-his-head-back-and-roared-into-the-night laughed. I frowned at the sound, unable to keep the quirk of a smile from my own lips.
“Minus your affair with an evil queen, of course,” I shrugged.
“When I thought I had you figured out, you come back fifty years later odder than before.”
“Oh, was I strange to begin with?” I raised my eyebrows, but he just looked over at me and smiled, lips closed tight. I could tell it was genuine, or at least as genuine as the stiff-necked Syrus of Alrontez could get.
“So I found these books I can’t read,” I said, kicking my feet up next to his. “But the pictures were super barbaric. There were like these beautiful people and they used torture devices to mutilate their enemies. It was gross.”
“Sounds like you found a history book.”
“God, that’s terrible.” I frowned, trying to imagine a world where those things had actually happened. “You mentioned a war in this world?”
Sy nodded.
“Well...” I prompted. “What happened...?” I secretly wanted him to tell me a story; he made a good listener out of me.
“A thousand years ago, the godspawn ruled. The sons of men and gods, usually raised apart from the world they ruled over. They were powerful and righteous, but also hard and unforgiving, thus their idea of what was just did not always sit well with the people under them.
