Tiger's Dream (Tiger's Curse Book 5)

by Colleen Houck

  Lokesh gave Ren an injection and asked question after question. Most of them about Kelsey. Ren screamed in agony as Lokesh plunged a knife into his body and twisted it. Ana lifted a finger and I noticed that Ren’s eyes cleared, his body sagged in relief. She’d taken his pain away.

  Lokesh grabbed Ren’s face, turning it toward him. “I promise you, my proud prince,” he spat, “you will tell me the location of the other two amulets. It’s just a matter of time.”

  Once he was back in his cage and the compound became quiet as night crept across the sky, an interesting thing happened. Kelsey appeared. Ana caught my hand as I stepped forward and drew me back, shaking her head.

  How can she be here? I asked.

  It must be their connection, Ana answered, pressing my hand to the carved tiger truth stone hanging about her neck. Can you see the strength of their auras? It is like ours. It draws them together. I could indeed see the brilliant light that surrounded each of them.

  “Kells?” Ren said, his voice barely a whisper.

  “Yes. It’s me,” Kelsey answered, grasping the bars of the cage.

  “I can’t see you,” he said.

  Kells got down on her knees and pressed her face against the bars. “Is that better?”

  “Yes.” Ren touched her hands with shaking, distended fingers, and the light surrounding them bloomed exponentially brighter.

  I slid my hand over to Ana’s shoulder and drew her closer, pressing a kiss against her temple as I held her.

  Seeing his wretched state, Kelsey began crying. Ana followed suit, pressing her fingertips to her mouth. “Oh, Ren! What did he do to you?” Kelsey asked.

  He told her about Lokesh and that he wanted to find her at any cost. She begged him to hold on and promised we were coming for him.

  When he said, “I’m just so…tired,” my heart broke for him. I was surprised when Kelsey’s response was, “Then tell him. Tell him what he wants to know.” Is she crazy?

  “I will never tell him, prema,” Ren vowed.

  The fire went out of Kells as quickly as it had come. “Ren, I can’t lose you,” she said.

  “I’m always with you. My thoughts are of you. All the time.”

  Ana cupped my arm and leaned against my chest.

  Ren mentioned Durga and that she had offered to help, but Ren deliberately let Kelsey believe the offer was to save him, not her.

  “Take it!” Kelsey pleaded. “Don’t think twice about it. You can trust Durga.”

  Ana winced at those words.

  “Whatever the price is,” Kelsey said, “it doesn’t matter as long as you survive.”

  “But Kelsey,” he said.

  “Shh. Just survive. Okay?”

  Ren nodded, resigned to his fate, and told her she needed to leave. He asked for a kiss, believing it was the last time he’d ever kiss the woman he loved. The way he held her so gently, with such care, anyone watching might have assumed it was because he was in pain, but that wasn’t it at all. To Ren, Kelsey was the most precious thing in the world, and he wanted her to know that. I envied how easy it was for him to express his feelings. Then he went and opened his mouth to spout poetry. Really? Now?

  I shifted impatiently, hoping Ana would get the message to speed things along, but she mentally shushed me. The poem moved Ana more than it did me, but I got the point of it, the message he was trying to get across. If I hadn’t felt great sympathy for my brother before, I surely felt it now.

  When he finished, Ren moved away from Kells. All the warmth leached from his voice as if he was already letting her go. “Kelsey?” he said. “No matter what happens, please remember that I love you, hridaya patni. Promise me that you’ll remember.”

  “I’ll remember. I promise. Mujhe tumse pyarhai, Ren.”

  Light shifted around Kelsey. She began to phase in time. If she hadn’t been so fixed on Ren, screaming his name as she was ripped away, she might have turned and seen us. Then she was gone.

  It’s time, Ana said.

  Summoning her power, she shifted her body, letting it shimmer fully into Ren’s time.

  “I will accept your offer, Goddess,” Ren said.

  “Very well.” Ana stepped closer to him.

  “Will I never remember her again?” Ren asked.

  “Your memories will only be blocked temporarily,” Ana replied.

  The relief on his face was greater than when she’d taken away his pain. If he’d been able, I think he would have knelt at her feet to worship her. “Thank you,” he said humbly.

  “You are welcome,” Ana said and reached into the cage, touching his face lightly with her fingertips. She began her work but then I thought of something. I remembered that moment when Ren regained his memory. It had been when I kissed Kelsey.

  “Ana,” I murmured quietly in the dark.

  “Hmm?” she turned to me.

  “You have to set a trigger in his mind. A thing that will bring his memory back.”

  She nodded. “There needs to be a trigger, Dhiren.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked. “Who is with you?”

  “I am accompanied by my…my consort.”

  I snorted, not liking that word at all.

  Ana ignored my outburst. “The trigger is an event that will jar your memory. It must be something that will prove to you that she is safe.”

  Ren suggested several ideas for triggers, but none of them were the right one—the one that actually happened.

  “The trigger was a kiss,” I told her. “When I kissed Kelsey for the first time, he got his memory back.”

  Ana gave me a look, frowning. I folded my arms across my chest. If she was going to call me a consort, then she could deal with my past relationship. “Kelsey is safe with your brother, is she not?” she asked, turning back to Ren.

  Apparently, when I was phased, Ren could hear me enough to know someone was with the goddess but not well enough to understand my words or recognize my voice.

  “With my brother? Yes. She will be safe with him. So, seeing them together will give me my memory back?”

  “No. It’s not enough to just see them together. They must be…comfortable.”

  Ren laughed. “My brother likes to get a bit too comfortable around Kelsey. He’ll probably take advantage of my absence and try to kiss her at every opportunity.”

  He didn’t notice how Ana’s whole body became stiff.

  All business now, she nodded. “Very well. Your trigger shall be a kiss.”

  “You mean when I see him kiss her, I’ll get my memory back?”

  “Exactly.”

  Ren pulled away.

  “Why do you hesitate, Dhiren?” Ana asked. “Do you not believe that your brother will kiss her?” I raised an eyebrow at the tiny note of hope in her voice.

  “Oh, he’ll kiss her, all right,” Ren promised.

  “And can you be assured of her safety if you see them kiss?”

  “Probably.”

  “Ah, you wish there were another way,” Ana said and turned to me. “I also wish there were another way. But what is meant to be is meant to be. Come, Dhiren, it is time to finish.”

  As she worked, Ren went into a little trance.

  I phased into time fully, knowing she’d take away any memories of me being there. “How much of this will he remember?” I asked.

  “Only the parts we want him to,” she answered, her gleaming hand outstretched as she carefully sifted through his memories. It was much easier to wipe a mind completely or to remove everything that happened in a certain time frame than to go about the delicate work of just removing one person and leaving the rest intact.

  “Make sure he doesn’t know that I was here then.”

  Ana nodded.

  I approached and knelt beside the cage. “Hello, brother,” I said.

  His bleary eyes shifted to me and he scooted closer.

  “Kishan? How…how are you here?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry that you have to suffer,” I said, wis
hing I could take some of the burden away from him. “You’ll be rescued soon. Not that you’ll remember me saying that.”

  “I don’t understand,” Ren said, his voice evocative and demanding. “What’s going on, Kishan? Tell me!” he insisted and tried to sit up.

  “It’s a veil of concealment,” I said. “We’re hiding your memories of Kells so Lokesh won’t find her.” I reached a hand through the bars to help support him and winced at how skinny he’d become. Touching the amulet, I made the cage just a little bigger. Not so much that Lokesh would notice but even a few inches on all sides would make him more comfortable.

  How many years of his life has Ren wasted away in cages?

  Guilt for leaving him there nearly incapacitated me, but then I remembered the conversation we’d had. It was months before for me but centuries for him. Even then, when he didn’t know Kelsey, he’d accepted his fate. I was sure if he knew everything now, he’d do the same thing again. My brother was a noble man and one deserving of every happiness he had. He’d earned it.

  “But why are you here? I don’t understand.”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I tried to explain,” I told him gently. “Besides, I barely understand it myself. Just trust me when I say that this is necessary.” I touched his shoulder, squeezing it lightly, then left Ren and mumbled to Ana, “Are you almost finished?”

  “Nearly.”

  Ren’s whole body shook and then went limp. We watched as he transformed into a tiger.

  Ana said, “Now it is done. Sleep, white tiger, and dream of the girl you love one last time.” She wove magic in the air and used it to cushion Ren’s body as she lowered him down. Then she gave him fresh food, clean water, new straw, healed him, and summoned the power to bathe and dry his body. Ana scratched the ruff of his neck and touched her lips to his head, the bars melting away as she neared and reforming when she stood.

  When she was satisfied, Ana let her glamour drop away, and we leapt through time, stopping at various points to ensure Ren’s memory block stayed in place. The first stop was Phet’s hut. The phony monk was rubbing globs of pink goo into Ren’s hair. We stopped time and everyone remained frozen in place except for Kadam. “It’s about time the two of you showed up,” he said. “I don’t know how much longer Ren was going to sit through this.”

  Ana laughed, covering her mouth to stifle the giggles, and we reinforced the block.

  Kadam as Phet waved us off. “Thank you. I’ll take the rest of it from here.”

  The two of us zipped away to the Star Festival next. Ren nearly remembered everything when he took Kelsey to the tree he filled with paper wishes. Ana was transfixed by the idea and pulled a few notes from the tree, keeping them for herself. When I asked her to show them to me, she refused, and when he saw me and asked me who my new girl was, Ana smiled and worked her spell to remove our appearance from his mind once again and fortified his mind lapse so he couldn’t remember Kells.

  Next, we went to his room at our home, where he pored over his pages of poetry, all of them about Kelsey. Ana froze time and peeled a page from his fingers. “This is very…effusive,” she said.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” I replied. Ana reinforced the block and we moved to the next place.

  Freezing time in the red dragon’s palace, Ana studied the golden light blooming on Kelsey’s palm. Ren stood behind her, the two of them harnessing enough energy to create a supernova. Tapping her lip with her fingers, Ana said, “When they use their power in such a way, it burns through the memory block. It’s similar to what happens when we…we embrace.”

  “Ah,” I said. “That makes sense then, I suppose.”

  “It comes from their bond as an incarnation of the goddess and her tiger. That’s also why she’s able to open all our locks and gateways. They’re channeling the same type of power.”

  I frowned. “But, Ana, Kelsey tested out that power with me on the boat. Kells and I couldn’t generate that power together.”

  “Perhaps that is because you are not her tiger,” Ana answered softly and held out her hand.

  “No,” I said, sliding my palm over hers, relishing the familiar tingles associated with our touching. “I belong to someone else.”

  Ana stepped into my arms and twirled her finger, letting time proceed naturally. We watched as Kelsey and Ren lit the star. When they were finished, both of us saw the moment he remembered.

  “Kelsey,” he said, his entire being attuned to her. Emotion filled his face as he called to her again. But she was exhausted. She didn’t notice. I felt sorry for him then and might have been tempted to let him at least talk to her, but Ana, ever efficient, quickly swept the memories from his mind again.

  “If I hadn’t thought to make Ren averse to touching her, we would spend a whole lifetime just trying to keep them apart,” Ana said. “How did you manage to betroth yourself to a girl who was besotted with your brother?”

  “He was an idiot and broke up with her. She almost died because he couldn’t physically save her. It made him sick to be close. Ren decided she was better off with me. It broke both of their hearts.”

  “Yours too,” she said quietly.

  “Mine too,” I agreed.

  We next went to the top of the wheelhouse on the Deschen, where Ren and Kelsey were reclining on pillows, eating popcorn. Ren stared at his bowl like it held the secrets to the universe. He mumbled something about a blue dress and Ana said, “He’s remembering something and it’s triggering more.” Lifting his head, he smiled and took a step toward Kelsey. As he did, Ana swept her hand over his face and he faltered.

  In a flash, we were on the Deschen in a room I recognized as Kelsey’s. We heard her humming in the bathroom. “Are we healing her from the kraken bite?” I asked.

  Ana shook her head and frowned. “That was not on the list. Did you use the kamandal?”

  “We hadn’t filled it yet.”

  “Perhaps Kadam healed her?” Ana suggested.

  “No.” I shook my head. “She healed quickly on her own, like she did in Shangri-La.”

  “She healed there? Interesting. And yet she needed the kamandal to heal from the bite of the shark?”

  I nodded. “And Fanindra healed her from the Kappa bite in Kishkindha.”

  Ana said, “Shangri-La is a special place indeed, but I did not create it to be a place of healing, nor did I fashion Kishkindha to be such. And this is a place where dragons rule. They created it themselves. I wonder if, like me, Kelsey draws upon the power of her connection to her tiger to heal. It is stronger between us, since our bond is permanent and the elixir enhances this power. But Kelsey and Ren also have this ability, albeit in a more limited fashion.”

  “I suppose that makes sense. Her injuries were less severe in this case and her bond was stronger. Well, if we aren’t here to heal Kells, then why are we here? Is Ren’s memory block failing?”

  “It is. But this time we want it to fail.”

  “Ah. Then tonight is my first date with Kelsey.”

  The door cracked open and Kelsey emerged from the bathroom wearing her beautiful dress. “Kishan?” she called and we immediately fell quiet. “Guess not,” Kells said. “Apparently, I’m hearing things now too.” Kelsey paced nervously back and forth, checking her appearance in the mirror.

  Ana closed her eyes. She is praying.

  To you? I asked, surprised.

  No. To her mother. She…she wishes her mother were here to guide her and… Ana cocked her head.

  What is it? I asked, urging her to go on.

  She wants you to feel happy. That you belong to this world. She wants to love you as she does Ren.

  She doesn’t though.

  Her feelings for you are strong. They still are. Kelsey loves you but—

  But she loves Ren more.

  Turning toward me, Ana touched my arm.

  It’s okay, I said. A part of me always knew. It’s why I agreed to stay behind with you.

  There was a knock on the
door and Ana leaned closer to catch a glimpse of my old self. You looked very handsome, she said.

  I offered my hand and the two of us followed Kelsey and her date up to the deck, where I’d worked to arrange a romantic dinner.

  You went to a lot of trouble, Ana said, admiring the table.

  Yeah. I scrubbed the back of my neck, feeling guilty that I’d never done anything like that for Ana. I was pretty desperate to win her affection, I said.

  She replied, Any affection won in such a way is fleeting. A woman should love a man for his character, not because he showers her with beautiful gifts and finery.

  That’s true, I said, wrapping my arms around her waist from behind. I leaned down to speak softly in her ear. But a man should be courteous and thoughtful when wooing a woman. With Ana’s weight resting against me, we began to sway to the music. Will you dance with me, Ana?

  She nodded and I turned her in my arms and pulled her close. The feel of her body, moving with mine, was intoxicating. Her hand stroked my chest and I captured it, pressing it over my heart. We were soon lost in a world of our own and I became so focused I nearly bumped arms with my old self as he began dancing with Kelsey. Instead of yanking me away, Ana froze time and we danced to a music of our own making.

  Sliding her arms up around my neck, she drew closer and our lips met. My hands roved her back and the dip of her waist. I captured the length of her hair and tugged gently, so her face tilted up and I could kiss the soft skin of her neck. The world around us ignited and we finally broke apart when we heard a crash.

  It seems time started without our help, Ana said.

  Ren must have done it. We should learn never to underestimate a desperate tiger, I said.

  Kelsey’s hands were still gripping the shirt of my old self and his hair stood on end. With Ana’s truth stone pressed against my chest, I noticed that Kelsey’s aura didn’t match the one worn by my other self. Before I could tell Ana, we heard Ren’s voice come from somewhere above us. “I said, let…her…go.”

  There was another crash and a vengeful Ren stalked toward them. He said, “Don’t…make me repeat myself.”

  I asked Ana, Is he remembering?

  He is on the verge, but no, not yet.

  Well, let’s put the poor guy out of his misery.