by K. J. Sutton
Unless… Zara had lent so much of her energy that even she hadn’t been able to complete the healing.
As I had the thought, a memory floated back like driftwood, and I realized how extensive the damage had been. Do you want to die?
His voice had the haziness of a dream, but I knew my father. He’d been real. He’d found me in death to speak truths I didn’t want to hear, just as he had done in life. Thanks for coming through for me one last time, Daddy. There was an ache in my heart that had nothing to do with supernatural burns.
I was fully conscious now, and with awareness came agony. Despite the painkillers I was probably on, every part of my body hurt. Dear God, was this how mortals felt every time they were significantly wounded?
You deserve it, a faint voice whispered at the back of my head.
Shame spread through me, swift and lethal as poison. Those unwanted memories breathed down my neck. So much pain. So much death.
But I’d fixed it now. I’d made it impossible for me to use that terrible power ever again.
Grimacing, I focused on colors around the room as a distraction. The minty walls, the yellow stain on the tiled floor, the beige blanket draped over my legs. There was a clock on the wall. Once I noticed it, I couldn’t block that sound out. Tick. Tick. Tick.
I looked toward the hallway, wondering if I could convince a nurse to take the clock down. The door was slightly ajar, but now that I thought about it, I hadn’t seen a single person walk past. The voice that pulled me from oblivion had gone silent. Was something wrong?
My instincts were rousing, speaking to me in insistent whispers, and they all said the same thing—danger was near. Fear took hold, stronger than the pain, and I finally sat up and moved my legs to the side.
“Hello?” I called, mindless of my exposed backside from the gaping hospital gown. A draft of air whispered across my skin, reminding me of the Hunt, and I shivered. “Is anyone out there?”
There was no response. The fear expanded until it felt like there was a balloon in my lung, making it hard to breathe. Tick. Tick. Tick. Wheezing and cursing the clock, I stood shakily. I called out again, listening hard. When there was only silence again, I took a few steps and grasped the doorknob. It twisted in my hand, but not from my doing.
“What are you doing out of bed?” a nurse chided, entering carefully. I felt as if she could hear the wild frenzy of my pulse, beating in time with the clock. Thud. Tick. Thud. Tick. The nurse put her hand on my shoulder and eased me back into bed. “You’re not trying to leave, are you?”
The thought was so ludicrous that a laugh caught in my throat. I didn’t let it free, though—even that small movement would hurt too much. I let silence be my answer. If the human was bothered by this, she didn’t show it. Her expression was pleasant as she checked the machines beeping next to me. “Happy Thanksgiving, Miss Sworn,” I heard her say.
She left the room. I wanted to call after her, but I wanted to avoid the pain more. Did she say it was Thanksgiving? I wondered dimly, tension seeping from my muscles as I gave in to darkness again.
Days passed.
Or maybe it was only a few hours. I didn’t know and I didn’t care. I lay there on sweat-drenched bed sheets, trying not to fall asleep. Nightmares waited for me, I knew, hulking shapes within that hovering darkness. Awareness came rushing back when something cold touched my arm.
My eyes snapped open, and Finn’s whiskered face loomed inches away from mine—it must’ve been his nose I felt. Lyari stood behind him. My first thought was that I’d returned to the dreamscape. But we were still in the hospital room and I could read words on the monitor next to me. I was awake. This was real.
“What are you guys doing here?” I asked when my heart had slightly calmed. More time must’ve passed than I thought, because it felt like I’d healed; I was able to look up at Lyari without a burst of pain. Or, more likely, I’d gotten a fresh dose of the good drugs. The room was glowing, which seemed like further evidence of this theory.
Lyari looked at me as though I were an imbecile. “We’re here to protect you, of course.”
“You made that oath to your queen, which no longer applies to me,” I reminded her in a slurred voice, ignoring another stab of pain. This one had nothing to do with dragonfire, though. “You’re free, okay?”
“You’re really going to make me say it?” the faerie snapped.
I frowned at her, running an absent hand down Finn’s back. “What the hell are you—”
“For fuck’s sake, this isn’t a romance novel,” Lyari snarled, then seemed to rein her temper in. “I’ve come to the conclusion, Your Majesty, that a throne is not what makes a queen. My oath is no less legitimate because of where you were sitting while I made it.”
Her voice was stiff and reluctant. As she spoke, the barest beginnings of a smile tugged at one corner of my mouth. I looked away, my head flopping toward the window, and I stared out into the night. Two things, I thought. Two good things came out of surviving those trials.
I’d saved my brother… and gained a friend.
Within the hour, or maybe it was a handful of minutes, the pain returned and made me forget everything else. Finn nosed at my arm, as he’d been doing repeatedly over the last few hours. It didn’t hurt when he touched me—not anymore, at least—but the warmth of his breath was uncomfortable. I didn’t stop him, though, because I knew he was doing it to reassure himself that I was still alive. His fear filled the room like scent from a burning candle.
Being human felt like a hollow shell, I decided. I shared this thought with Lyari, but I wasn’t sure if I was actually talking out loud. I also wasn’t sure if that was Emma and Damon talking in whispers, or if they were another dream.
When I finally forced myself to leave the bed and creak my way into the bathroom—Finn hovered nearby with every step—I walked on legs that felt like brittle sticks. One misstep, one fall, and they’d crack. I finished my task with success and began the painstaking journey back to bed.
I was staring out the window again, my eyes half-shut in drug-fueled drowsiness, when it shattered.
Glass sprinkled onto the floor. Lyari shouted, but her words were drowned out by the humming in my ears. I struggled to sit up just as something crawled through the jagged hole, clicking like an insect.
The cherubim had returned.
Once again, I didn’t know if I was sleeping or awake. If this was a dream or reality. I instinctively fumbled for a weapon in the nightstand. But I was weak from the ordeal with Cyrus and my hand slipped off the small handle. Fuck.
Down the hall, someone cried out.
“No, don’t hurt anyone,” I tried to say. A moan was all that passed my lips.
I was dimly aware that Lyari and Finn were both locked in battle with separate cherubim. But there was a third crawling through the window now, and I met the creature’s gaze for exactly one shocked, frozen instant. Then its arm moved—I saw it out of my peripheral vision—and time seemed to slow as I rose my own to block it. Too late.
Something small and hard smashed against my head. It cracked like an egg. In the next moment, the most fetid stench I’d ever experienced filled the room. I recoiled against the plastic headboard, gagging, and tried to plug my nose. It had become even more difficult to move, though. The air itself felt like tar.
“Do you see the ghosts?” I whispered to the cherubim. I must’ve lost time again, because it was carrying me through the air. The hospital room was gone and cold, black sky surrounded us, filled with spirits and voices. “Do you hear them whispering?”
The creature just made another chattering sound. Its wings looked like smoke. No, blurs. I tossed my head, trying to clear it, but the movement only brought darkness closer. There was a reason I didn’t want to sleep, I knew. There was something I needed to do.
One of the ghosts was whispering in my ear, saying something about… a prince. Maybe it was a fairy tale. The urgent task felt less urgent, suddenly, and I closed my eyes to lis
ten. A dreamy smile curved my lips. “Was the prince very beautiful?” I murmured.
“Oh, yes,” the ghosts whispered back. “Oh, yes…”
The insides of my eyelids were red. Sunlight. Morning. Everyone else was probably already awake. Emma would be trying to cook an enormous breakfast on her own. Get up, Fortuna. Just open your eyes. You need to help Emma.
Reluctantly, I started to obey. But just as my eyes cracked open, everything came roaring back like a tsunami. I remembered waking up in a hospital, after Cyrus had burned the bad parts of me away. Finn and Lyari came to stand guard. Then… breaking glass. A battle. People screaming. The memories became even dimmer after that. A final image whispered through my mind. A glimpse of city lights far below. There was a leathery wing obscuring part of my view.
How much of it had actually happened? Which parts were hallucinations and reality? Were Finn and Lyari all right?
When my vision cleared, the haze of sleep efficiently blinked away, I wasn’t surprised to find myself in a strange place. I’d been taken, that much I did know. Whatever the cherubim smashed against my head had caused apparitions and lost time. I still felt the effects of it, a grogginess that wasn’t fading as I looked around. The bed was mammoth, with a canopy above, and could easily fit several more people. Tall windows surrounded me, their filmy curtains fluttering in a breeze. The ceilings were vast and the walls gleamed with golden wallpaper. To the right, there was an enormous pair of doors.
When I turned, trying to take in the rest of the room, my gaze met Laurie’s.
“Shit!” I jumped so violently that my spine slammed against the ornate headboard, and that was when I finally noticed I was in restraints. Chains rattled from the suddenness of my movement.
The Seelie King sat in a chair beside the bed—no, he wasn’t the king anymore, I needed to stop forgetting that—legs crossed, hands resting atop his knees. There was a teapot on the table beside him. My wild heart began to calm. If Laurie was here, I was safe. My gaze moved over the rest of him. He wore clothing even more elaborate than usual, a gold and blue slashed doublet coupled with gauntlet gloves. Nestled in his silver was a crown I’d never seen him wearing it before.
“Where are we? What happened?” I rasped. “Do you know if Lyari and Finn are okay?”
Instead of answering, Laurie studied my face as though he’d never seen it before. “Welcome to the Seelie Court, Fortuna Sworn,” he said. His voice was strange, too. Higher than it normally was.
My instincts were shrieking like a wounded siren. Once again, my pulse quickened. Somehow, though, I managed to stay still. I gave Laurie a questioning look, waiting for him to offer the inevitable, logical explanation for the restraints. While I’d been unconscious, I had thrashed or lashed out. Maybe I’d even hurt someone.
Instead of doing this, however, the faerie just quirked a silvery brow at me.
“What’s going on, Laurie?” I asked evenly. Even now, I hoped for a valid reason I was strapped to a bed. The beginnings of panic stirred, though, and I couldn’t stop myself from tugging at the cuffs.
With an elegant flick of his wrist, my friend checked a Rolex watch I’d never seen him wear before. “As of… 6:23 this evening, I’ve laid claim to you,” he informed me. “You are no longer the monarch of an opposing Court, so in the eyes of our world, I’ve merely taken another slave. Albeit a very infamous one.”
There was something in the way Laurie looked at me, maybe, or the tight crook of his mouth. Not quite a smile, not quite a smirk. Some terrible thing that hovered between the two. In that moment I had a flash of intuition, like lightning striking a tree, and I felt the fragments left of my heart cracking even more. “You sent the cherubim,” I said flatly. It wasn’t a question.
Laurie inclined his head, as though he found my response deeply interesting. His gaze fell, just for an instant, and zeroed in on his knee. His sensuous mouth pursed. His long, pale fingers fussed at a piece of lint I didn’t see. “A crude method, I admit, but they don’t give my secrets away,” he remarked.
“And why,” I said through my teeth, using anger to disguise my pain, “did you go through all this trouble? Why ‘claim’ me?”
That’s when Laurie smiled, and the sight sent a chill through my body. It looked nothing the smile I’d known until now. The smile that, somehow, was always just for me, even when we were surrounded by other people.
“Well, my dear, isn’t it obvious?” Laurie asked in a self-satisfied purr, his eyes gleaming like razor-edged diamonds. He reached for a teacup. “I have plans, Fortuna Sworn, and none of those plans will come to fruition while you’re human.”
For a moment, I just stared at him, wondering if this was a dream. Collith’s voice floated through my head like a ghost. Haunting me, appearing to me when I least expected it. Did you know that you can’t read in a dream? Desperation sliced through me, and I scanned the room again, but there was nothing I could test Collith’s theory on.
Laurie’s words eventually registered. While you’re human, he’d said. If my heart had been pounding hard before, it was a mallet now, slamming against the wall of my chest so hard it hurt. I tugged at the restraints and snapped, “I don’t understand.”
“What’s not to understand?” He took a sip of tea, then smacked his lips. The sound was too loud in this eerie stillness. Seeing the complete change in his demeanor, hearing the change in his voice, I realized that Laurie was a stranger. I didn’t truly know him, because the person I’d formed in my mind wasn’t the one sitting in that chair. A flash of memory blinded me, and I saw the whites of Savannah’s eyes, her face flung back as she tried to shout a warning. Someone is still coming!
Her voice was still echoing through my head as Laurie’s gaze met mine and he said, those pretty silver depths glinting with cruelty, “I’m going to make you a Nightmare again.”
END OF BOOK THREE
Acknowledgments
What a ride.
I wrote this enormous book during 2020, a year I think we can all agree wasn’t conducive for creativity. But, as always, I had an incredible support system every step of the way. Without them, I’m not sure Deadly Dreams would exist.
The first individual I want to acknowledge is Jessi Elliott. Over this past year, you’ve become one of my dearest friends. Without our FaceTime calls, our sprints, our shared passion, 2020 probably would’ve broken me. I’m so lucky to have you in my life. Thank you for the part you played in this book’s creation, and I can’t wait to write even more together in 2021!
As always, thank you to the other friends in my life for continuing a relationship with me despite the amount of times I say, “Sorry, can’t, I need to work on the book.” You know who you are.
My eternal gratitude to my outside readers, Randi Georges and Brianna Stahl. It was no small task, editing a book that clocked in over five hundred pages, but neither of you batted an eye when I asked. How did I get so lucky?
And finally, thank you once again to the Fortuna Sworn fans who took the time to message, e-mail, review, and share about this series. Your passion feeds my own and every single post continues to surprise and humble me. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.
About the Author
K.J. Sutton lives in Minnesota with her two rescue dogs. She has received multiple awards for her work, and she graduated with a master's degree in Creative Writing from Hamline University.
When she’s writing, K.J. always has a cup of Vanilla Chai in her hand and despises wearing anything besides pajamas. She adores interacting with fellow writers and readers. Until then, she's hard at work on her next book. K.J. Sutton also writes young adult novels as Kelsey Sutton.
Be friends with her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. And don’t forget to subscribe to her newsletter so you never miss an update!
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