by Allison Pang
Melanie and I had slipped back into our usual state of friendship. If things still seemed a little strained with the forced Contract between her and Talivar, well, that was something we were working on as best we could.
Charlie, on the other hand . . .
I let my hair drift down from its bun. Total clusterfuck there. I had no idea if she knew her lover had cheated on her, and I really didn’t want to know. But Moira had been right. Knowledge was power, and if Robert kept a slightly more respectful tone around me these days, well, I wasn’t going to look too closely at it. Still, it sucked royally to have to look at your friend and lie—or at least pretend not to know.
I wished Moira had never told me, but anyone who saw the baby would probably be able to tell. There was a definite resemblance in his chubby face. If he sprouted wings the jig would be up.
I quickly washed up in the bathroom, wiping at my face with a damp cloth. My reflection looked the same as it always did, trapped in that strange half-life of nonaging. I’d had that part of the geas reinstated when I formally re-signed Moira’s Contract, though she had limited that particular perk only to the inner regions of Portsmyth. It seemed like the status quo thing to do, and if I had to give up another six and half years of my life, I might as well come out of it looking as good as I had going into it.
As for the rest of it, I hadn’t decided on either the wish or whatever sort of boon the Queen might decide to offer me. I preferred not to think about it, honestly. Gifts freely given are one thing, but gifts offered under duress are another animal altogether. At least this time Moira had made the extra effort to train me once or twice a week. And the fridge had better food in it now too.
The thought of food turned my thoughts to Brystion. Not for the first time, and probably not for the last time.
I’d had a lot of time to think about him, my eyes drifting down to that spot just below my sternum. I lifted my shirt, staring at it in the mirror like I’d done nearly every night—another scar to live with. My fingers traced the silver oval left by the knife. It was almost like a tattoo, perfectly round, but with one little jagged edge at the bottom. No, it wasn’t likely I’d be forgetting that night. I let the T-shirt drop. I needed a shower, but I needed sleep more.
I caught my own gaze and held it. “Are you in there, you bastard?” I said it half seriously, but a flutter of anticipation took wing in my chest. Was there a hint of something there? Would I see a flick of disdainful arrogance, a flare of gold? I turned away before anything had the chance to manifest. I was ever the coward, as Brystion had pointed out. “Still running away,” I agreed, turning off the light.
The manila envelope from my mother’s attorney seemed to echo the sentiment. I’d moved it from its little domain in the kitchen once Talivar moved in, but this time I left it in plain sight on my nightstand. So far, I’d still managed to ignore its presence somehow.
And yet, tonight I was drawn to it. Maybe it was the conversation with Sonja, or maybe I was just tired of being afraid.
Sucking in a deep breath, I carefully pried it open as though it might suddenly grow teeth and bite me. Snorting at myself, I pulled out the letter, a standard sort of legal thing, wishing me well and stating that my signature was still required for the release of my mother’s estate and asking me to call at my earliest convenience.
“Not just yet,” I murmured. I shook the envelope and realized there was something else in the bottom. Cold metal fell into my hand, sliding through my fingers. A key to a lockbox, undoubtedly residing in the bank back home—and a silver necklace.
I stared at it bemusedly, taking in the shining blue topaz amulet, so similar to the one Phineas wore around his own neck. I certainly didn’t remember my mother ever wearing it. I ran my fingers over its smooth curves, wondering at its origin. Why had Mr. Jefferies sent it to me? I reread the letter but there was no mention of it at all.
“Is a puzzlement,” I declared, tossing the envelope back on the nightstand, the key and amulet clustered together upon it. A small victory, perhaps, and maybe a hollow one, but for now, it was enough to have acknowledged her death, even in this fashion. Baby steps and all that. The scab wasn’t really ready to be pulled off, but it was a start.
Besides, I had bigger fish to fry.
I turned off the light and slipped beneath the covers, huddling into a soft cocoon of warmth. From underneath the door I could see the flicker of light indicating Phin was still happily immersed in his game. Well, that and the occasional cry of “DPS, my ass. Motherfucking Death Knights.”
I rolled over, tucking the blankets around my shoulders, and let my mind drift away. What if Sonja was right and Brystion really was as hurt as she said? I still had no way to explain the nightmare I’d had about him. But more to the point, he blamed me for that which I could not control. Or was I just making excuses? Were dreams truly the window into the mind’s soul, or just mere instruments of processing?
My thoughts continued to chase themselves round and round, an endless circle of fox and hound, chicken and egg, each answer leading to another question. I was not going to find satisfaction by myself, that much was certain. It occurred to me that I hadn’t dreamt of him once in the last few weeks. In fact, with the exception of the visits to my Heart, I’d barely dreamt at all, let alone been exposed to my nightmares. Was he even now guarding my dreams? He’d had no cause to do so.
I opened my eyes for a moment, staring into the darkness. There was only one place to find the answer, and it wasn’t going to be here. “We’re going to have this out tonight, Ion. One way or the other.” I felt foolish saying it like that. I had no idea if he could hear me, but I didn’t care.
“Do you hear me?” I let my voice drop to a whisper. “I’m coming to find you.”
I exhaled sharply and shut my eyes again, this time falling quickly into sleep, my journey sped by purpose and possibility.
The house was dark and creaked something fierce when I opened the front door. The noise wasn’t quite a warning and not really a threat, merely a shadow of its normal self. I moved forward, brushing away the cobwebs that clung to my hair as I crossed the threshold.
I slipped into the main hall, past the familiar rugs, bookshelves, and dusty fireplace. Even the small bowl of potpourri on the wooden end table—strawberries, with a hint of cinnamon. My mother’s scent haunted me here. The smell was cloying; it distracted me with memories I couldn’t afford to pay attention to.
The shadows drew my gaze up the stairs to the bedroom, but even though I could feel his presence in every corner, I knew I would never discover him there. It would be too easy then. No, to find Brystion, I was going to have to go deeper.
What was the line from that Narnia book? Farther up and further in . . .
I pressed through the kitchen, a hanging crystal winking a dim purple in the hazy candlelight from the window. The rest of the dreamhouse sat in silence, doors closed and quiet. The crickets’ song called my attention outside toward the garden. I inhaled sharply, tasting Brystion on the damp breeze that blew in from the open window.
Dark. Earthy. Hungry.
“Where are you?” I asked the silence, but there was no answer. Not that it mattered—I hadn’t expected one. Sonja had warned me as much.
Abby . . .
“Brystion.” I said his name, the sorrow and loss I’d felt over the last several empty weeks bubbling up, tingeing the flavor of the word with an aching echo of that night. I slid open the screen door, my shoes sounding sharply on the stone patio. Heedless of my passing, the fireflies continued their celestial mating dance, fading in and out of the growing darkness.
I traveled down the steps cut into the hillside and through the damp grass—grass that became taller and thicker until I was weaving through prickly thorn trees and past an ivy-covered gate. I hadn’t come this way before, but its familiarity stung me to the core and brought a lump to my throat. From dreams into nightmares, I supposed. Still, it was a bit unnerving to actually see it. I’d
always confined myself to the House proper, not willing to venture forth into the wilderness that was slowly swallowing it.
The brush became overgrown and harder to push through as the light faded faster. I let out a desperate groan, somehow knowing that if I didn’t find him by the time the dream evening was gone, he might slip away forever. The sleeve of my sweater snagged on a low-hanging arch of rock. I pulled away, feeling it start to unravel.
“Please.” I tripped over a gnarled tree root, stumbling to my knees. I glared at it in betrayed frustration—dream trees weren’t supposed to do that. “Thanks a lot.” I brushed a stray twig from my hair, wondering what the hell had possessed me to wear such inefficient shoes.
A snap of branches sounded behind me and I started, my ankle twisting sharply. I could feel his presence in the shadows, darker than before. I knew he was there, watching me struggle but offering no hand to help me up. Clearly he had not forgotten our last words and they hovered between us like the cord of a whip, tangible and taut. I fought the urge to flee. I fought the urge to beg. I fought the urge to reach out and touch him.
The breeze pulled the hair away from my face and I looked up at him, seeing him fully for the first time. My heart ached. I hadn’t understood what he meant about feeding before, not really. But this . . . this was an incubus bereft of dreams.
His skin was midnight blue, almost deep enough to be black, but it glowed in the moonlight with tiny crystalline scales. They were curled in delicate patterns across his face and abdomen like the gossamer strands of some celestial spider’s web. He looked so different, and yet, his arms were familiar to me, and his hands, and the rippled muscle of his chest as he breathed. All of it was still Brystion.
My fingers pressed to my lips as my eyes roamed over the rest of him, catching the details of what I hadn’t been able or willing to see before. He had the hind legs of a stag, curved and cloven and furred, a dusky lion tail twitching by the left hock. Great antlers swept up—wicked, glittering, and crystal pale—bursting from his brow and tangled in the blue-black of his hair. His ears were pointy, cupped hollows with a hint of deer, but his face . . . oh! His face was the same—from the arrogant pout of his lips to the angled edge of his cheeks. His eyes remained dark and haunted, only the merest ember of gold shining.
“You’re beautiful,” I murmured, taking a step closer.
His nostrils flared, and his left hoof stomped a warning, but he didn’t retreat. I reached out and he flinched. “Don’t.”
I left my hand where it was, my gaze never faltering. His breath misted slightly, and I wondered at the crisp chill in the air. Surely it hadn’t been there before. “Do you live here now?”
“You offered it to me.” His voice was bitter, his mouth a pencil-thin line. “What choice do I have?”
“You have the choice to live your own life,” I pointed out dryly. “Moping about my Heart doesn’t seem like a particularly proactive way to go about anything.”
“Easy words from someone who can’t even see herself in a clear light,” he retorted, but there was an uncertainty behind it. “You think me a monster. Admit it.”
“I’ve never copped to being something I wasn’t. Just avoided what I couldn’t admit to—survival mechanism, I guess. And I don’t see you as a monster, Ion.” I hesitated. “Although when you threatened to eat Maurice’s soul, that kind of threw me. I didn’t think you did that sort of thing.”
His skin appeared to darken. Was he blushing? “I’d forgotten you could see me.”
“Can you actually do that? Eat souls, I mean.”
“I suspect so.” He looked away, one hand clenched against his chest. “I don’t know what side I fall on, which Path I belong to.”
I watched him for a moment, wondering at the grief in his eyes. How long had he hated himself?
“Which one do you want to belong to?” I stepped closer to him again and this time he didn’t back away. “Who do you want to be?”
He remained silent, paralyzed between hope and fear, eyes wide and gleaming.
“You could come back, you know.” I said it quietly, casually, my pale fingers drifting over the dark skin of his shoulder. The muscles trembled beneath my touch. “We could start over, be ourselves without the pressure of the sky falling on top of us to push us together.”
“You don’t mean that,” he said, his voice carefully braced on the edge of flight. “You can’t.”
“Of course I can. Would I be here otherwise?”
“It is your Heart that makes you so compassionate. Your need to fix what is broken.”
I laughed but there wasn’t any humor in the sound. “I can’t fix myself, Ion. What makes you think I could fix you?” I brushed the hair away from his forehead and placed my fingers at the base of his antlers. “I’ve missed you.”
One silver brow rose, the emotions flattening on the perfect beauty of his face. “Don’t you get it?” He whirled away from me, lowering his antlered head. I fought the urge to flinch from the glittering points. “You Dreamed me as someone who hurt you, ravished you, cut you. You’re a Dreamer. Your dreams can become reality, especially to one who . . . who is connected to you.”
“That makes no sense,” I snapped, shame pricking me like the point of a needle. A memory of teeth rippled across my skin, remembered fear making me harsher than I should have been. “You’re not connected to me at all.” I winced beneath his stare, regretting the words the instant they left my mouth.
“Perhaps I was mistaken, then. I will not trouble you further.” He skittered sideways, as though he might melt into the moonlight.
“Hold up there, bucko. You think because I dream of maggots pouring from my head it means it’s going to happen? You think that imagining someone I care about attacking me is something I intended?” He shuddered beneath the onslaught of my words, but I pressed forward. “Newsflash for you, incubus. I wasn’t aware of doing anything right then.” I wiped my hand over my face. “What is it you want me to do, Ion?”
“I don’t know.” He leaned against the side of a fallen elm, one arm holding on to a curved branch. “Why are you here? I lied to you, stole your faith, your friendship . . . your lust.” His eyes drifted partway shut, taunting me with a touch of his old arrogance.
“Yes. And I suspect that, had things not turned out the way they did, Moira would be looking to nail your ass in front of the Council. But they took into account the circumstances. I don’t think they’re completely happy with you, but there’s no ill will on the part of the Protectorate.” Sonja had seen to that matter almost immediately, pleading clemency for her brother far more eloquently before the Council than I ever could. Of course, I’d still been in my sleep-induced coma, so the point was completely moot.
He snorted. “I could give two shits about what the Protectorate thinks. Why are you here?”
My teeth ground together. Confession time. “You know, if you’re just going to play hide-and-seek with me all night, you could have just left me in that damn painting and saved us all the trouble. I’m a little short on mental floss, at the moment.” I exhaled sharply. “The more important question is why do you think I’m here?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, his face suspiciously devoid of emotion.
“Oh, of course not.” I moved closer to him, ticking off on my fingers. “Let me guess. You’re like a thousand years old, but you’ve never found love, right? Never found a single woman in all that time who made your loins quiver and completed your soul, or whatever bullshit you happen to need? Well, except one and you had to cheat on her.”
He blinked, dry amusement flickering across his countenance. “Actually,” he said slowly, “I’m only about thirty-five as far as your years go. Then again, I’m not really sure what you’re accusing me of. It’s a Contract you want then?”
“Don’t be such an ass.” I rolled my eyes and yanked hard on a lock of that perfect hair. “Come here,” I insisted, leaning up to kiss him.
&nb
sp; His lips met mine for an instant, fierce and possessive, hands digging into my hips so that I slid against the hardened muscles of his torso. He uttered a low groan and it pulsed into my mouth even as the curved length of him brushed against my belly.
Brystion . . .
He thrust me away, ignoring my cry of protest. His eyes flashed feral and golden now, his chest rising and falling in painful counterpoint to the pounding of my heart.
“I cannot stay with you,” he said finally. “Not like this . . .”
“I don’t understand.” I swallowed against the tightness of my throat, his words pricking the edges of my heart.
“Just . . . this.” He gestured at me. “It’s all I can ever be to you, Abby. All I know is of the flesh, the hew and the thrust of pleasure. An incubus is not meant for more.”
“And if I don’t want more?”
His eyes narrowed. “You can’t lie to me—not here. Not for long anyway,” he snorted. “And when the moment is over . . . what then? When the ripples of gratification have faded away, the heat of passion cooled . . . when you realize that I will not grow old with you, or have children?” His expression turned rueful. “And however you might feel about these things now, I have tasted them in your dreams . . . and those do not lie.”
He captured my hand to rub it against his cheek. “And perhaps, in truth, it is I who want more,” he said. “More for you, anyway.”
The heat from his skin jolted down my arm in a warm flush that fluttered wildly between my thighs. He kissed one finger and then another, his grasp locked around my wrist. “I don’t want you to be anything you’re not,” I whispered. “Ever.”
He groaned, harsh and guttural, as he leaned forward, his mouth trailing hot and wet over my ear. “I could give it up for you—what I am. You have the power, Dreamer.”
“I have nothing,” I insisted. “I have a wish, given to me by the daughter of the Queen of Elfland—and not one I can use for quite some time. Besides”—I kissed his collarbone with a sigh—“if you’re going to play Angel to my Buffy, you should know this type of stuff never works out once one person becomes ‘normal.’ Could you have rescued me if you were human? Could you have protected my dreams?”
