Dream Magic

by Michelle Mankin

  “But you’re a Dark. The guards will stop you,” Catonia warned me.

  “They are welcome to try.” I lifted a brow and launched into the air.

  The gargoyle was already aloft and several yards ahead of me. I easily overtook him. His gaze narrowed on my wings. Their sheen dazzled in the sunlight but his reaction to them was more than that. Like that of the vamps, his scrutiny held hints of portent. He pointed in the direction he wanted to go and picked up the speed. Though it was a short flight, it was an unusual experience for me. I had never flown side by side with anyone. All the other winged creatures I had met in the air had been flying to oppose me. Why was Stone so accepting? Did he know my reputation? Did he anticipate my aid? He lowered his altitude as we approached the ramparts of the palace. Passing over the fence, we landed quietly without incident in the back on a topiary lined lawn.

  When we reached the steps, we encountered two tunic garbed guards. They were slumped over one on either side of the door. Given the harsh angles of their bodies, I knew they weren’t sleeping. They had been drugged.

  “Donar’s potion has done this. They will have no memory of their unnatural slumber,” Stone explained. “But keep quiet, Falcon. The princess has prepared the way for us. She gains more and more allies among the elves each year, but it is best to remain cautious.”

  I nodded following his lead, finding myself again a follower. I didn’t relish the experience. But he knew the way and I was quickly coming to the realization that I would do whatever and follow whomever as long as it led me to Cecilia.

  We flashed up several flights of stairs. The gargoyle wasn’t as fast as a vamp but he was agile and surprisingly quiet for one so massive. At the top we discovered more slumbering guards. I counted a dozen by the time we made it to the end of a long hall and a set of double doors with the rising sun insignia. Phoebus’ quarters? The door was strangely unguarded. Without hesitation, Stone ducked inside. The chamber we entered was large with plush rugs and heavy antiques. The princess emerged from the adjacent room where a bed was visible. She looked scared.

  “Stone.” Fiori’s gaze passed over me absently. Her eyes filled. “I hoped you would come quickly. The potion won’t last long. I’ve tried but I can’t get her down by myself. The chains are too thick. Can you help me? Please.”

  Chains?

  My stomach knotted with trepidation. I hurried after them.

  Two thoughts blazed through my mind when I entered the monarch’s bedroom.

  Horror for her.

  Murder for him.

  Hands bound together above my head, I lurched out of the post lyre haze with the same awful pounding headache I always got whenever he used his persuasive talisman on me and forced me to inhale Fiori’s heated blood. Only this time I found myself in an unfamiliar dream where comforting arms held me and luminescent eyes consumed my field of vision. Eyes that I had never seen before because if I had I would never have forgotten them. Eyes that reflected all the colors of the rainbow. Like that arch of colors formed in the sky they seemed to contain a significant promise, one that could be mine if only I would take a chance, reach out and grab it.

  I licked my dry lips. The black brows above those two miraculous orbs furrowed their focus shifting to my mouth. I blinked slowly watching them darken. My brain slowed like sludge, but then in a sudden landslide the preceding events cascaded back to me with startling momentum. Phoebus and the guards cornering me. Him plucking that damned lyre. Dragging me to the stage pulling my strings as though I were his puppet. Trussing me up afterward in his bedroom. The manacles digging into my wrists as I struggled…

  No! No! No! I screamed inside my head, panicking anew and yanking frantically at my bonds. Being confined reminded me of the slave ship, the whip, the dungeon, the knife and the horrible pain when they held me down and…

  The panic withdrew as if commanded as I registered the soothing hand stroking my back. Warm fingers spreading wide over the bra strap and my bare skin to steady me, the comforting embrace loosened. The wall of rigid muscle my nearly naked breasts were plastered against rocked, an arm shot upward like a missile, and in the very next moment my hands tumbled thankfully free. Useless, numb from my time in the shackles, they fell between me and the iridescent eyed stranger tangling together like limp noodles.

  My legs were so weak I would have collapsed except that the massive arms that had held me so tightly reasserted their claim. They provided a strange sense of calm that enveloped me, a shelter within a raging storm of emotion. I studied his face searching for clues to explain how he could have such an effect over me, his gaze a greater force than any power Phoebus’ lyre held over me. He seemed so familiar. The slash of those determined brows. The mesmerizing multi-hued eyes below them. The arrogant nose. The firm lips. The stubborn jaw. Strikingly handsome, more so than any man I had ever seen. But I didn’t know him. Tears pricked my eyes both from my frustration at being unable to identify him and because of the onslaught of pins and needles that signaled the return of sensation to my arms. Identifying my need before I could voice it, the pain became the bliss of pleasure as the stranger began massaging life back into my abused flesh with his expert fingers.

  A moan of approval escaped my lips, no thought given to contain it.

  “Oh, Cecilia.” His fingers tightened around my arms, his eyes narrowing and filling with an emotion that shook me awake from the dream. “What did he do to you?”

  “Move!” Instant tension returning to my limbs, I twisted to break free from his firm yet surprisingly gentle grip. I didn’t want to hear him give further voice to his suspicions. I refused to be pitied. Those closest to me knew how I hated it. They pretended not to see the bite marks on my skin or the bruises on my body because I insisted that they ignore them. “Let me go, por favor,” I pleaded in Spanish stilling when my efforts were ineffectual.

  “What is wrong?” His brows drew together. “What did I say? I did not intend to upset you.” The deep rumble of sincerity from the stranger’s sculpted lips made me feel more off balance than I already did. My stomach fluttered. Though his concern consoled me and his touch tempted me, I couldn’t afford to acknowledge either.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” I returned bitterly when the truth was so obviously the opposite. Shifting with renewed determination, I gained an inch of separation that I suspected he allowed me to have. His gaze dipped and I noted his abhorrence at the slave collar and the rest of it. The see through mesh bra, my nipples laid bare beneath it. The matching panties the v of my sex exposed by the cut out crotch. Clothed but not concealed. For some reason I was more embarrassed having this stranger see me dressed up as a plaything than I had been when Phoebus had ordered the demonesses to strip and drape me in this provocative costume.

  I pushed against the stranger’s chest ignoring the way my fingertips tingled when they came into contact with hard muscle. Seeming to sense my desperation, he relented. Peddling backward, immediately cold and unacceptably bereft without his incredibly strong arms around me, my gaze landed on the bed where Phoebus had lain naked. Where he had writhed on the sheets with the two demonesses after binding me and compelling me with his powerful voice to watch. Bile rose. I hated how he had focused his unwanted attention on me after he had tired of them. Hated the sharpness of his teeth. The heat of his soft hands. Hated how he teased and toyed with me. Hated how my body betrayed me. That was the ultimate humiliation. And my ultimate shame was his greatest pleasure.

  I pulled in a shaky breath, the lingering musk of sex making my stomach lurch. I staggered quickly to the bathroom. The tile cold on my bare feet, I made it to the toilet just in time. Falling to my knees, I heaved and heaved. Eyes watering as I coughed, nothing came up, as I hadn’t eaten all day. I barely registered the soft silk thrown around my shoulders from behind or the considerate hands that swept my hair back from my face.

  I closed my eyes, praying I could forever purge the memories of what Phoebus had done to me. But my life had no room for regret
or wishful thinking. Only cruel harsh reality awaited when I opened my eyes. I tried to stand, but a wave of dizziness staggered me. Wondrously strong arms caught me and steadied me from behind. Without speaking, he shuffled me toward the sink. I avoided the mirror and his gaze while he filled his much larger wide masculine hands with soap and washed my smaller trembling ones as carefully as if I were an untrained child.

  “Who are you?” I whispered my gaze downcast while he turned me around by the shoulders with damp fingers and began drying my wet hands with a towel. The only other man who had ever treated me so gently was my papá but that had been so long ago that I sometimes feared I had only imagined my former life.

  “Stone and I took care of the last guard, but Daddy could come back any minute. We need to get out of here…” Fiori appeared in the bathroom doorway sputtering to a stop when she saw us together.

  I yanked my hands free. “Yes of course.” What the hell is wrong with me? I pulled on the robe and started to step around the stranger. That’s when I noticed them. How in the Creator’s world had I not noticed them before? “You’re…you have…” He stood up straighter. He was so much taller than me that I had to crane my neck to get a better look at them. Bluish-black like the darkest depths of the night the majestic tops peaked over each shoulder, spellbindingly beautiful even at rest. In motion I was certain those wings were as mesmerizing as his eyes.

  Unbidden, a sudden swift longing pierced my heart as I imagined how glorious it must be to have the freedom to fly wherever you wished to go.

  As I continued to stare at them with undisguised longing, the individual feathers ruffled as if I had actually sifted my fingers through them. I stilled, realization slamming into me that they were exact images of the one I had held onto for years. I swayed, the edges of my vision becoming foggy. What kind of witchery was this?

  “Cici!” Fiori exclaimed. “You don’t look so good.” Stone’s heavy footfalls preceded his appearance in the doorframe directly behind the princess.

  “Don’t worry.” The stranger’s rumbly voice was so sexy I shivered and my nipples hardened to sensitive points. “I’ve got her.” He swept me into his arms before I could protest his highhandedness. Biceps too big to be believed bunching beneath my hands, he exited the bathroom as if he were a groom crossing a threshold.

  “Put me down. I can walk. Stop,” I protested as he headed toward the door to the outer suite. “I need to get my feather.”

  “Where is it?” Stone asked from the position he had fallen into beside me.

  “Phoebus took it and locked it in the nightstand this time,” I explained feeling the stranger’s speculative gaze on me. It irritated the monarch that holding the feather helped me resist his dark advances and the seductive power of that cursed lyre of his.

  Stone lumbered to the nightstand and tugged on the handle but the drawer wouldn’t budge.

  “Allow me.” Shifting me in his hold as if I weighed nothing, the stranger flicked out a deadly sharp looking black talon.

  Hola, where had that been when he had washed my hands so gently a moment before? He bent determinedly to his task and sliced through the wood of the nightstand near the lock as easily as if it were made of paper. The drawer sprang open and Stone withdrew the feather handing it to me. I hugged it to my chest, exhaling my gratitude.

  “Pretty fond of that feather, are you?” The stranger grinned, a single deep crease appearing in one cheek amid the dark stubble, his eyes glittering as if my attachment to it pleased him immensely.

  I nodded, my gaze dipped to his perfectly shaped lips and the sexy baritone that flowed between them. Mira. That voice. ¡caray! When I managed to refocus again, I wiggled in his grip. “Put me down,” I insisted.

  “No.” He leaned closer. His warm breath ghosted across the sensitive skin beneath my ear. I suppressed a shiver. “I like holding you.” I started to protest but was beginning to recognize stubbornness within his handsome features that I knew instinctively rivaled my own.

  “Stone,” I called seeking backup.

  “Yes, Cecilia,” he answered. He was too far away for my liking. I needed him closer.

  “If you don’t release me,” I warned the stranger. “I’ll have my gargoyle make you.”

  “I’d like to see him try.” He snorted. “That would be…amusing.” His cocky grin widened and my stomach summersaulted in response to the beauty of his dazzling smile.

  “Por supuesto. Another time, maybe I’ll let the two of you duke it out, but for now…seriously. I can walk. I need to walk, handsome.”

  Studying me a long moment, he sobered before he nodded. Had he been afraid I would faint and succumb to hysterics just because Phoebus had tied me up and humiliated me? Well, I might have…if it had been the first time.

  Waves of glossy black hair as silky as his feathers slid forward to tangle in the heavy stubble coating his jaw as he lowered me to the ground, surrendering me on his terms. His purposeful movements made my near naked body glide slowly along his very solid clothed one, while his warm hands skimmed softly over my shoulders and arms leaving a shimmery trail of awareness everywhere his skin touched mine.

  Cheeks flaming, knees wobbly, I took an unsteady step back avoiding the stranger’s eyes. Could he see, did he know, how deeply he affected me?

  “I’m so sorry I couldn’t get to you sooner.” Fiori touched my arm softly, her expression troubled. She took on too much guilt for what her father did to me and everybody else.

  I took her smaller hand and squeezed it. “It’s not your fault, Fi. It’s his. It’s always on him, the evil he does.” My arms stiffened, my fingers curling into tight fists. I hated him more than anything else or anyone. We hated each other, the passion between us a violent, twisted ugly thing. One day I would give in completely to it and let it destroy both of us, but that time had not yet come.

  Purposeful steps across the plush carpet on my bare feet carried me away from the nightmare that had occurred in the bedroom. Clutching my feather and the lapels of the robe to my chest, I determinedly strode from the Sun God’s suite out into the hall where his guards were already stirring. I quickly ducked into the adjacent suite and the relative safety of my own quarters.

  Stone moved to his usual position at my door. Fiori entered next and I was just about to close the door after her but a heavy boot appeared in the gap preventing me.

  “No. Uh-uh. No way.” My gaze swept upward noting how sturdy his legs were and how well his slim hips and the rest of what he had to offer looked in his dark jeans. Everything about the stranger screamed dangerous and powerful. It wasn’t only his wide shoulders, his confident manner or his unique wings. But I was used to dealing with powerful men. I could hold my own against one more. I looked into his determined visage and shook my head. “Get your foot out of my door, mister. This is my room. I don’t know who you think you are…”

  “Morpheus. The name is Morpheus.” He thrust his rugged hand toward me as if he were meeting me for the first time, as if he hadn’t just seen me tied up and nearly naked. I stared at it for a protracted beat. Talons notwithstanding, I recognized that his hand though a formidable weapon that could no doubt twist and tear an immortal’s neck from his body, held the capacity to be amazingly gentle. His attempt to be polite, his effort at civility after what he had just seen bordered on ridiculous. I was tempted to close the door. I probably should have but then I lifted my gaze and saw what I think he wanted me to see, that no matter how ridiculous it seemed it would matter to him if I turned him away. It would hurt him. So I slid my hand into his, swallowing hard as it engulfed my own. A feeling of connection and a longing to explore the depths of it swept through me. For a moment it seemed as though we were the only two beings in the world and that singular feeling of significance intensified when he started tracing a slow soft circle into my palm with the rough pad of his thumb.

  “Cecilia,” I whispered. “I’m Cecilia.” My words meant more. It meant let’s start over. Let’s pretend you
didn’t see me the way you did. That matters to me. What you saw wasn’t me. I’m not that helpless girl. I don’t want to be that girl. What Phoebus does to me doesn’t define me.

  “I know.” His voice was low, his understanding earthshattering. His piercing gaze told me that he could give me anything I needed and everything I ever wanted.

  “Cici, is everything ok?” Fiori asked from behind me. Her voice was exactly the wakeup call I needed to end this, whatever it was.

  “Go away.” I withdrew my hand. Go far away. Your offer is too tempting, I thought. No one here got second chances. It was too dangerous to cling to dreams. You were only left to pick up the pieces when they were invariably shattered. “You can’t stay here. You have to leave. No one is allowed on this floor unless authorized by Phoebus. I’ll answer for it if the guards find you here.”

  “Very well.” His lips flattened. Reality seemed to get through to him, too. “I’ll go.” His agreement was reluctantly given. “For now.” His face softened and his eyes filled with compelling warmth. He was planning on coming back. I liked that idea. Too much. Somehow, he read the truth in my gaze. He reached for and gently tucked a strand of my loose freaky hair behind my ear, an intimate and surprisingly tender gesture from one so imposing. “But only if you assure me that you are well. That he…”

  “I’m fine,” I cut him off, immediately and completely. I lifted my chin. I could feel my eyes glowing. I didn’t know what spell he had cast over me. I didn’t know why he was really here or what he really wanted. But it didn’t really matter. “I can take care of myself, handsome. I’ve been doing it for a long time now. I have a system in place that works for me. I don’t need you to come back. I don’t know what you think you saw or what opinions you’ve mistakenly formed about me. But let me set you straight right now. It wasn’t rape. The marks on my body, the bondage thing…I get off on it. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t allow him…” I swallowed. That wasn’t entirely true, but it was a lie that I told myself. A coping mechanism that minimized my self-loathing. “He never forces me.” Not in the end. He didn’t have to. He loved reminding me of that fact, nearly as much as he enjoyed bringing me to that point where I actually begged him not to stop. That was when I truly felt like his slave, like an object he owned. That, along with his many other numerous crimes, was why Phoebus had to die.