Dark Consort

by Amber R. Duell

  “That shouldn’t be a problem yet,” Kail said, and I followed his voice to the room where he had given me the knife. “Where’s Rowan?”

  The large hand on the clock moved with a series of soft clicks.

  “As expected,” he murmured.

  “What is?” I asked, and the brothers both startled.

  “Rowan’s still at the Keep.” Kail pointed to a symbol on the clock that looked like an upside-down triangle on a stick.

  I stepped closer to the mantel. A dozen gold symbols were emblazoned around the black clock face. “How do you know?” I asked curiously. Surely there was some rhyme or reason to it, but it all seemed like hieroglyphics to me. Were there only twelve nightmares he could find? Who were they?

  “Halven asks the clock. Each of the symbols is a location.”

  I crossed my arms. “Even I know there are more places than that.”

  “These were the original landscapes. It narrows things down by telling Halven the nearest landscape, then he focuses his energy in that direction to pinpoint the person specifically. It’s faster this way.”

  “You seem to know an awful lot about it,” I said carefully.

  Kail shrugged.

  I squinted at him. “Back to what you were you saying when I walked in. What won’t be a problem yet?”

  The brothers exchanged a look—or Kail did, at least. Halven turned his masked face in his brother’s direction. “Mara’s hiding out in a cave at the moment.”

  “Ah, yes. Her.” I chewed on my bottom lip. “Where’s the Sandman?”

  Halven stiffened.

  “What?” I scoffed. “Do only nightmares show up on there?”

  “Dreamers, sometimes,” Halven rasped.

  “I’m sure the Dream Lord is fine,” Kail added. “He’s giving you the space you asked for.”

  I winced. He was right, but I wanted to see him. Almost needed to.

  “Take heart, Lady,” Halven said kindly.

  I forced a smile, then glared at Kail. “I like your brother so much better than you. Maybe he should train me while you manage the rabble outside.”

  “Please.” Kail snorted. “I’m the best nightmare you could get help from.”

  “I don’t know about that.” I glanced at Halven. “He talks a lot less than you and is nice when he does.”

  Kail bristled. “Sorry, Lady. You’re stuck with me until my eye is fixed.”

  “Is that all it takes to get rid of you?” I reached toward his face, and he jerked backward.

  “How about you practice changing a few moving targets first?” he said, his pupil blown wide. “My eye is a lot more complicated than a doorknob.”

  “Arrogant bas—”

  “Shall we call it a day?” he asked loudly. “I’m exhausted, and you look like you’re about to fall over.”

  Now that the shock of the army’s arrival was beginning to fade, the drained feeling crept back in. But I had done it. Fixed the tower. Returned charred remains to their former glory. I smiled to myself, and the grin matched it, equally satisfied. Wanting to be alone, I nudged it.

  But it didn’t budge.

  In fact, it grew.

  Panic clawed at my chest. The door I locked the grin behind had disappeared, and the darkness grew heavy in my veins. We need each other, it seemed to say with startling clarity. I took a shaky breath. It wasn’t wrong.

  Besides, we both knew I was only trying not to like it.

  “What’s next?” I asked.

  “Now, Lady, we get some rest.” Kail flopped down on the couch and put his hands behind his head. “Tomorrow, you take control of your realm.”

  20

  The Sandman

  Hours could have passed. Days. It was hard to tell. All I knew was the white-hot pain in my chest. The sand worked fast once it dragged me home, burying me within seconds, but the wound was still there. Skin grew like new over the cut, but beneath, the trapped sand wrestled with interior repairs. Rowan hadn’t cut me that deep, but the amount of blood flaking on my skin made it seem otherwise.

  I reached up to shake the sand from my hair and winced. How was I going to be of any help like this? I eased back onto the beach and took long, deep breaths. It felt as if a fever was in my bones, making everything ache. But there were other ways to help Nora while I healed. Smaller ways, like getting her a message, would be enough for the moment. She needed to do this alone, after all.

  And she had Kail.

  Jealousy sparked along my nerve endings, but I shook it away. Nora loved me. This wasn’t about us, and Kail was far from being a threat in that respect. Sure, he got to see her every day, all day—a thing I’d never been able to do myself, but one day, maybe I could. I wouldn’t lose hope that we would eventually reunite the realms. Forever was a long time.

  But what worried me most was why Kail told me how to kill Rowan instead of telling Nora. It seemed like he wanted Rowan dead, so why go through the effort of putting on a show? There must be a reason. Kail never did anything without one—it was just rare that anyone knew what that reason was.

  A little longer, and I would get dressed, track Nora down, and tell her everything. This information was too important to trust to a messenger, even one as trustworthy as Baku. And, perhaps, part of it was my desire to see her. Just to make sure she wasn’t doing something ridiculously stupid again. I winced at the flash of heat the thought brought along with it and shoved the anger back into its box. Everything in its time.

  “Sandman,” a voice called down its cord. A voice I knew well enough from five years inside Nora’s dreams. “Help me sleep.”

  I immediately stood on shaky legs and yanked the cord hard, hurtling myself into the Day World with a pained scream in my throat. My legs buckled as the soft blanket of sand became a braided area rug that did little to soften the blow when my knees hit. I fell forward into a puffy bedspread, buried my face into the soft material, and panted for a moment before composing myself enough to stand.

  Katie stared slack-jawed at me from the other side of the bedroom. “It worked,” she said in an incredulous voice. “It—it worked.”

  “Yes.” I caught a glimpse of another form under her sheets and stumbled back a step. “Who—”

  “Kellan’s a sound sleeper,” Katie said in a rush. “Plus, he’s high as a kite tonight, so if he sees you, don’t worry about it.”

  Don’t worry about it. There were an awful lot of things I wasn’t supposed to worry about lately, and, in my opinion, they were all very much of concern. Katie rolled her eyes and rushed up to the bed, shaking Kellan violently.

  “Don’t do th—” I began to protest.

  “See? He’s out.” She let out a disbelieving huff as she turned back to me. “I can’t believe it worked.”

  “It’s nice to see you coming around to the truth,” I said carefully. The Dream Realm was already pulling at my center. “I’m sort of in the middle of something, so if this is some kind of test—”

  “Oh my God. Oh my God. Is that blood?”

  I stepped around the bed and gripped her upper arms carefully. The strong scent of alcohol permeated from her. “Katie, listen to me.” My magic rippled. In another ten seconds, I would be hurtling back to the beach whether I wanted to or not. “We have to finish this conversation somewhere else.”

  “Wha—”

  As quickly as I could, I pinched a bit of sand that was trapped between my shirt and tunic and threw it in her face. The next second, she slammed to the floor. It wasn’t my best moment, but it was the only option I had left, because this time, when the beach called me home, there would be no denying it.

  If it was any consolation to Nora’s sister, my landing back on the beach wasn’t much better. The sand cradled me, softening the blow, but the impact made every warm, throbbing piece of me flash red-hot. My vision was still blanketed in white when a pair of hesitant hands brushed the hair from my face.

  “Hey,” Katie half-shouted. Or maybe it just felt like she did. “A
re you okay?”

  “Sorry about your headache,” I mumbled.

  The hands disappeared. “My what?”

  “You’ll understand when you wake up.” The sand moved to cover me, but now wasn’t the best time for another burial. If Katie was going to accept the truth, for Nora’s sake, I couldn’t risk scaring her off. “Just give me a second.”

  “Okay,” she whispered so softly I barely heard.

  I steeled myself by taking deep breaths and focusing on my center. Whatever strength I could pull from the sand within the next few heartbeats, I did, though it wasn’t much. My vision cleared, and I forced myself to sit up, but that was all I would be doing. Katie knelt beside me, her face paler than pale as she stared into my pavilion. I knew what she was looking at.

  “Nora gave them to me,” I said. When she turned back to me with a wild, confused expression, I added, “The drawings.”

  “This is it, isn’t it?” Katie practically flopped backward, propping herself up on her hands. “This is where she came every night. She tried to tell us…”

  “Breathe, Katie,” I said gently, and she gulped down air. “The place Nora and I met is just under the brightest star, near the water, but yes. This is the Dream Realm. I wouldn’t have brought you here if I had another choice.”

  Her eyes darted back to my chest. “What happened? Is Nora okay?”

  “She’s fine. I will be too, but you caught me at a bad time.”

  “Is she here?” Some of her shock gave way to concern. “I know she won’t believe it, but our mother is having a horrible time dealing with everything. We all are. So I mean—I thought, if she wasn’t with you, you would know where she went.”

  And there it was. The question I knew was coming. I ran both hands down my face. How was I supposed to tell her what happened? Did Nora even want her to know? If she did, she would’ve found a way to let Katie know, but maybe now… There was no easy path to take.

  “She’s not here,” I said simply.

  “Then where is she? I think she wants us to believe she ran off to New York, considering all the work she put into faking an internship, but maybe it was to throw us off.” Katie inched closer with each desperate word. “If she’s fine, but she’s not here, then where is she? Please.”

  There was no denying how deeply Katie felt Nora’s disappearance. It was all over her face, in every syllable of her plea, and she had called me. Me. Who she didn’t believe existed. And Nora loved her. Nora loved her so deeply that she risked everything to track Katie down in the Nightmare Realm. No matter what happened between them, Nora wouldn’t want her sister to be in this much pain. Katie deserved the truth.

  I sighed. “Would you like the full version or the quick one?”

  “The quick one,” she answered immediately.

  I nodded. “After we saved you, Nora killed the Weaver, which transferred his magic to her. She rules the Nightmare Realm now.”

  Katie blanched. “Actually, I think this merits the full version.”

  It absolutely did. I waved toward the pavilion. “Make yourself at home. This is going to take awhile.”

  Katie was much less patient than Nora had been as I laid everything on the table. The explanation took so many detours that half of it didn’t sound logical even to me, but sometime near dawn, I told her of the last time I saw Nora. I left out the part about her haggard appearance.

  “So you just let her go off with this other guy? This—this nightmare,” Katie screeched. “But you think he’s helping her?”

  I swallowed a groan. We’d been over this. “I’m not, nor have I ever been, someone who would force a person to do something.” The Weaver, maybe, but that was different. Nora’s story wasn’t the same as his. “Your sister is smart and capable, Katie. A lot more than anyone likes to give her credit for.”

  Katie glowered. “She’s also ridiculously impulsive. Care to take a stab at where that can get her? Oh, that’s right. Literally stabbed. By some evil, manipulative tree-woman.”

  I closed my eyes and willed away the image Katie’s words inspired. When it was safe to speak again, I met Katie’s gaze and held it. “I promised Nora I would step back so she could figure things out, but don’t confuse that with not caring. Every star will fall from the sky before I let anything happen to her. It doesn’t matter if the entire Night World collapses. The balance could leave us with nothing but a single stone to stand on and I would step off so that she could survive.”

  Katie paused to study me. “You really do love her, don’t you?”

  “She is my soul. Without her, I am nothing.”

  “Why?” she asked curiously.

  I frowned. “Why?”

  “Why do you love her?”

  Was there supposed to be a why? Did love have to make sense? I’d never loved anyone the way I loved Nora. At the time, when my feelings toward her began to grow, I wondered if it was because she was the only person I had significant contact with. It was me, the beach, and a silent Baku without her. It took nearly three months before I accepted that my feelings were real and not because I was lonely. I loved Nora because there was a connection between us that had nothing to do with magic. Her smile lit her eyes, which lit something in me. She had five different laughs, was a talented artist, and had a fortitude that never failed to fill me with pride. Things were easy between us. We were two halves of a single piece, fitting together in each jagged place.

  “You’re blushing.” Katie smirked then, half-glad, half-troubled. “Whatever your reasons, you’ve got it bad, Sandy. Make sure you don’t confuse her right to be an idiot with my right to be alive. I love Nora with my entire heart, but letting her hold the fate of all mankind?”

  “She’s not holding it alone,” I said quietly.

  “No.” Katie sighed and eased back on the pillows. “I suppose not. But still…”

  She wasn’t wrong about her sister. My Nora was kind and smart and compassionate, but she was also impatient to a fault. First with killing the Weaver, then returning to the Night World with Mare in tow. If she didn’t learn to slow down and think things through, there was no telling what the consequences would be. Suddenly, seeing her again felt increasingly urgent.

  “Mind if I stay?” Katie asked. “I’m not ready to wake up and face the real world yet.”

  I shook my head, though she was no longer looking at me. “Stay as long as you’d like.”

  “Thanks.” And then, after a long pause, “Can I come again? I promise not to get in the way, but it feels like I’m closer to Nora here. Like I’m seeing her in a different way, and I want to understand.” She huffed. “I’m probably not making sense.”

  “You are,” I assured her. This was the place where Nora could always be Nora. Even though she wasn’t here, it sometimes felt like she could be. “Open the drawer on the end there. Take one of the pouches and fill it with sand to use whenever you’d like.”

  “I’m sorry I called you a freak,” she blurted.

  My eyes widened, and a laugh burst from my chest. The pain sent me backwards into the sand.

  “Sorry about that too,” she said nervously.

  I smiled and tried not to wheeze too loudly. “I’ll live.”

  “You better.” The drawer thumped open then shut again. “Someone needs to look out for my little sister.”

  I sobered, hoping against hope that both of us were wrong about that. Please, please let us be wrong. My exhaustion won then, dragging me into a state of fitful slumber with Nora’s name playing on repeat.

  21

  Nora

  Nora.

  I shifted under the covers.

  Nora.

  Pulled them up over my head.

  Nora.

  My eyes flew open. That voice. I recognized it. The Sandman’s voice was more familiar to me than my own. I gathered the blankets tighter around me. But how? It felt so very far away now that I was awake, and I couldn’t be sure I had really heard it at all. He sounded wrong. Too frantic. Wild.
My gut twisted.

  “Kail?” I whispered. “Are you out there?”

  Silence.

  I looked inward to the Sandman, shifting through my own feelings to see if I could catch some glimpse of his. Anything to feel a little less alone. But, unsurprisingly, his walls were barred tight. I lingered anyway. Would he feel me if I reached out? If I knocked on that barrier between us, would he answer after I told him to leave me alone? I shook my head. Of course he would. But doubt still nipped at me as I lifted a finger and tapped three times.

  For the briefest of moments, his mental doors cracked, and a burst of pain shot up my leg. I flew out of bed and buckled to the ground with a yelp. “Sandman?” I hobbled around the room, throwing on the first clothes I found. His doors slammed shut again. I beat against them with my mind, begging to be let in, but they didn’t budge.

  “Kail!” I raced out of Rowan’s old room and paused. My thoughts sparked all over the place, making it impossible to focus on my own magic. Desperate, I shouted his name again.

  He sauntered down the hall, seemingly out of nowhere, shirtless. His brown skin was covered in a senseless pattern of black lines. “Yes?”

  “We have to go.” I quickly retrieved my bookbag from inside the door and tossed it over one shoulder. “Now.”

  Kail squinted at me. “Go where? We don’t march until dawn.”