Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
KAIROTH
I didn’t dream. I hadn’t dreamed in a long, long time. Dreaming was a very human thing to do, and I’d lost my humanity long ago. It was something mortals needed to fill their minds with warnings, with hope, with fantasies. Something that they would try to interpret in the waking world.
When I closed my eyes to sleep every morning, I didn’t do it because it was required. I slept because it was the only way to turn off my mind. It was the only time I could truly stop thinking, stop seeing the carnage, stop hearing the screams, stop remembering all the ways I’d caused so much harm in my eternal life.
That’s why this was so very odd. I was asleep, yet my mind was not. I was aware of it, but I couldn’t get myself to wake up. It was like something was keeping me in this dream-like state. I stood in my castle. Everything was shrouded in shadows and darkness as always, but something was slightly off. A presence.
I whirled around to see her. The woman from the garden. She stood before me, her black hair wild and tumbling down her shoulders. Unlike in the garden, her red dress wasn’t torn or muddied. It hung down to her knees, the sleeves long, the waist cinched, the neckline straight. Her skin was pale and creamy, her eyes dark and commanding. She’d looked familiar before, but I’d brushed it off. Now, I couldn’t help but think once again how it seemed like I knew her.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I asked, my voice low and deadly.
She walked toward me. More like glided. So graceful. So beautiful.
“What?” Her voice struck me. In the garden, she’d signed, and I assumed she was mute, but in my dreams, her voice was like music. Low and melodic, a cadence to it that I couldn’t help but be drawn to.
She stopped in front of me, trailing a finger down my arm. She reached right through my shadows. The ones that were always with me. They whirled around me in constant motion, but she didn’t even flinch as she touched me.
A shiver ran down my spine.
“Not used to seeing such a beautiful woman in your dreams?” She smiled, her red lips so luscious, so tempting.
“I’m not used to dreaming at all,” I said, my mind muddled. It was hard to catch hold of any one thought. “Who are you and how did you enter my dreams?”
“Let’s not worry about that.” She shot me a mischievous smile. “You have three prisoners below your castle, prisoners who you want to set free.”
The words snapped me from whatever daze I was in, anger surfacing over the gall of this woman to enter my dreams, to try and trick me.
I snatched her wrist so she couldn’t keep running her finger up and down my arm in that distracting manner. “Oh I’ll set you free. After this stunt, you’ll be making a trip to the spirit world.” I tightened my grip on her. “And I’ll make sure it’s not Galaysia where you end up. You won’t be frolicking in fields of flowers and reuniting with lost family members. You’ll be in the fiery depths of Mortimire.”
Fear flashed in her eyes, but then her gaze hardened. She shook free from my grasp, glaring up at me, her chin set, her lips pursed. Before I could stop her, she hooked a finger under my chin, her touch filling my dark soul with light. Her gaze bore into me, my head growing dizzy. At least, I imagined this was what being dizzy felt like.
“Three prisoners,” she said. “You want to set us free.”
Her voice echoed in my mind, her words burrowing deep down. “Yes,” I murmured, my brain foggy and dense. It was hard for me to remember why I’d been upset. Hard for me to think of anything but her touch and her voice.
“You’ll walk down to the prison cells with me.” I watched her lips as she spoke. “You’ll set us free. And then you’ll forget about us. It will be like we were never here.”
“Never here,” I repeated, something about her words feeling off, but before I could catch hold of the thought it was already fluttering away.
She slid her hand down and threaded her fingers through mine. “Now show me the way to the prison cells.”
I found my feet moving in that direction, gripping her hand tight. It had been so long since I’d been touched by anyone, and suddenly I craved it. I craved this woman whom I didn’t even know.
We walked down the darkened hallways. She reached out a hand and flicked her wrist, the hallway suddenly filled with light.
I shielded my eyes from it as my shadows scattered. They couldn’t leave my side, but they could hide behind me, in front of me, under my arms—wherever they needed to avoid the light. She laughed. “Not used to any sort of brightness in this dark cave you call a home?”
“I am the God of Shadows,” I said. “Darkness calls to me.”
“Well, maybe it’s time you let in a little light.”
“How are you doing this?” I asked.
She looked up at me, flashing another mischievous smile. “Let’s just focus on the task at hand.”
Once again, her voice, those words, caught hold of me, wrapping around me, commanding me. Something in my brain told me not to listen. Told me this wasn’t right, but every time I tried to stop walking or ask another question, her voice drowned out my own.
“Do you live all alone in this castle?” she asked.
“My shadows are always with me,” I said. “They’re here. My most trusted ones.”
“Anyone else?”
“A few servants,” I mumbled.
“Mm,” she said. “Any guards?”
I scoffed. Such a human question. “I don’t need guards to protect me.”
“Ah, of course not. Not when you’re such a big, strong spirit.”
I hated that spirit nonsense. We hadn’t been called the Seven Spirits when we walked among mortals. In fact, it hadn’t been until I’d been freed, came to this place that I’d even heard the term. I came across it in the library here, in text after text after text. I was called Spirit Shadow. A spirit. Like something that didn’t even exist. Maybe that was the point. That’s all we were to these elementals. They’d never known us, seen us. We might as well have been ghosts.
We neared the stairs at the end of the hallway. They wound down toward the main level of the castle.
“How did you know we were here? In your garden?” the woman asked, hand still clasped tight with mine.
“I know everything that goes on in my castle,” I said.
She peered at me with curiosity. “But how?”
My mouth clamped shut. This woman and her questions. I didn’t like them. They were prodding. They were...
“Oh come.” Her voice broke through my thoughts. “You know you want to tell me. Show off all that power. You haven’t had an audience in far too long, no one to be in awe of you.”
I’d never cared about having an audience, but her voice coaxed the confession out of me.
“My shadows are connected to me. They see all. They know all. The moment someone crosses that boundary, they alert me.”
It was how I’d protected this place, my identity, for so long.
“Interesting,” she murmured, the music, the enchantment, from her voice gone.
She frowned for a moment, and it took me back to the garden. To her breaking in and trying to steal from me. Just a weed. But it was mine nevertheless, and no one stole from Kairoth, god of shadows.
The woman tugged me closer. “Remember, those prisoners must be freed. All you care about is your privacy. We’ll go away, and it will be like we were never here at all.”
There was a frantic edge to her voice that didn’t quite dispel my thoughts like her previous words had. This woman. She was in my dreams. She was making me dream.
I jolted and yanked my hand from hers, and she backed up against the wall, a scowl replacing that charming smile she’d had just moments ago. It was like she was a different person now with the way she frowned at me.
“You’re harder to break than I’d hoped.” She bared her teeth, this small woman with wild black hair and scorching eyes.
“How are you doing this? You shouldn’t have this kind of power,” I murmured as she disappeared in front of me. “I am a god, and you are a...” I didn’t know what she was.
But I was going to find out.