Chapter Ten
CHAPTER TEN
Elara dreamwalked again that night. As she began to fall asleep, she held herself in limbo, the crucial moment between sleeping and waking, and secured her tether to the waking world. A dreamwalker’s tether was their most important item. She always visualized it as a cord, growing from just below her navel, flowing into the ground and anchoring her to the earth.
Her tutors had told her horror stories growing up, of dreamwalkers who had become untethered, their soul lost to the Dreamlands—or, even worse, the Deadlands right beside them—if they had wandered too far, their body cursed to remain in the waking world, sleeping, until it withered and died.
Confident that her tether was secure, seeing the shining, midnight blue rope with its familiar silver patterning, she rose. It always felt a little like falling upwards, her stomach shooting up as her dream-body became weightless.
She looked at the differently coloured and perfumed clouds around her. Each one belonged to a dreamer, and she flitted between them.
There was one that smelled like light-baked earth and sandalwood, another that smelled like amber. A few others smelled sweeter, more inviting. But tonight, she was drawn more to the darkness than ever.
She settled on the deep golden cloud that smelled of sandalwood, and drifted through the perfumed mist and into the dream.
A young boy with shorn hair and torn clothes was climbing up a dew-rose trellis to a balcony in the Palace of Light, a knife between his teeth.
He couldn’t have been older than ten, and yet the way he scaled the balcony with agility and precision made him seem far more mature.
She followed, the surroundings morphing into a grand bedroom, gauze curtains fluttering. The little boy stole through them, taking the knife from his mouth and creeping towards a sleeping figure in the bed.
Elara’s pulse pounded as she watched the boy press his knife to the sleeping figure’s neck.
‘Give me all the gold you have,’ he demanded.
And when the other boy opened his eyes, she gasped.
To her surprise, the little Enzo in the bed did not scream. He laughed, emptily. A laugh too jaded for someone so young. And a blast of light burst from him.
The boy with the knife cried out as he flew backwards, crashing into Enzo’s armoire.
Enzo leapt up, no weapon but his hands as flame flared in one, another ray of light in the other.
‘Who sent you?’ he hissed, as the boy flared up his own light—this one crackling and writhing. When Enzo launched a fireball at the boy, lightning writhed, deflecting it, and Enzo’s eyes widened. The boy gave a grunt of pain, throwing a fork of it at Enzo, and it sizzled against his arm as it passed.
‘Give me your money before I kill you, prince,’ the little boy snapped.
‘You think I’m scared of a street rat?’ Enzo mocked, and this time his powers extinguished as he launched himself at the boy. He pummelled him, so angry, so ruthless with his movements. But the boy held up, going against him blow for blow.
When one of the boy’s punches made contact with Enzo’s nose, the prince stumbled, and his eyes flared with light.
The boy scrambled back. ‘What are you doing?’ he stuttered, as something Elara couldn’t see began to happen between the two.
‘I’m seeing who you are,’ Enzo snapped. ‘Leonardo Acardi. From the Apollo Row slums. Poor. Destitute. And wants my money to—’
‘Stop!’ the boy shouted.
‘To pay for a healer for his dying mother.’
The light extinguished, casting the two boys into darkness.
Leonardo sat panting, wiping blood from his mouth, as Enzo held his nose.
‘She…she got a fever, a few weeks ago. I thought it would break but it’s only getting worse. And as “street rats from Apollo’s Row”, we can’t afford a healer.’
Enzo looked at him, and Elara guessed he was using his gift again, to see if the boy was lying or not.
‘Can your mother work, when she’s better?’ Enzo finally asked.
Leo frowned, before nodding. ‘She’s the best gardener I know.’
‘Bring her to the palace.’
‘She didn’t ask me to do this,’ Leonardo stammered, all bravado gone. ‘This is nothing to do with her. If you’re going to punish anyone, punish me alone.’
Enzo cocked his head. ‘You’re the only boy I’ve met that can come close to matching me in a fight. All these lords’ sons are prissy wimps.’ He held a hand out, and Leonardo took it hesitantly, before Enzo pulled him up. ‘Your mother can take board here. We have the best healers in Helios. And you can make yourself useful by training with me.’
Tears filled Leonardo’s eyes. ‘Are you—thank you. Thank you, Your Highn—’
‘Don’t cry,’ Enzo snapped. ‘Don’t let anyone see you cry, least of all me.’
‘I’m sorry—’
‘Don’t apologize either.’
Leonardo stood up straighter, sniffing as he nodded. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘Go back home now and bring her by morning. I’ll speak to my father.’
Leonardo nodded, bowing before hurrying back to the balcony.
‘And it goes without saying,’ Enzo called after him. ‘Don’t mention to anyone you had a knife to my throat. Unless you want to burn for treason.’
Leonardo’s face blanched a little, before he nodded once more. ‘Thank you, prince,’ he said hoarsely as he swung a leg around the balcony.
The prince’s lips quirked. ‘Call me Enzo.’
A streak of magick shot past Elara out of nowhere and she cursed, ducking to avoid it. The dream had changed around her—now instead of the palace gates, she stood in a forest filled with dappled light. When she turned, Leonardo stood, no longer a boy but fully grown, lightning writhing between his hands. It crackled, and she stumbled back. But when he recognized her, the lightning vanished.
‘Elara?’
‘This is your dreamscape,’ she said hoarsely.
He frowned at the word. ‘I’m dreaming?’
‘Yes,’ she said hurriedly. ‘Yes, you are. I’m sorry, I didn’t know this was your dream, I should go.’
‘You saw it?’ he asked. His brow was furrowed, eyes pleading—strangely vulnerable for a general.
She nodded. ‘I didn’t realize you grew up in the palace with Enzo.’
Leonardo sighed. ‘If it wasn’t for him, I’d likely be dead. I owe him my life. And so much more.’
She didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing at all.
Turning, suddenly anxious, she tried to feel for her tether. She shouldn’t be here, especially in the dreams of a man who had helped Enzo and his father with their raids of the Asterian–Helion border, and had carried out attacks like the Borderland Fires. She shouldn’t be anywhere near him.
Leonardo walked closer, but there was something softer about him in the dream. As though the mask he wore as a battle-weary general had slipped a fraction.
‘Please don’t tell anyone what you saw,’ he said quietly.
Elara frowned. ‘I wouldn’t. But why?’
‘It took me blood, sweat and tears to become the general of the Helion army. To captain the King’s Guard here. If they found out I tried to kill the prince of Helios…I’d be put to death. Whether Enzo came to my defence or not.’
‘I won’t breathe a word,’ Elara said. And she meant it. She didn’t like the man, but some kind of honour lay within him. An honour that contradicted all she knew of him, and for that, she would keep his secret.
Leonardo’s face softened. ‘Thank you, Elara. You may be the enemy of the kingdom I swore to protect. But I see that what you are doing is to help us. The Stars have ruled above us with their arrogance and cruelty for too long.’
‘I think you overestimate my magick greatly.’
He shook his head. ‘I have an eye for these things. As a general I have to. And what you are doing helps Enzo. Which is all that is important to me.’
‘I’ll never see the goodness in him that you seem to,’ she said tightly.
‘Perhaps not,’ Leonardo said. ‘But I know that for the people he loves, Enzo would set the world on fire, if we asked.’
Elara finally grasped her tether. ‘I have to go,’ she said. She latched on to the midnight-blue rope, and in a swirl of magick, the forest disappeared as she dreamwalked back to the waking world.