Chapter 8
brYN
This dream is different from the others.
Where there was the white room, there’s now a dark, gray, and desolate landscape full of jagged boulders.
The rock here is all the same color. The sky itself is a dull gray, uniform and solid, but there are no clouds.
At first glance, even at the second, it’s a lifeless place, even more so than that barren world where The Barrack was, but there are flashes of gold climbing out from the cracks between the stones.
Yellow flowers. This place isn’t as dead as it seemed at first.
There’s a gravelly path in front of me. I walk down it slowly. The rocks beneath my feet are the same as the others all around me, but thin and sharp like worked flint.
I walk for a time, and I come to what appears to be a great flat expanse. It's black as obsidian and smooth as glass in stark contrast to everything else. Is it a lake or a great piece of rock that's been embedded into the ground? I can’t tell.
I approach it, keeping my eyes open in case there’s anything else alive here, and I pick up one of the shards of rock at my feet.
As I gaze around, I understand down to the core of my being that this place is firmly in the Dark Realms. A far-off feeling of panic emerges within me, that I'm back here, in these dangerous worlds again, but it's quickly muted as if it doesn't matter in the least. In some far corner of my mind, I know it doesn’t make sense, but…I’m drawn to the vast blackness in front of me.
I go closer still, intending to throw the rock I’ve picked up, to see if the surface is water, stone, or something else.
'You mustn't touch the Black Lake!' someone hisses from behind me, and I whirl around.
It’s the man from my other dreams, I realize. His light brown hair curling around his shoulders, his robes still white, looking almost luminous in this gray place.
I should be afraid, or at least surprised that he’s here. But I’m not. I just turn back. The Black Lake. He comes to stand next to me, staring out at it with me. He puts his hand on my shoulder.
'Must never disturb the surface of the lake,' he says.
I glance over at him, my body sluggish and slow, as if time itself is stretching it. He looks older than in my other dreams of him.
‘What is this place?’
‘Power. Loss. The beginning of everything.’
‘I don’t understand,’ I say slowly.
'Do you know who I am?' he asks, looking at me, his eyes boring into mine.
'Only from my dreams,' I say, but my voice is warped. It doesn’t sound like my own.
He looks pensive, glancing over his shoulder at the path I came down.
‘Let’s see, then.’
With those cryptic words, he turns and begins to walk away from the lake, but every step he takes somehow moves him much farther away from me than it should, and I have to run full-pelt up the path to catch him.
He turns a corner, and I find a Ring. Large and imposing.
Gray and stark like the rest, but its stones are polished to a brilliant sheen.
It’s open into the Breach.
I follow where he must have gone, into the dark corridors of the ether, and I see him.
He doesn’t look the same. He’s smaller. Tired. Older. Gaunt and pale.
'What happened to you?' I ask.
He puts his hand on my shoulder and opens his mouth, but all I hear are the screams.
I wake suddenly in my bed.
Alone.
I turn onto my back, breathing hard.
Since the night I spent with Morgan, I've been sleeping in this room by myself again. He hasn’t asked me to join him upstairs, and I'm not sure how to ask him without feeling as if I'm begging. I almost wish for one of those attacks to come upon me, so that I have an excuse.
I try very hard not to let his rejection bother me, but it does. He speaks to me, he’s pleasant, and he ensures I eat heartily. Why will he not fuck me? Did he not enjoy it?
As I stare up at the ceiling, unsettled and troubled, I recall with a sinking feeling that today is the day the training with Voss will begin, and my spirits plummet even lower.
I hate that I don’t really know what to expect. The others have only given me a general idea. I don’t think they know either. None of them grew up with the other fae, so perhaps they aren’t privy to how the Under-born spies are trained.
They have been speaking about it when they're together, I think. Jak and Morgan are even including Locke in their talks. And I know they’ve been conferring about me, because when I come into the room, they immediately quiet.
I can only guess what their discussions are regarding when my back is turned, and I don’t like it.
How many of my hours will this training take up?
Will I still have time to help Jak at the apothecary?
I hope so. Everything's been going so well. I've been learning the names of the herbs already and people in Halsford are beginning to ask for me. When they see me in the street, some of them greet me as if I’m one of the village. It isn’t as bad here as I first feared it might be. I’m starting to feel more settled.
I only hope after all this, that I’m allowed to stay.
I get up and dress, deciding to put on the clothes that I wore when I was in Merediea and pretending to be a Fae. I assume the training will be physical, so a gown will just be cumbersome and impractical.
I look under the bed to make sure the vials of healing potion that I brought from the healer's rooms yesterday are undisturbed. Considering what happened the last time I was alone with Voss, I'm not taking any chances this time.
A part of me wonders if I should just tell the others what happened.
I don’t know why I don’t. A lack of trust perhaps, and fear, I suppose, stays my tongue.
Things have been different between us over the past days, it’s true, but what if they don't believe me?
Worse, what if they do and they decide to confront Voss directly?
I remember what Calder said in the Hall about them not belonging here.
Their positions in Halsford, though not as precarious as mine, are still shaky.
I would hate for them to be cast out because of me…
especially as I can handle it myself. I rarely even had a healing potion the first years of my life anyway, and I definitely had none during my time in the pits.
I can endure whatever this training entails. There’s no other option.
I comb my hair and try to plait it out of my way myself, growling in annoyance when I can't get it as tight as Morgan can when he does it for me, so I go into the living area and find him making a hearty breakfast.
I give him a small smile, my heart increasingly softening towards him. He enjoys taking care of me, and I like it. I can admit that at least.
The leather tie in my hand, I give him my back and wiggle my head in request without a word.
He moves behind me, deftly plaiting my hair, his hands lingering on my waist when he’s finished.
I lean into him, but then he moves away, and, with a small sigh of discontent, I sit down to eat what he’s made.
The others are already at the table. Locke has another book and is still looking for references to the Kismet. They've still found nothing, and I'm wondering how much longer they’ll keep trying before they decide it's a waste of time.
I would like to know more, of course. Since the alley and the egg falling on Tavish’s head, I've been trying to make things happen on purpose, but nothing has come of it.
But I was angry the other times. Perhaps I need to be in a fury.
I'll keep trying, I decide, but I have to face the possibility that perhaps I was wrong, that the other times were just flukes.
'Have you found anything in the books?' I ask.
Jak looks up at me and shakes his head. He does seem a bit annoyed that they’re still at it, now that I look at him. Locke, lost in the book in front of him, doesn’t seem to even hear my question.
A plate of eggs, bacon, sausages, fried bread, and mushrooms is put in front of me and, though my stomach is in knots, I try to eat as much as I can, if not for the day ahead, then for Morgan who clearly woke early to prepare it.
'I suppose it's almost time to go,' I say when I’m finished, letting out a small sigh to hide my dread.
'I don't like this,' Morgan growls low. 'This training is for fae who will be sent to the Dark to be part of the network. Even Tori and Soreno weren’t required to do it. And what is Bryn going to learn anyway?’
Locke squints up from the book finally, his lips thin.
‘We’ve already discussed this at length, Morgan. If there was a way out of it, I’d see it done, but there isn’t.’
Locke glances at me and his eyes soften. ‘I don’t want Bryn carted off to the Underhill to sit in a cell for the next however many days or weeks as punishment for refusal, do you?’
‘No,’ Morgan snarls with an apologetic glance my way. ‘Are you all right? We could…say you’re ill. Delay it.’
He means it. He’d chance Voss and Calder’s wrath simply so I didn’t have to go today.
I smile at him and it seems to catch him off guard.
‘Today. Tomorrow. It makes no difference. I'll survive. Besides, though I may not be a fae, I'm not merely a human either. I'm Kismet.’
'But he knows that,' Jak argues, putting down his utensils with a clang. ‘He could use it.’
He glances at the others with a pensive expression, and I immediately know what he’s thinking of. He knows how all my scars really came about, the ways Ogdan punished me and others with Fate. But I don’t want to speak of it now, and I definitely don’t want to see their pitying expressions.
I need strength today, not coddling. Maybe one day I’ll tell them, but why today?
I give Jak a meaningful look, which he ignores.
Morgan's eyes narrow at us.
'What is it?' he asks.
'Nothing,' I say, my jaw clenched tightly.
Jak shakes his head. 'It's not nothing, Bryn.'
I kick his shin under the table, and he yelps.
‘Sorry. My foot slipped.’
I stand quickly, calling an end to this discussion.