Chapter 8
I crashed into bone-numbing water.
It rushed over my head in a wave, burying me, and for a moment, I was stunned into stillness, suspended and floating.
Incredible.
Light and darkness mingled around me, casting an endless array of luminous shapes across my arms, and the gleam of something iridescent floated through it all, rotating and spinning like a thousand moving stars.
It swept over my skin and danced along the lines of my dress, nearly making me forget who I was and where I was supposed to be.
A familiar melody hummed in the distance, drifting faintly, ever so faintly, through the water.
It repeated twice before threading into nothingness.
And as the sound faded, so did the light.
I clawed to the surface, crying out for breath the moment my mouth met air.
“You,” a familiar voice snarled.
The Shadow Bringer stood at the edge of the water, hatred radiating from every inch of his tall, shadow-wrapped frame.
He was wearing the same attire from the previous dream; intricate black armor covered him from foot to throat, and a horned helm with a caged lower jaw hid all his features except for his mouth, eyes, and silver-white hair.
A dark cape was affixed to his shoulders, sometimes appearing corporeal, sometimes appearing as though its threads were hewn from shadow.
Above us, stained glass windows arched into an unfathomably tall ceiling, twining with vines, crumbling stone, and an expansive collection of candelabras.
“Why am I back here?” I cried, more to myself than to him.
I couldn’t decide if I should swim to the edge—where he was—or remain where I was, suspended in a bottomless pit of icy water.
I was also wearing the same attire from the previous dream, and while the dress was beautiful, it was painfully difficult to swim in.
Realistically, I’d probably drown before I made it to the edge.
If dreamers could drown, that is.
“A foolish question, considering you’re the one trespassing.
A second time, no less,” the Shadow Bringer said, fixing me with a stare as frigid as the water.
He clasped his metal-encased hands together, drawing a stream of billowing, inky darkness from somewhere within himself.
It draped across his shoulders in a languid pile, likely waiting for his orders to capture me or maim me in some way.
“I won’t let you escape so easily this time. Your unconscious mind is prone to wandering into forbidden places, and I intend to find out why.” His silver eyes narrowed.
The shadows rushed from his shoulders, rampaging in fierce, erratic loops over my head.
A few separated, springing out from the cloud like a swarm of serpents, and rustled around in my hair, prodding and pulling.
I screamed, clawing at them, but they fell against my neck regardless, pricking at the skin with a depraved eagerness.
Dark, smokelike blood appeared from the injury they caused, rising in the air to mingle with the rest of the shadows.
The Shadow Bringer crossed his arms, looking oddly perplexed.
“Strange. I’d expected to draw his hideous stain, but there is still only darkness in your blood.”
“I am not stained, you bastard.”
A shadow slipped beneath the water, pinching my side with a deft clip of what felt eerily similar to teeth. I blindly swiped at it, horrified, and watched as the entire swarm released itself from me, nestling back into place at his side.
“You’re a fitting counterpart to your Light Bringer,” the Shadow Bringer said disdainfully, brandishing Light Bringer as if it was a terrible insult. “Weak, deceptive, and unwilling to wield your power when it matters most.”
As he considered this, the shadows atop his shoulders roiled in unison.
It bore a slight—very, very slight—resemblance to laughter.
But whatever it was, laughter or amusement or something else entirely, was gone before it could solidify, replaced instead by the Shadow Bringer’s overpowering scowl.
The shadows quieted. “Still, this is an unforgivable breach,” he continued, deadly serious.
“Come closer, dreamer. If you follow me and open the castle doors, I will consider showing you mercy. But only after I am freed and not a breath before.”
“Never,” I spat without hesitation.
“Then I will send you back to Mithras in pieces. Or you can help me. Your choice.”
Cold water continued to lap against me, swirling my dress into tangles.
I kicked against the clinging folds, aiming to untangle the fabric from my legs, all the while fighting to keep my expression neutral.
If the Shadow Bringer knew I was struggling, he’d likely use it against me.
I had no doubt he’d force me underwater to suffocate in the murky, swirling liquid.
A strange, frantic understanding prodded at me.
Dream Weaver tales, along with other histories told within our kingdom, declared that the Shadow Bringer prevailed all those centuries ago, suffocating the Dream Realm with demons and Corruption.
That he freely reigned, commanding his monstrous armies with a bloody fist and gnashing teeth.
And yet here he was, trapped in his own castle and desperate for release.
I wondered if the Light Bringer knew this.
Because if the Shadow Bringer was vulnerable, I needed to stay alive long enough to tell him.
The Shadow Bringer noticed something in my expression—something distracting. He tilted his head. “You’re unable to swim. How unusual. Especially for a dreamer.”
“Don’t mock me, demon.” I sucked in an angry breath, indeed struggling to remain above the water.
He bared his teeth. “Careful.”
Something grabbed my flailing ankle, hard, and pulled me under.
At first, I thought it was him—that he manifested some ugly, clawing menace again for the sheer purpose of punishing me. But as I twisted, thrashing and choking, I saw what was squeezing my ankle so roughly that it was close to snapping.
The thing had golden eyes, a ruined, gaping mouth, and vaguely human features—but it wasn’t human at all.
A monster.
A demon.
It peered at me through the water, its too-wide mouth snapping open and shut.
I fought hard, kicking a heel into the demon’s bony neck.
The cloth of my dress danced out of its claw, tumbling through the water like a frightened animal, and the demon gurgled out a piercing screech so full of madness that its entire body quaked.
I surged to the surface and took a deep breath.
Then it grabbed my ankle with both claws, dragging me under a second time.
My arms moved in ways I wasn’t conscious of—jerking, swirling, reaching—and my lungs filled with a brutal, suffocating flame. I was dying. I was going to die. And it felt so real. This was a dream, but the fire burning my lungs and breaking my ankle was real.
The thing fixed its yellowed eyes on me again.
Was this what it felt like to fall into Corruption? To be taken, ruined from within?
The water shifted into darker and colder hues as we dropped, clouding my vision and settling over the scarred face of my captor. Its yellow-gold eyes were incredibly swollen, bulging out of its skin, giving the impression of a giant, misshapen river fish.
The claws at my ankle slipped, sinking deep into my boot and pulling it off.
Now. I had to move now.
Again, I tore my way to the surface, hating myself for being so damnably useless at swimming. My shin knocked against something—another demon? No, a ledge—and I stepped on it, not caring that my left ankle was shrieking, likely broken.
The Shadow Bringer stood with his arms crossed, unbothered by my struggles.
“Will you come with me now?”
“No.”
His upper lip curled in disgust. “I don’t think you understand. The castle doors only started to open when my hand wasn’t forcing yours. If you agree to come willingly, I will save you.”
“I said no, demon.”
“Then I have no further use for you,” he said, pinning me with dead, empty eyes. “But perhaps the demons do.”
He turned without another word, cape billowing out from behind him, and left the cavern. The demon, still clawing my discarded boot, broke through the surface behind me, along with several more of its kind. All humanlike but marked by horrific, deformed additions. Additions that made them other.
At that moment, something snapped within me.
A tautness behind my eyes, connecting me to something outside the cavern—connecting me to the Shadow Bringer.
A rush of power interwoven with pain, anguish, and a few final, pathetic shreds of courage poured through me, raging in my mind like a feral sea.
It felt familiar and yet unfamiliar. It felt overwhelming and yet not enough.
It felt like a blanket of soft silk. It felt like a squeezing cage of iron. It felt uncomfortable.
It felt glorious.
For a moment, the rush made me forget my bleeding, injured ankle.
It made me forget my grief—grief at Eden’s death and Elliot’s despair.
Grief at seeing Mother and Father, shadow marked and hated.
Grief at seeing Corrupt Norhavellians fighting and dying.
Grief at imagining my future—my lack of future.
Grief because of my weakness. Grief because of my world.
Then the shadows burst in.
They churned around me, spinning and rotating as a furious whirlwind, flashing and sparking like daggers of obsidian. The shadows were more powerful, more demanding, than the languid pile that had draped itself over the Shadow Bringer’s shoulders.
The shadows fell upon the demons in a fury.
I could scarcely see, scarcely breathe as the dark ripped skin, forced itself down throats, wrenched heads into the water—until it finally moved into a towering cage of impenetrable black, pinning the demons to the grotto’s glistening walls.
The demons—or what few left that could move—prodded weakly against the smothering shadows.
One by one the monsters stilled, and the roaring power faded like smoke forced away by the wind.
Feeling equal parts horrified and delirious, I wanted to cry.
I wanted to laugh.
Of course I’d have some sort of demented, evil power in the Dream Realm. I’d tried to be the dutiful daughter after Eden’s death, but duty couldn’t mask what had been festering within me.
A crashing noise echoed from somewhere behind me.
The Shadow Bringer had returned.
He swept into the room as if he was death embodied, blood leaking from his mouth and marring his pale skin. It slid down the column of what was exposed of his throat, pooling at the top of his armor. His blood was identical to mine: filled with shadows that rose like smoke and stained like ink.
“How dare you?” the Shadow Bringer gasped, materializing a dark blade from his palm and charging into the water after me. “How dare you?”
I staggered backward, now immune to the pain in my ankle. I tried to fling up shadows over and around me for protection, but the darkness fluttered, sputtering, and was extinguished entirely, releasing the demons into the water.
“You think you’re entitled to my power?” He grabbed the cloth at the front of my collarbone, roughly twisting it in a taloned hand. He jutted his blade under my chin as the cold water swirled around us, pooling at our hips. “You think you can control it—control me?”
I pulled at his hand, trying to weaken his grip, but the metal on his gauntlets was impossibly sharp.
Touching him was like grabbing a rose by its thorns or a snake by its fangs.
My gaze dropped to his mouth. His lips, ever so slightly, were trembling.
My chest heaved against our hands, feeling close to bursting.
“This wretched power belongs to me alone. I have always been the only one.”
For a moment, we just stared at each other. The Shadow Bringer’s tone and stance were filled with hatred, but his eyes, a dim shade of gray, appeared hopeless. Miserable and without any light or soul.
“Enough of this,” he said.
And then he made to separate my head from my body.