Chapter 18
I woke in a pile of silken pillows and feather-soft blankets, bathed in the strange scent of a thunderstorm mixed with dusty furniture.
I pressed my face to the nearest pillow and breathed in, relishing it.
It reminded me of a fog-covered field, but with a subtle undertone of woodsmoke and old books.
“Let us out, let us out, let us out!” shrieked a demon far too close for comfort.
I sprang to my feet, disoriented from the low candlelight. My heart plummeted as the chamber sharpened into focus.
“Oh, Maker,” I gasped in dismay. “No.”
The barricade of furniture I’d piled high against the door was gone. Every chair, every desk, every book was now precisely placed, resting exactly where it had originally been.
“Let us out!”
I made to slam a chair against the bowing door but quickly changed my mind. A chair would be nothing against the strength of a demon; I might as well use a scrap of lace to stop the force of a river.
Maybe there’s a way out through the balcony. A hidden ladder of some sort.
Two familiar demons sat against a pair of trees below the balcony, their distorted faces mocking and cruel. One was sharpening a piece of metal, carving its edge into something gleaming. The other simply looked bored.
“Dreamer,” greeted the gray-haired demon. It took the second demon’s improvised weapon and tested it on a section of its long cape, nodding appreciatively when it sliced straight through. “Still without that cloak, I see. Here to delight in this good morning?”
“This is no morning.” The sky was the color of sapphires and turbid, ancient wine. Without the balcony’s candlelight and the forest’s silvery-blue orbs, the demons would have been altogether obscured. “How is this morning”—I motioned wildly at the sky—“and what about any of this is good?”
“Ah, that. Should we tell her?” The long-caped demon glanced at the second, its expression thoughtful, but the gesture was ignored.
The second demon merely continued sharpening its makeshift blade.
“Very well, I will tell her.” The first demon looked back at me and grinned.
“We aren’t in the mortal world, darling. Our eternal night is, well, eternal.”
“But we are all dreaming. Can’t the structure of day and night just be altered?”
I thought back to when the Shadow Bringer’s dungeon had shifted, transporting me to my home in Norhavellis. Or when wings had burst from the Bringer’s back, carrying him high over the Visstill.
“No. This domain was permanently set to protect our lord. Or to punish him—we aren’t certain. Have we decided our opinion on that?” The first demon glanced at its companion again, and again it was ignored. “As I said, we aren’t certain. So eternal night it is.”
I cursed under my breath. The forest below was a long way down, dropping farther and farther away the more I looked. Without wings or the Shadow Bringer’s magic, I’d have to physically descend the wall. Or jump. And neither option seemed very realistic.
“Are you in distress?” the long-caped demon inquired. “You seem a bit distressed.”
“No.”
“If you ask our lord nicely, I’m sure he would quell your troubles,” the demon said, its cracked lips widening into what could almost pass as a smile.
“I’m sure he would.”
The demon inside the castle—still clawing at the Shadow Bringer’s door—roared, its howl rattling the chamber and echoing out into the night.
“He’s in a mood today, hmm?” the talkative demon from the forest commented, leaning back into its tree. The second demon from the forest, silent and sullen, still hadn’t joined the conversation, clearly preoccupied with its weapon. “Trouble sleeping?”
“Enough with your games,” I seethed. The demons clearly knew more than they were choosing to say, likely withholding information that would enable my escape. “You know that scream wasn’t his.”
“Could have fooled me,” the demon said with a careless shrug, crossing its feet.
“I need to wake up from this dream,” I said tersely. “Tell me how.”
The demon thumbed its gray chin, considering. “Quite a dangerous venture, that.”
“I don’t care what I have to do. I don’t belong here, and I need to go home,” I said.
“You truly wish to wake?”
“Yes,” I answered fiercely.
The long-caped demon’s grin widened even farther. “Then you must first go to sleep.”
The second demon slammed its blade into the grass. “Your attempt at wit is making me lose my own,” it hissed through bared teeth, nearly spitting from the force of its words.
A roar suddenly erupted from inside the castle, along with the shuddering crack of a door splitting open.
A new demon lurched toward the balcony from inside the Shadow Bringer’s bedchamber, spindly arms trailing like liquid across the stone.
Its spine was long and crooked, needled with twigs and fur, and its face—if it could be called a face—was the skull of an elk.
I reeled backward as it approached, frozen with terror.
My hands were empty, bereft of either steel or shadow, and I could do nothing but watch, horrified, as the demon slunk forward.
If I jumped from the edge of the balcony, would I wake in the Tomb of the Devourer?
I shook my head. No—my body was physically tied to the Realm.
If I died here, I might not come back on the other side.
I might not come back at all.
“Out,” the elk demon rasped as three others joined it from inside.
The balcony trembled from the weight of their collective steps, shivering as I did when I looked upon their bodies.
Atop each neck sat a skull; there was the elk of the first, a horse on the second, a bull for the third, and something fanged and serrated atop the fourth.
They lifted their skulls toward the midnight sky, raising their faces to meet the wind.
The elk demon growled, towering over the balustrade. “Where is he?” Its voice rumbled and cracked around each syllable, as if it hadn’t spoken a coherent sentence in centuries.
The long-caped demon from the forest stood from its sitting position, stretching its gangly limbs and stifling a yawn. “Whatever do you mean? You should have passed our unruly lord on your way out of his bedroom.”
As an answer, the quartet of demons on the balcony made furious, animalistic noises.
The sullen demon from the forest, previously silent as it sharpened its makeshift blade, pointed its weapon at me. “If he isn’t in there, then ask that one where the Shadow Bringer is.”
The elk demon turned to face me, halting its jagged movements.
For a moment, it simply stared, its empty sockets suggesting vision that saw movement and shape beyond the physical.
Things deep within the soul. Then it stepped forward again, slowly dragging itself to me.
I pressed myself flat against the balustrade, attempting to still my shuddering limbs.
I had almost succeeded until it bowed low enough to scent the air by my neck.
“Something of his resides within her,” the elk demon growled.
The fanged demon stalked closer to the elk demon, followed by the horse and the bull. It looked ready to jump, its clawed hands gripping at the stone. “She has been here before,” the fanged demon realized. “Perhaps she is his replacement—or perhaps he has abandoned us.”
The horse demon joined in, circling me. “Where is he? Where is the lord who would not release us?”
I held my chin high against the demons’ menacing faces. I had neither steel nor shadow to fight with—only words. “If you so much as touch me, the Shadow Bringer will exact his revenge upon you all.”
“Do not trick us,” bellowed the bull demon. “He cares not for you nor anyone.”
The fanged demon hissed. “Your death would be of little consequence, dreamer.”
Beneath me, the balcony cracked.
No, no, no.
I staggered against the crumbling stone, swaying, reaching, grasping for anything—but the demons, in the chaos, thrashed their limbs into the banister.
They shattered the stone, flinging it wide and far.
A large piece of the broken castle crashed into my chest, pinning me against the balcony and slamming my skull into the floor with a sickening crack.
I didn’t know where the screams were coming from—if they were from my lungs, my mind, or some nauseating union of both.
All I could see were the demons. A horde of skulled, broken beasts crawling, climbing, and lurching their bodies from the Shadow Bringer’s castle over the edge and into the forest. Shrieking with glee.
Roaring with pleasure. Crushing others as they clambered for their freedom.
Hundreds of demons pouring into the night.
I woke in darkness upon the Shadow Bringer’s floor.
The dark had become a living, breathing thing, forcing its way into my eyes and nose. It hurt to breathe. Cold air swept over the blankets still strewn about the floor, flipped the pages of books left unread, and whistled through unlit chandeliers and candelabras.
For the first time, the castle had not restored itself.
Drawing a velvet blanket around my shoulders, I stumbled to the balcony, cursing my fate and contemplating whether or not to yell into the night. If this was to be my eternity, my mind would surely disintegrate before I saw the light of day again.
I shivered from a new kind of fear. Just how long would it take for me to wake up from this?
When I was little, the idea of dreaming had felt precious and wondrous.
Sacred, even. Before the Shadow Bringer existed, to dream was to receive a gift from the Maker; in a dream, one could relish in hope and wander in possibility.
Eden and I used to whisper about dreams, worried that Mother or Father would hear and think we were being disrespectful.
But we enjoyed imagining what the Realm might look like.
How the Weavers dressed, talked, moved. We would curl under a tent of blankets with our Weaver tales, spinning stories of adventure.
We discussed how a dream might feel—conjectured the sights and sounds that we might experience.
We wondered what it would take to become a dream warrior of legend, or to have a Weaver choose us as a follower.
But most of all, we wondered what we might have to do to escape our twisted life in Norhavellis.
I laughed, the sound of it weak and small against the void around me.
What I wouldn’t give to have that life back.
Fear was a battle I couldn’t win here. It suffocated me—crawled over my skin, squeezed my heart, chilled my bones.
There was always the crumbling crack of a stone that sounded like footsteps, a whisper of wind that sounded too near to a breath.
I knelt behind a statue, drawing the blanket close.
If I concentrated, I could pretend I was a child in Norhavellis, spinning tales of wonder with Eden.
Dreams weren’t meant for this. Fear, sorrow, hatred—dreams were meant to quell these things. Not ignite or reaffirm them.
From my burrow of velvet and stone, I watched in horror as a figure leapt to the castle’s highest spire. It was tall and spindly, bone-white skin glowing as though it were the moon and stars. Sweeping tendrils of hair flowed out from its skull, webbing the castle in black.
A demon?
For a moment, it stood, motionless, its face tilted downward.
I couldn’t tell where it was looking; its face was shrouded in shadow, its limbs half-cloaked by its hair. I sucked in a slow, steady breath and held it, flattening myself against the statue on the balcony.
Don’t see me. Don’t see me. Don’t see me.
As though it could hear my thoughts, the creature cocked its head.
Then it descended.
It floated through the air, landing elegantly in a pile of its robes and hair. The creature—the man—looked my way, his face a serpentine array of angles. His mouth was a thin, cunning frown, his nose a sweeping line between listless eyes of coal.
And atop his brow sat an ivory crown.
“You needn’t cower so,” the serpentine man said, acknowledging me but maintaining his distance. His voice was slow and melodic, a dusting of silk upon stone. “Had you answered the door, I would have entered properly.”
I lifted myself from my burrow. “It isn’t my door to open.”
“Darkness beckons to the isolated. If you do not open the door, you will still be found,” he murmured, his eyes clouded in thought. Then, as if a weight was lifted from his skeletal shoulders, he sighed. “But I digress. Will I be invited indoors, or shall we continue this charade on the balcony?”
“Who are you? Are you of the demons?” I asked.
“At one time or another, we are all nearly demons.”
I clenched my jaw. “That isn’t an answer. I asked who you were.”
“And I owe you nothing, dreamer.” He fixed me with his eyes of coal. “But I will give you my name, because you already know it.”
For a moment, I studied him, the angles of his dark, intelligent eyes, the ghostly undertones of his voice. He spoke as though he knew sorrow, despair, and death—knew them so intimately that he no longer feared them.
He looked nearly the same as his image in the book of Weaver tales.
Somnus, Weaver of the Past, introduced himself and bowed. “A pleasure.”