Chapter 25
We sprinted through Istralla under a film of salty mist, trailing the boy as he ducked into the surrounding forest. Even with his pack of food and drink, he ran as though he carried no extra weight, darting under boughs and avoiding roots with expert precision.
The mist didn’t burden him, either; it was denser now, clinging to every surface and suffocating the air.
“So that boy—he’s really you,” I panted, struggling to match the Bringer’s pace.
“Evidently.” The Shadow Bringer lanced me with a brief, annoyed look over his shoulder. “Remember what I said about imagination. Keep up.”
Keep up? My legs felt like rocks and my head swam from all the wine, but I was dreaming—and I was running as if I weren’t. I should have been nimble, not trailing behind the Bringer and tripping every few steps.
Working through my imagination, I shielded my feet from rocks and twigs, lightened my limbs, and lengthened my stride.
My dress was next. It was useless and flimsy in this terrain, so I altered it into dark, close-cut pants and a belted tunic.
A biting wind cut through the trees, impossible to ignore, so I added a silken cloak lined with thick, comfortable velvet, taking inspiration from the Bringer’s attire and giving it properties of smoke and shadow.
Running became easy, instinctive. The more I focused on what was in front of me, the simpler it felt.
So I fixed my eyes on the Shadow Bringer, mimicking the way he moved.
And the Shadow Bringer moved as he always did: like a creature of living darkness.
Even without his shadows to strengthen his steps, he ran through the forest as though he were a spirit that dwelled within it.
“Do you know where we’re going?” I asked, releasing a stream of pent-up air. I didn’t feel like a creature of living darkness, but at least I was keeping up. “It’s your dream. You really should know.”
“I have an idea.” The Bringer spared a glance over his shoulder, evidently surprised that I was still there.
Or maybe he was surprised that my clothes now looked a little like his.
“Your heart doesn’t beat in the Realm,” he added, picking up his pace.
“Eliminate its influence, and you’ll stop gasping for breath every five steps. We breathe here merely out of habit.”
“I’m not gasping. And my heart is fine.”
“You are. And it is not.”
Unconvinced, I brought a palm to my chest. And my wrist. And my neck. But my body was quiet. Nothing but a hollow, silent shell. “Where is my heart?”
“Ask the Maker.”
“I’m asking you, Shadow Bringer.”
He sighed. “The Maker designed it, fearful that humankind would forget themselves within the Realm. It’s one technique of many used to determine whether one is awake or simply dreaming. Out of habit, however, dreamers still tend to breathe. Or to feel the ghost of their heartbeat.”
“Strange,” I murmured.
In the Realm, blood spilled. Pain bloomed. Emotions burned with rage and chilled with fear and loneliness. The Dream Realm could look and feel real even during its most unbelievable moments. But no heartbeat? The Realm was a strange place, and this was perhaps its most unnatural quality of all.
The Bringer stopped, and I collided into his back. “What are you—”
“Get down,” he commanded, yanking me to the grass.
We had arrived at the pond. The cottage, its walls decaying and covered in filth, was no longer dark or silent; its windows glowed with light, and conversation drifted from between its cracks.
Inside, the boy could be seen talking with two adults—his parents, perhaps, since they shared his dark, finely crafted features—as he offered bundles of food with a hopeful smile.
“I thought we couldn’t be seen,” I observed, shifting so I wasn’t eating the leaves of the undergrowth the Bringer had thrown us into.
“It depends on the dream,” he said simply, peering intently at the cottage and everything else beyond it. Mist passed around us like a shroud, lingering atop our backs and turning the Bringer’s hair into a veil of its likeness.
“Then why are we hiding, exactly?”
The Shadow Bringer looked at me as though I were a fool. “The demon.”
I ripped my attention away from the cottage, eyeing every shadowed corner within the clearing. And there were many shadowed corners. Most of which were also draped in mist.
“You’re the Shadow Bringer,” I remarked, sounding more nervous than I wanted. Where was the demon hiding? What could he see that I couldn’t? “Subdue it with your wicked might or something.”
“My wicked might?” He reached out as if to grab me by the chin, but stopped, instead fixing me with an exasperated stare. “If I were its lord, then why would I be hiding in a bush? You’re a foolish creature.”
“I’m no more foolish than you,” I shot back. He made a logical point, but his tone irritated me. I wasn’t a foolish creature. I wasn’t something to be ignored or thrown aside. And I had a name. “I’m eighteen. Not a foolish creature—an adult.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Age does not beget maturity.”
“That’s interesting, considering you’ve been alive for centuries and are still a—”
“Time doesn’t exist when you’re a ghost,” he said angrily. “It stopped for me the day I was sentenced to rot in my castle.”
“I see,” I said, biting my tongue against another cruel retort.
“If you wish to prove your worth, Esmer, then call out your sword and give it to me. I have a demon to kill.”
“Use your own sword,” I snapped, bristling. If I gave away my sword, my only weapon in the demon-infested Realm, I wasn’t sure I’d get it back. And I really didn’t want to take that risk. “It’s mine.”
“My power is weakening. Not yours, it appears.” He moved closer, his body nearly touching mine. If I leaned forward, we’d be embracing. “Give it to me.”
“I don’t think so.”
His scowl twisted up a bit, revealing the edges of his teeth. From my angle, they looked more akin to fangs. “Am I to strangle the demon with my bare hands?”
“I’d love to see it,” I challenged. “I’m sure you’d fare just fine.”
My palm tingled, thrumming with power and urging me to let out the sword underneath. Gritting my teeth against the discomfort of burning skin, I willed the sword to return to the depths of its original resting place.
But the sword fought back. It sprang to life in my hands, gleaming wickedly, and the Bringer pounced, making to pry it from my fingers.
Except the sword resisted, slamming him hard on the ground with a blast of shadow.
He gaped at me from where he was thrown. “You willed it to attack me,” the Bringer spat, flicking some dirt from his helm.
“I warned you first. It listens to me, not you.” Except I wasn’t sure why the sword had exploded like that, throwing the Bringer back with monstrous force, but he didn’t need to know that.
“Do you want to fight the demon all by yourself, then? Because that reality is imminent.”
Definitely not. “No, but—”
The door to the cottage swung open, revealing the raven-haired boy. His face was red and splotchy, tears shining silver upon his skin, and the half-formed sounds of a violent argument followed him.
“You wretched beast!” screamed the boy’s father. From the window he had appeared handsome; now his face was skull-like and quickly turning gray. “You are a curse to all who know you. Filthy, filthy boy!”
The boy tried to speak. “I just wanted to help—”
“You are not our son,” the woman joined in, flinging her own words of condemnation into the night.
She, too, had been beautiful, with black, flowing hair and fine, feminine features.
Now her skin festered, sagging into deep, dripping wrinkles that opened into sores as they melted off her face.
“A son would not make his parents choose between their lives and the life of their child.”
“A son would not dream when he should be working to provide.”
“A son would not let his parents die!”
Together they screamed at the boy for stealing their food and leaving them to starve. They blamed him—damned him—for everything. Their hunger, their poverty, their pain, and even their deaths. It was all the boy’s fault. It would always be his fault.
The Shadow Bringer looked away, cursing low and deep.
This dream was terrible and cruel. It was the kind of dream I was warned about as a child—a dream of unimaginable pain, brought on by a demon who sought nothing but to devour souls.
But this dream of a young Shadow Bringer from over five hundred years ago was all wrong. Dreams like this weren’t supposed to have existed back then. They couldn’t. Not before Corruption and the rise of the Shadow Bringer.
“Why are they treating you like this?” I asked, horrified. “They’re your parents, aren’t they?”
“They are.”
“So the dream is distorting them? It’s taking your memories of them and twisting it into something worse.”
He didn’t answer.
“Their food always disappears!” the boy howled into his empty hands. Except they weren’t empty—not exactly. Two ugly red welts bloomed across his skin, wrapping down his palms and up his forearms. “Why? Why does this always happen to me?”
The boy’s parents loomed over him, forcing him to kneel.
“I just want to help you,” the boy sobbed. “I just want you to love me.”
“We will never love you,” his father snarled, spitting at the boy’s hands even as he grasped for their feet. “You’re a pitiful excuse for a son.”
“I miss you both so much,” the boy cried. “Why do I only ever see you in my nightmares?”
“Because only good boys have good dreams. You’re a worm who belongs in the dirt and the dark.”
His mother reached down, and for a moment, it looked as if she might embrace him. The boy looked up, hopeful even through his tears. But just as her nails grazed his cheek, she slapped him. Hard.
Instinctively, I lurched forward, but the Shadow Bringer grabbed my arm, pulling me away.
“You don’t need to see this.”
I dug my heels in. “He needs our help, Bringer.”