Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
Camilla
It came upon me in fragmented flashes of overly bright light and ringing sounds.
Icy water dripped against my skin.
Shadowy darkness pulsed in the corners of my mind.
Fear.
So much fear.
And then pain.
Terror and anguish swam inside me with such strength that I nearly doubled over. And yet, it wasn’t my own. I was a witness to it—a victim of someone else’s agony.
It was my body and also hers.
She was I and I was… I didn’t know.
The flashes of visions came faster and faster, swarming so rapidly that I struggled to disentangle everything I was seeing.
Hyrax.
And Caldrius.
Anger on one face, satisfaction on another.
Iwoke to the sensation of hands on my shoulders, shaking me so forcefully that my head rocked against the pillow.
“Camilla!”
I jerked, scrambling backwards on the bed, half-delirious. “What happened?”
Elaina sat before me, still in the simple gown she had worn yesterday. Her long hair was loose around her shoulders; her face pinched in concern. “You were having a nightmare.”
My chest rose and fell heavily, my heart unable to slow as I became acquainted with my surroundings. Moonlight from the clear sky crept into my room through the tiny window across the space, but I still felt rain coating my skin.
Dropping the sheets from my fingertips, I held up my hand in front of me, turning it over and back, searching for some kind of physical evidence of what had just happened.
“What’s wrong?” Elaina asked, frowning at me.
“It’s broken.” My voice cracked, and I took another heaving breath. “It broke.”
Shifting forward, Elaina took my hand in both of hers, running her fingers over it and massaging out the tension. “No, sweetie, it’s not. It was just a nightmare.”
She kept her tone soothing, not noticing how that only sent me further on edge.
She was wrong. I had felt the bone snap and send spikes of aching up my arm and shoulder.
I know I had felt it.
Or at least…
Maybe I hadn’t felt it so much as I had watched it. No, that wasn’t the right way to explain it either. I had lived it.
I had lived the experience of another.
A sob broke out of me, and I rubbed at my temples. That didn’t make any sense. None of that dream had made any sense.
“Shhh,” Elaina crawled further into the bed, settling herself beside me and pulling me into her arms so that she could run a hand soothingly over my head. “It’s alright, Camilla. It was just a bad dream.”
I took comfort in her warmth, breathing in her familiar scent and savoring her gentle touch.
She’d been here when I’d fallen asleep too.
She had stayed here with me. She knew if she left I would stay awake all night making poultices and tonics, so she had stayed right here by my side, telling me stories of her kingdom until I fell asleep.
Had she accidentally fallen asleep next to me? Shared the same bed?
The thought sent a small burst of warmth bursting through me.
“I don’t deserve you,” I whispered, angrily brushing aside my tears.
“Oh hush. You are my friend, Camilla, and I will not be dissuaded from enjoying your company.”
A hum worked its way through me as I smiled softly at her words. I liked her company too. I liked it better than anyone else’s.
Even if the way she said friend sent a pang of confusing discomfort through me.
“Do you want to tell me about your dream?” She asked, the words more of an offer than a demand.
Her voice had a sort of power to it. Every word she spoke pulled me deeper into this waking reality and away from whatever madness had polluted my nightmares.
“It was about Thea.”
I felt her nod against my head. “I’m worried about her too.”
“It’s not that.” I pulled back, keeping her hand in mine as I shifted to meet her gaze. “I think… I think she might be in danger. Or at least she had been.”
Why could I not make sense of my own thoughts?
I frowned. “Or maybe she’s afraid she will be.”
Elaina’s brows pinched together as she shifted her weight, stroking her thumb across my knuckles. “I don’t understand.”
Biting down on my lower lip, I glanced out the window across from us, imagining that I could see all the way through that window and into the castle.
“It’s just a feeling I’ve had lately. A strange feeling. It goes beyond just being worried about her.”
Elaina considered my words for a moment before folding her feet under her on the bed and tucking a lock of my hair behind my ear.
“Do you think it’s a magical feeling?”
My blood turned icy. No. I hadn’t used my magic.
I wouldn’t.
“You know that I haven’t—”
She ran the pad of her thumb over my knuckles reassuringly, sending me her warmest, most forgiving smile. “You were asleep. Maybe you didn’t mean to.”
I shook my head forcefully. “That’s not how witchcraft works.”
She stared at me before sighing. “Then the dream has to be nothing more than a manifestation of your concern for her.”
She stood, floorboards creaking under her weight as she moved to close the curtains of the window. The room plunged into darkness as she crept back to my side and urged me to lay back down.
Elaina was right.
As real as it had felt, it must have been a nightmare. That was the only logical explanation.
It was ironic.
Once my hatred for Thea had plagued my nightmares, now my fear for her safety did. Pasnia must have been rolling over in her grave at the thought.
“You’re right.”
She laughed. “Of course I am, now try to go back to sleep.”
I felt the bed dip under her weight, and then she stretched out next to me, her head only inches from mine.
I turned towards her, meeting her eyes as we shared the same pillow. “You’re going to stay?”
Accidentally falling asleep in my bed was one thing. Staying was… well, another.
There was a long pause before she answered, and when she finally did, her voice was timid. “Oh, well, it’s so late that I thought maybe I would. But if you don’t want me to, I can—”
In the darkness I sought her hand, and wrapped my fingers through hers.
“No,” I whispered, my head tilting even closer towards hers until we were sharing the same breath. “Stay. I like having you here.”
She grinned at the request, and I thought, for a moment, that she might have the most beautiful smile I’d ever seen.
Her fingers were still in mine, so still in fact that I thought maybe I had made her uncomfortable. Maybe I had overestimated her offer of friendship. Maybe when she saw me, she saw only a girl desperately in need of hope and not someone she actually wanted to offer her companionship.
Maybe her stomach didn’t do the same intense somersaults mine did when our eyes met.
But then her fingers tightened around mine and she whispered, “Okay.”
My eyes darted to her lips as she spoke the word and some part of me had the sudden, unexpected desire to crush my lips into hers.
I swallowed against it.
Before long, Elaina’s gentle snores began to sound next to me, her hand still clutching mine even as I rolled onto my back and stared up at the ceiling.
I’d never felt this way before. Not really. Sure, I’d experienced pangs of longing and attraction, but never accompanied with that sensation of feeling like the world was falling out from under your feet when another person smiled at you.
I’d certainly never felt it for another woman.
But as I clung to her hand in the dark, there was only one aspect of this night that I understood with perfect clarity.
I didn’t like when she had called me her friend.