Chapter 28
Luna couldn’t say at what point she came awake.
It barely felt like being awake in any case, considering she could not open her eyes, move, grunt, or give any sign of conscious presence.
The sluggishness of that sleeping spell was heavy on her, along with some other spell.
Something she did not recognize, but which seemed to pulse in the aether around her soul.
While she couldn’t do much, she found that she could, in fact, breathe.
Purposefully—inhale and exhale. It wasn’t much; her body did it automatically even when she wasn’t conscious, but she took some pleasure in controlling the act simply because she could.
She drew in a deep breath and recognized a familiar scent of tea and must and old wood and mountain air, and . . .
I must be dreaming, she thought. Because this smells an awful lot like Tealeaf Cottage!
It couldn’t be though. Surely. The last thing she remembered before the sleeping spell overcame her was screaming in a dark dungeon cell.
And there was no hope, and there was no help, and there was certainly no escape.
Which meant this must be a dream. Born of her distressed mind, desperate to give her the only escape possible, the escape of semi-madness.
Well, she was grateful, she supposed. She’d rather exist in a madwoman’s dream than in the terrible reality awaiting her back in the waking world.
She would smile, only she didn’t have the ability to smile anymore.
She could only lie there, breathing in the familiar scents of home.
Perhaps Jastira had already possessed her.
Perhaps that was why she couldn’t act in any autonomous way.
Perhaps her mind had been shoved deep to linger in this pleasant space of semi-awareness.
Panic started to rise at the thought, but she hastily suppressed it. After all, it could be much worse.
Voices plucked at the edge of her awareness.
Murmuring voices, sound without meaning, but recognizable.
First the stern tones of Auntie Aurora, close by.
Luna inhaled a bit more sharply. Oh, it had been so long since she’d heard one of Auntie Aurora’s lectures!
She’d give just about anything for a good sharp one right about now.
Next came the honeyed tones of Auntie Arabella, soothing and sweet as always.
Would Auntie Apolonia appear in this dream as well?
She was dead, of course, but if this was a dream, that shouldn’t stop her.
Instead, however, there was another voice. Deep, a bit ragged. Almost painfully posh. Brimming with devotion and despair combined.
“Please, let me stay with her.”
Mr. Grimm?
What was he doing in this dream? He . . .
didn’t make sense here. Not at Tealeaf Cottage.
He was part of a whole different set of dreams. Much hotter, more fevered dreams in which her aunties certainly never appeared!
But when she sniffed, Luna could just about discern his sandalwood-cinnamon scent, mingling with other aromas of the old cottage.
“No,” Auntie Aurora answered, her voice clipped and final.
“The Green Magic-awakening spell is very sensitive,” Auntie Arabella added with more gentleness but no less firmness.
“It’s best if no one is in the room with her while it does its work.
Don’t worry, dear boy! We will check on her periodically.
But for now, she needs to sleep and let the spell do what it does. ”
A few more exchanges followed this. Voices and tones, but Luna could discern no more words. After a little while, the voices faded, and she could almost swear she heard the creak of the back stairs. Oh, that familiar creak! It was like music to her ears, a song she’d never thought to hear again.
Luna rested back inside her mind, drifting down a little deeper into the space where the most prominent sensation was smell.
It was a nice place to be. The smells were pleasant, especially that lingering scent of sandalwood.
She got a vague impression of conflicting magics whirling around her, however, which was significantly less pleasant.
Almost painful, only she couldn’t really claim to feel pain, considering her body seemed to be mostly detached from the rest of her awareness.
There was sorcery at work—one of those dark spells the Brotherhood had placed on her while she screamed and struggled in that cell.
Apparently, it had followed her into this dream.
But there was another spell as well, brimming with greenness and light and a sensation of cool, running water. Auntie Aurora’s magic, infused with prayerful influence—Luna would recognize it anywhere. She leaned into that one, trying her best to ignore the other, darker spell.
Slowly but surely, something awakened inside her.
Some power she had not known she possessed and certainly never sought or craved.
Something dark uncoiled in her gut, even as the bright coolness of green light continued to spread.
A strange dichotomy of existence, neither of which felt natural, neither of which felt like her.
Luna frowned. Groaned.
And suddenly realized that she had, in fact, frowned and groaned. Which meant . . . oh, Green Mother above! She still had a body! She wasn’t just an unbound consciousness, trapped in a space of memory. The rest of her was still present and it was still hers.
It took her a minute to figure out how to groan again.
She couldn’t seem to manage it. But the awareness of embodiment continued to expand.
She inhaled, smelling the bouquet of scents available to her, and suddenly became aware of an itch on the tip of her nose.
Which meant she had a nose! Now that was encouraging indeed.
Finally, finally . . . she began to think.
That was the worst part. Thinking. Remembering.
Clarity—ugh! She didn’t want clarity. Could she possibly just go back to smelling things, please and thank you?
But no. She must face what had happened.
She remembered falling to the sidewalk, her arms bound in a terrible binding spell.
She remembered cowled figures closing in while blood trickled into her eyes.
Everything was patchy after that. Screaming.
Chains. Energy-siphons. Watching the creation of her own mirror-image self.
In the end, the sleeping spell knocked her out.
And that was it. That was all she knew.
So . . . how exactly had she come to be back home in Tealeaf Cottage?
Because, now that her embodiment was progressing so nicely, she could no longer deny that she was here.
This was real. Too real to be a mere dream.
She felt the specific way her rope bed sagged, and the feather mattress that was always a bit too lumpy-bumpy.
She heard the subtle groan of the old roof timbers when the wind blew strange and howling down the double chimneys.
She smelled tea. So much tea. Fresh tea plants of all varieties out in the garden, brewed tea down in the kitchen.
Tea in the walls and the floors and the shingles and the windowpanes.
No, it was too much to be a dream. She was here. But how?
Luna opened her eyes.
She stared up at the beams overhead. It was quite dark in her little room.
Was it dark before, when she was listening to the voices?
How many hours had passed since then? Days?
Weeks? Who knew? Now that her eyes were open, she became more aware of the rest of her body.
The aches. The sores. And there was still that weird feeling of dark-uncurling in her gut, along with the strange brightness of green light in her veins.
But she didn’t want to think about those things. Not right now.
She sat upright. Then blinked, frowned, and looked down. She seemed to have her old teddy bear in her arms. She stared down at it blankly. Its button eyes gazed back at her with an expression more inane than she remembered. “Hullo, Gruffles,” she whispered, then squeezed the bear to her breast.
Swallowing hard, she looked around her little room.
Everything was exactly as she remembered it and yet, somehow, not.
The sloping ceiling seemed lower than it had in childhood, the whitewashed walls closer together.
Her narrow iron bedstead stood beneath the window, its familiar brass knobs catching the starlight.
Across from it sat the little oak wardrobe that had once seemed enormous to her.
Now it looked almost toy-like, squat and worn, its doors scarred by decades of use.
A small washstand occupied one corner, its porcelain basin gleaming faintly in the dark.
Beside it stood the spindle-backed chair where she had draped countless dresses as a girl.
Her gaze drifted to the walls. The magazine clippings were still there.
A few had curled at the edges over the years, but she could still make out the smiling black-and-white faces of film stars she had once adored.
One featured a glamorous actress in a fur-trimmed hat.
Another showed a handsome leading man gazing heroically into the distance.
They seemed oddly childish now, relics of dreams she had long since outgrown.
It was all so familiar. The faded patchwork quilt folded at the foot of the bed. The faint scent of lavender lingering in the linens. And yet, the room felt strange as well. As though it belonged to another person entirely.
Almost to convince herself that she still really was herself, Luna looked down.
She half-expected to see her undeveloped adolescent body.
But no—she was a woman. Wearing a nightgown of soft blue with a low neckline and flutter sleeves.
She’d not packed this one when preparing to flee home nearly three years ago.
It had struck her as impractical, being rather too thin and too frilly.
She hadn’t seen this nightgown in a long time.
Luna swallowed hard. Then she swung her legs out from under the covers and onto the cold floor.
Her feet were bare, but she didn’t bother looking for slippers.
She needed to find . . . someone. The aunties.
Let them know she was here, let them know she was alive.
Let them know the Brotherhood was probably not far behind, and they were all in grave danger.
Let them know she needed a cup of tea in the worst way.
Standing up, she dropped Gruffles on the bed, then shuffled to the door, her feet very soft.
Opening it carefully, she listened. There was no sound below save the faint creak-creak-creak of Extremely Great Aunt Amelia’s old rocking chair.
Auntie Arabella was probably still up, darning by firelight.
Luna’s mouth quirked in a little smile at the thought.
She crept softly down the stairs, remembering exactly which treads squeaked loudest and taking care to skip them.
Her arms and legs were shaky still, but with that new influx of green-light in her veins, she felt stronger than she remembered feeling in a very long time.
Reaching the bottom of the stairwell, she peered out into the kitchen, expecting to see Auntie Arabella’s pale-golden head, bent over her work by the fire. Luna even opened her mouth to speak a greeting. But nothing came out. Nothing but a silent exhale.
Because it wasn’t Auntie Arabella who sat in the rocking chair.
It was Mr. Grimm.
Mr. Grimm with no jacket, tie, or waistcoat.
Mr. Grimm with his shirt rather indecently unbuttoned.
One ankle resting on the opposite knee, no sign of shoes or socks to be seen, he held a paperback novel rather close to his face.
His brow was stern, his eyes squinting as he struggled to make out the words by firelight.
Mr. Grimm.
Her Mr. Grimm.
Here in Tealeaf Cottage.
Suddenly Luna knew: he’d come for her. She didn’t know how, didn’t fully understand.
But he’d done it. Somehow, impossibly. He’d come for her, ventured into the very depths of darkness and evil.
Fought his way through terrors and foes, plucked her out of the dungeon’s depths.
And while she knew he could not actually thwart her coming fate, she didn’t care anymore.
She didn’t care about anything: not propriety.
Not social rules. Not standards of behavior or politeness or the expectations placed upon a lady. Certainly not fate. None of it.
Because, looking at that man, seated there in her extremely great aunt’s rocker, she knew exactly what she wanted. And she was going to have it.
Luna stepped out of the stairwell, her toes shivering against the cold flagstone floor.
Though he faced her direction, Mr. Grimm did not see her in the shadows.
He seemed quite engrossed by whatever was happening on the page.
Luna glided across the kitchen until she stood just outside the circle of warm light cast across the hearth.
Then she took another step.
Mr. Grimm’s head popped up from the page. His squinting eyes widened, and his mouth dropped open. “Miss Talbot!” he exclaimed, springing to his feet so quickly, the rocking chair tilted wildly back then rocked forward again, hitting him behind the knees. He stumbled forward a step.
“Hullo, Mr. Grimm,” Luna said, stifling a little giggle behind her hand. “What are you . . . what are you reading?”
He stood before her, opening and closing his mouth several times. His gaze, she noted, trailed very briefly down the length of her thin nightgown before shooting back to her face and focusing there with great intensity. “I, erm, I hardly know. I found it. In your auntie’s darning basket.”
Luna held out her hand. Mr. Grimm blinked a few times before handing the volume over. She turned the cover around and nodded. “Oh, The Rake’s Redemption. That’s a good one. Do you like it?” She flicked her gaze up to him, catching his burning eyes with hers.
“It is, erm, illuminating. Having never been a rake, I cannot vouch for the plausibility of the storyline, but—”
With a flick of her wrist, Luna tossed the paperback over her shoulder, stepped forward, and placed her hands upon his chest. “Sit down,” she said.
His black pupils dilated, obscuring the blue irises. “What?”
“I said, sit down.”
At the least bit of pressure from her palms, his legs seemed to fold up. He sank back into the rocker, his legs braced, his hands gripping the age-polished arms. His head tilted back, his eyes staring up at her with abject hunger.
Luna stepped forward, between his knees. Then, hiking up her nightie, she straddled his lap, slipped her hands around his neck, and pressed her mouth hard against his.