Chapter 23 #2
Cursing at herself for forgetting how fast time can shift in the Dream—especially for someone consciously present and therefore not seamlessly part of the Dream’s subjective reality, even if that reality was native to her—Rose banished Sebastien’s hallway and followed him.
Fortunately, that much was within her abilities, especially with their bodies still connected via physical contact.
And, she hoped, the synchronicity of their hearts and minds.
She found him again immediately, which was good, but his dream had spiraled to an even darker and more twisted place.
Nina and Nonna, baying, raced past. Sebastien chased them with a glad cry.
He ran through room after room of increasingly distorted horrors, bodies of people in fancy dress dismembered or turned into furniture, the lush bodies of women with open orifices calling to him.
Screaming incoherently, he searched for the hounds, but they’d disappeared again.
He turned to the furniture people, grabbing one gowned figure after another, sobbing.
Rose, unsure of the best course of action but also certain she shouldn’t waste another opportunity, drew near enough to realize Sebastien was calling her name.
Both reassured and brokenhearted over her role in his emotional storm and fraying mind, no longer stalling, she reached delicately into the fabric of the dream, willing only goodness and joy and love into the strands.
The nightmare stubbornly refused her gentle nudges.
Sebastien wept over a dark-haired, delicately beautiful woman dressed in fanciful black and silver.
Guilt and shame slammed through her. She wasn’t good for him and he knew that, for this to manifest in his dreams. The terrible regret poured from her in dark threads, reaching for Sebastien with tentacles of longing.
She wanted to apologize and have him reassure her that she wasn’t terrible and evil, that she hadn’t destroyed his essential goodness with her darkness, his pure humanity with her wrongness.
Her body, that he’d kissed and caressed, brought such pleasure to, wasn’t even real flesh. Surely that had tainted him.
Adsila suddenly winged from the shadows, circling her head and landing on her shoulder.
In the next moment, her mind had cleared, the Dream withdrawing.
She hadn’t even realized how much she’d lost herself to the twisted miasma of Sebastien’s nightmare.
Rose had issues to wrestle, yes, but those were hers to handle.
She was here to save Sebastien’s sanity, not her own.
Which was for the best, as it might be too late for her.
With Adsila’s steadying presence, Rose reached for the joy and pleasure Sebastien brought her.
Once again, with fervor, she poured that into the fabric of the Dream, countering the instability wrought by Thorn and—to be perfectly honest—by her own inhuman self.
The room brightened, the figures melting into furniture not composed of corpses.
Sebastien looked around in patent wonder, laughing in pure delight.
She laughed, too, in sheer relief.
Sebastien turned at the sound, his expression a picture of unadulterated pleasure. He opened his arms. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
“I’m right here.” She didn’t go to him, not trusting herself to insert her own needs into his dream. In this she must be selfless as possible, not at all her strong suit.
“I was afraid,” he said, looking about the room.
The walls began to close in, the shadows gaining sharp edges like knives glistening with blood.
Several figures appeared. Court ladies baring their breasts, commanding him to be compliant.
In the distance, the hounds howled. “Nina! Nonna!” he called, turning in that direction.
“Sebastien,” Rose said gently. “It’s all right.”
“Is it?” he turned back, looking sad. “I’m afraid of this place.”
“Then let’s leave.”
“Can we?”
“Yes.” Now she held out a hand to him, more confident that was the correct move.
Sebastien hesitated, looking at her with a fear that ground at her heart. She’d done this to him with her doubts. “Is it safe?” he asked plaintively.
“I promise,” she answered, infusing the Dream with all her intention. He would be safe. “Take my hand and I’ll lead you from this place.”
Sebastien put his hand in hers and the Dream shimmered, reverberating as if a gong had been struck.
As if to affirm the connection, Adsila crow-hopped down her arm to perch on their joined hands.
In the other reality of the Dream, the goddess’s avatar shimmered with numinous power, looking like a vividly hued hole in the Dream fabric and simultaneously somehow more solid, possessing more dimensions than a single being could hold.
Heartened by what she chose to interpret as a sign of solidarity and encouragement, Rose willed Sebastien’s dream to change.
She sent healing thoughts through his dream, making him strong and whole, reinforcing all of it as his invention, all imagination, none of it real, then encouraged him to take them to his safest, happiest place.
The world shimmered, then shifted, a forest resolving around them, shrouded in snow but with the sounds of early spring echoing in the woods.
Birds sang in a chorus of counterpoint to the rills of melt.
Nina and Nonna, crisp as if real, bounded around them.
A black chicken wearing a jeweled emerald necklace pecked through the litter nearby. Sebastien sighed in relieved happiness.
And Rose withdrew, leaving him to the privacy of his dreams.
Her eyelids drooped as weariness caught up with her in a rush, sleep slamming down and demanding her full attention now that she’d solved one problem.
Making herself sit up, she pried off her muddy boots with her toes, avoiding touching them, and peeled off her stockings.
Standing, she wrestled off the fancy court gown, glad of the magical fastenings that made the process easier than it might have been.
Yanking the pins from her hair, she shook out the mass of it, resigning herself to deal with it in the morning, along with the dregs of whatever makeup remained.
It was more important to stay with Sebastien.
Ruthlessly, she removed all her jewelry, even—after a moment’s hesitation—the rose choker she never took off.
For the first time she saw it for what it was, that first gift from the man who called himself her father.
What difference between a choker and a collar?
From the moment she’d manifested as an oneiromancer, Clotaire had tried to control her.
“Rose?” Sebastien stirred, levering up onto one elbow, raking back his dream-tousled hair, and blinking blearily at her. “You were gone all day. I didn’t know what to think.”
She realized that, for the first time in their relationship, he hadn’t said he missed her. “I’m sorry,” she said, meaning it to cover so many things.
He gazed at her for a long, solemn moment. “Did you go see Thorn?”
How well he knew her. He didn’t even need to ask how or what she knew. “Yes. And my parents. She is my twin sister. Lily. The one I thought had died.”
He nodded, unsurprised. “We should talk.”
“In the morning?” she asked. “I’m so very tired.”
“Of course.”
Clad in her shift, she crawled under the covers he lifted for her and nestled against him, savoring his human warmth.