Chapter Eleven
If she’d had any doubt previously as to where she’d been taken, the scent of tobacco and honey certainly erased it.
She noticed tasteful decor within the house as Eli led her through, forest greens, smoke grey and midnight black creating a sumptuous palette.
Bookshelves lined nearly every room, filled with spines upon spines.
Finally, Eli stopped outside a door, nudging it open.
On the other side waited Leo, who had halted mid-pace—a deep frown on his brow. Merissa was perched upon a low divan, worrying at the tassels of a pillow. Both snapped their heads up at the intrusion, and Elara went straight to Leo, who embraced her tightly.
‘Thank you,’ he said, voice muffled in her hair. ‘You saved my life.’
She said nothing, rubbing his back before letting go. Merissa had stood, awkwardly wringing her hands, and stepped towards Elara, giving her a weak hug. ‘I’m so glad you’re safe,’ she breathed. Elara only squeezed her hand before the clearing of a throat made the reunited three turn.
Eli stood, hands in his pockets, by the door, looking embarrassed at the spectacle of affection.
‘I think it’s time to chart Elara’s plan of action within Ariete’s dreams,’ he said.
Elara frowned. ‘But the snakestone…’ With the chaos of the fighting dens, it had only just dawned on her—along with a sinking feeling in her stomach—that they were still several steps away from waking Enzo.
Merissa reached beneath the collar of her dress, producing a smooth black stone with speckles of green upon it and a round hole in the centre. ‘Is right here.’ She beamed.
Elara looked at her, then to Eli, in shock. ‘You got it?’
‘No thanks to you and your general,’ Eli said. ‘Thank your demi-Star for her magick and skills in thievery.’
Elara knew little of Merissa’s Star powers.
She knew Merissa had mentioned briefly that she had a little of both her mother’s and brother’s charm mixed into her blood.
But Elara had never witnessed anything but the glamour magick she was familiar with.
She couldn’t imagine how powerful Merissa must really be to have swayed someone like Madame Miramere.
‘Thank you, Mer,’ Elara breathed.
Merissa smiled shyly. ‘One step closer, El.’
Eli strode over to a desk, sitting down upon the bottle-green chair and kicking his feet on to the table. He lit a cigarette, the honeyed scent wafting through the room as Elara went to the fire, warming her hands and trying not to look at them, not to remember what she had done with those hands.
‘We now have everything we need to wake Lorenzo. The hypnom petals to force Ariete asleep. The snakestone to find Lorenzo’s tether, hidden within Ariete’s dreams. Now we plan the most crucial elements.
Elara, you are the final puzzle piece. The only one who can walk through dreams. Are you prepared? Confident enough in your abilities?’
Elara scoffed arrogantly. ‘I’ve been dreamwalking since before I could actually walk.’
‘He is a Star. His dreamscape may be wholly different to those you are used to.’
‘Then perhaps I’ll do a test run tonight by walking through yours.’
‘Be my guest,’ Eli said. ‘Should you be able to find your way out of them, I’ll have faith that you’ll not lose yourself within Ariete’s.’
She nodded, folding her arms.
‘And now, something a little more logistical. How exactly we get to Ariete in the waking world. As I told Elara, conveniently he is here in Castor.’
‘Yes, and why is that?’ Leo asked. ‘It seems a little too convenient.’
‘After his defeat in battle, he asked to come here to lick his wounds. As his right hand, I couldn’t very well say no.’
‘And you’ve seen him?’
‘Only a few times,’ Eli replied. ‘He’s been hiding out in my gentlemen’s club—the Emerald. Drinking and whoring daily. It’s why I’ve been able to slip away so often. Most of his time here has been spent in a daze.’
‘So we know where he is. How are we going to get him to ingest the hypnom?’ Merissa asked.
‘Well.’ Eli grinned. ‘I can think of no better time to introduce the Emerald to its two newest dancers and punter.’ He looked at Elara, Merissa and Leo in turn.
Leo narrowed his eyes. ‘You’re not suggesting—’
‘That Elara poses as a dancer—both glamoured and covered in illusions once in Ariete’s vicinity. We won’t take any risks.’
‘And me?’ Merissa chimed in.
‘You, my star of the show, will slip a hypnom petal under your tongue, and seduce our king with a private show. I’m sure you can gather how exactly you’ll transfer the drug to him.’ Eli smirked.
Leo and Elara both lunged forwards at the same time.
‘You’re mad,’ Elara seethed as Leo shouted, ‘Absolutely fucking not.’
Eli raised a brow, taking a sip of brown liquid from the tumbler on the desk. ‘Do you have a better idea?’
‘Many,’ Leo hissed. ‘You would force her into a room with him. Allow him to—’ He made a disgusted noise, pacing.
‘I don’t want Merissa within ten feet of him,’ Elara added, voice low with outrage.
‘We could slip the hypnom into his drink. Merissa would stay with me. And Elara could then illusion herself into the room to dreamwalk,’ Leo reasoned.
Eli scoffed. ‘The guard facade is sweet, really. So moral, so noble. But the hypnom in a drink won’t work. Ariete makes others taste his drinks. Plus, he would need to consume every drop of the liquid. It’s too risky.’
‘And how would an entire petal raw upon his tongue fare better?’ Elara demanded.
‘If Merissa does her job well enough, he’ll be far too distracted by…other sensations to realize what it is he’s ingested until it’s too late.’
‘You’re insane,’ Elara said, pacing too. ‘Even if it worked, the price Merissa would have to pay…I—’
‘Why don’t we ask the girl?’ Eli said. ‘Rather than speaking of her as though she wasn’t here.’
Elara stopped then, turning at the same time as Leo did, to where Merissa sat on the sofa, turning the snakestone over in her hands. ‘I’ll do it,’ she said calmly.
‘No!’ Leo and Elara both exclaimed in unison.
‘Mer, you can’t. What Eli is suggesting—it’s far too grand an action. And so dangerous, too,’ Elara implored.
‘And Leo fighting in the pits wasn’t? You walking through Ariete’s dreams won’t be? For once in my life, I can be useful. For once in my life, I won’t just be a shadow against the wall.’
‘You don’t have to be useful to be loved by us, Mer,’ Elara said softly.
‘But I want to be. You’ve sacrificed so much. Leo, too. All I want is for Enzo to wake. Let me do this. Please, Elara.’
The desperate plea in her eyes was enough to make Elara think. Her mouth worked.
‘Surely you’re not considering this?!’ Leo exclaimed.
Elara splayed her hands in surrender. ‘She’s a grown woman, Leo.’
‘You can’t expect to receive my blessing on this,’ he said, and Elara wasn’t sure if he was speaking to her or Merissa.
As he strode out of the room, Eli chuckled. ‘I don’t believe she asked.’
Elara lay in bed in the guest room Eli had lent her, listening to the muffled argument between Leo and Merissa. Their rooms must have been either adjacent or opposite, for she could hear their tone clearly—Leo, always so calm and sure, raising his voice for once, Merissa placating.
She finally heard what must have been a clipped goodnight, and the sound of a door closing very firmly. To her surprise, the door to her room opened, and Merissa slipped in. She looked like she’d been crying, and Elara—as distant as she felt from her friend right now—couldn’t bear to see it.
‘Come here,’ she said softly, lifting the bedcover. Merissa wiped her eyes before taking off her dress, so she was only in an undergown, and slid in beside her, lying on her back as she looked to the ceiling.
‘Leo won’t come round to the plan.’
‘I can’t say I blame him,’ Elara replied. ‘Anyone with eyes can see how much he feels for you.’
Merissa shook her head as her eyes brimmed with tears. ‘And that’s just the problem. I don’t want him to feel anything for me.’
Elara frowned. ‘Why? Is he not handsome enough? Powerful enough? Noble enough?’ She asked the questions sardonically. They both knew Leo surpassed in all three traits and more.
‘You’ve known me only a short while, El.
There is a whole part of me—the Star part of me—that fills me with so much shame.
I rarely show it to the world. And I will never know, with him or any lover, if they are truly falling for me, or if my charm—that terrible, manipulative magick, just like I used on Madame Miramere—is what they’re falling for. ’
‘But you aren’t like the other Stars, Merissa. You’re so good. You would never manipulate someone—’
‘I’m cursed in love.’ The statement hung in the air before Merissa took a deep breath. ‘My own brother, the very god of it, told me as much. And now I understand: this is what he meant. There is no love in my future. I tried to say as much to Leo earlier, and I’m sure you heard his reaction.’
‘You told him that the two of you didn’t have a future?’
‘I told him of my curse, of my magick. He said it didn’t matter, but, El, it does. In that pit, Adrian struck because Leo was looking at me. My charm was so strong around Miramere that it must have drawn him in too. And that one moment nearly cost him his life.’
‘Mer, how can you think that was your fault? Are you certain you aren’t sabotaging yourself? That this isn’t a reflection of whatever awful beliefs your prick of a brother bestowed upon you?’
Merissa shook her head, and Elara had never seen her so sure of herself, save for when she had been determinedly pushing the blade into Elara’s back and telling her to remember.