Chapter Twenty
Elara’s hand trembled as she placed it on the door to her dreamscape.
Both panic and exhaustion threatened to make her crumble. Enzo’s tether was around her neck, its light waning, which didn’t help her fear. But there was still a quiet thrum, and Elara could feel the magick of it against her pulse.
It was the first real sense of Enzo she’d had in weeks, and it was difficult for her not to simply collapse at the feeling of him so close.
She hadn’t dared visit her own dreams before now, scared of what she might find.
The door swung open, and she rushed in, tripping down a darkened hill to the small valley where she had left him almost two weeks before.
‘Enzo?’ she shouted.
She squeezed her eyes shut, lungs constricting. Focus, she had to focus.
She produced the snakestone and looked.
In front of her, drifting like dandelion seeds in late-summer air, were golden wisps. Not footprints—no, this was something fainter. She would have assumed it was wishful thinking, but as she reached out a hand to one, it curled around her finger.
She squinted into the distance, seeing more floating in a trail, and if that wasn’t confirmation enough, the tether laced around her neck began to heat and thrum as though it was urging her on too.
She set off at a ragged pace, reaching the edge of the clearing—the only part of her dreamscape she was familiar with.
To her surprise, beyond the hazy line of hills, she saw a forest had grown in her time away from it, a winding path thick with undergrowth ahead.
The golden light became brighter in the twilight, and she followed it, a prayer whispered between her lips, over and over, that Enzo would be there, beyond the trees, waiting for her.
There was resistance as she stepped beyond the boundaries of her dreamscape, and she checked on her own tether nervously as she traversed into unknown Dreamlands.
She barely took note of the world around her.
Her sole focus was Enzo.
She heard the sound of running water and frowned, looking to her feet and the silver water running alongside her.
She opened her mouth to call out Enzo’s name again and promptly stopped.
There, in the centre of the river, the light was brightest, something gold shining just above the water.
And as she stumbled towards it, she saw him.
Enzo’s figure was flickering, as though his very last tie to this world was slipping away, and Elara began to sprint, yanking his tether from around her neck.
‘Enzo!’ she screamed. But he didn’t hear her, too preoccupied by something within the water. And she saw him, without turning around, finally submerge.
Elara plunged into the water, feeling the cold move like gossamer against her.
Her hands wrapped around Enzo’s chest as she heaved him above the surface.
He felt like barely anything beneath her, the Dreamlands taking away touch and weight.
His eyes flickered open, and she began to sob at the dimmed gold of them, the shadows under his eyes, and the fear and emptiness within them.
‘Come back to me,’ she pleaded. ‘Please come back to me.’
He brought a trembling hand up to her face, a tear leaking from his eye. But he was only light and fire now, his corporeal form flickering in and out in front of Elara.
His mouth moved, but no words came out.
‘Enzo, stay with me. I’ve got your tether. You’re going to wake up.’
‘I love you,’ he rasped. The sound was like the gentlest of breezes whispered over her. ‘I loved you even when I didn’t know you.’
His eyes fluttered shut again, and Elara knew she had to keep him awake to wrap his tether around him.
She began to sing their lullaby—the one that had comforted him as a child—as she fumbled for the tether around her neck.
‘What a lovely dream this is,’ he whispered. The light beneath his skin shone so brightly that it made Elara’s eyes water. She shoved the tether over his head as she continued to sob.
‘Please, please find your way back,’ she begged.
And then there was only light.