Chapter 10
My bed had become a new kind of prison—this one forged not out of fear, but one that caged a restless hunger.
I no longer burned with the urgency to escape.
Instead, a deeper pull had taken hold: the need to uncover the secrets woven through this surreal world.
I felt that if I could only solve the mystery of this dreamscape, I could learn what had happened in my waking life.
Since I couldn’t currently explore, I tried to glean what information I could from the tight-lipped servants who tended me, as well as the king and queen whenever they visited.
These interactions were a mixture of stiff awkwardness and the suppressed longing they invoked within me—as if each parental gesture they exhibited towards me reopened a wound I’d thought long since healed of the loneliness I’d felt ever since I lost my entire family at a young age.
Long after our forced small talk ended, I stared at the door where they’d departed, almost tempted to ask them to return.
Desperate for a distraction, I sniffed at the cup of chamomile tea that steamed on my bedside table.
It would clear up quite a bit of the mystery if I discovered that my dreams were the result of particular herbs steeped in my tea or a spell woven into my food.
Perhaps it could even explain why my surroundings seemed to change each time I woke.
I couldn’t detect any trace of either an untoward plant or the swirl of magic in my cup, but to be safe I languidly carried it to the window, easily picking the lock…well, at least more successfully than I had before.
My fingers felt as though they were made of lead and it took four tries before the glass pane swung open.
The royal family was clearly concerned I might wander off again and had sealed the window with a thick bolt, but apparently had forgotten my abilities because they didn’t bother to reinforce it with magic as they had previously done.
I watched as the golden liquid streamed towards the ground far below, my eyes drifting in the direction of the gardens where I’d last seen the mysterious nobleman.
I frowned, pondering that unexplainable intersection of waking and sleeping worlds.
For a moment I contemplated another venture outside, but I had no misplaced optimism about scaling the walls now that I’d experienced their safeguards, nor the energy to climb down from my tower room.
If I could muster the strength, I finally had the opportunity to turn my search indoors, now that I was apparently no longer a prisoner. I was curious to test whether I could wander the halls at will or whether the act that I was a beloved princess would cease the moment I stepped out of my room.
Secrets filled this castle—the very walls hummed with them, vibrating just below the surface like hidden embroidery stitched beneath a royal crest, waiting to be unearthed.
Their silence issued a challenge I was determined to overcome.
I needed to find them, to read the stories in the objects left behind, to trace the shifts that had occurred while I slept in order to uncover whatever truth the royal family had buried beneath careful words and poised smiles.
I bit my lip and stared at the ornate door thoughtfully, wondering how long I had before I succumbed to sleep once more.
In a palace this large, there were bound to be secrets hidden within the stones to guide me in the right direction…
if I could but search for them. But the invisible force that lured me into a deep sleep every night—and kept me there long into each new day—left my body weighed with exhaustion, preventing me from investigating like I normally would.
The exhaustion didn’t descend like ordinary sleep, but crept slowly through my limbs, dulling muscle and bone, until even lifting my head felt like moving through water.
Each attempt to sit upright was met with unyielding resistance, as though the air itself pressed me back against the mattress.
As a person whose livelihood and even life depended on being able to stay alert and wary, I found this newfound weakness horrifying.
Clenching my jaw in determination, I made my way to my door.
Each step felt as though I waded through waist-deep water that flowed powerfully against me, but I forged ahead slowly.
The doorknob turned with no resistance and I shuffled into the hall, determined to find a clue to what was happening to me and this entire palace.
I trailed my fingers along the wall, feeling for memories.
Snippets of the past were abundant; untold numbers of people had passed this way, accompanied by their various emotions, concerns, and joys.
But nothing seemed suspicious or telling yet.
I reached an intersection of hallways and hesitated a moment before turning to the right, deeper into the palace.
I’d only made it a handful of steps before my sluggishness began to transform into the inexorable weariness I dreaded.
I swayed on my feet. Perhaps if I sat down for a moment I could regain my strength.
In a distinctly un-princess-like movement, I slid down the wall to rest on the floor, leaning my head back and willing the exhaustion to fade.
Faintly I heard voices, and felt the sensation of being lifted and carried.
I forced my eyes open just long enough to glimpse the blond hair of Garrett, one of the guards I’d met my first night here, as he brought me back to my chambers and deposited me on my bed.
Then my eyes closed as though a magical force pushed them shut for another restless night, to wake a dozen hours later feeling anything but refreshed after my dream wandering.
Even during my waking hours, I discovered that time blurred in strange ways. Light filtered through the windows in pale ribbons that never seemed to change; morning bled into afternoon and back again without distinction, as though the sun itself had grown uncertain.
Day after day, I attempted to explore the palace, but never made it far from my room. It seemed that the farther I walked, the more resistance I faced. Frustrated, I paced my room one day, pondering how I could uncover clues when I could hardly leave my chambers.
Without new secrets to occupy my thoughts and each puzzle being trapped at a dead end, I had nothing to distract me from the mysterious dream man, robbing me of focus that could be put to better use unraveling the mysteries filling these corridors—questions of where he’d come from, where he’d vanished, and most importantly of all: his motives.
Sleep, when it eventually claimed me, came in strange fragments rather than full dreams—a slant of moonlight across stone, a shadow leaning close, the curve of a familiar smirk just beyond clarity.
Once, I thought I heard my name spoken in a voice that felt dangerously real…
but when I startled awake, the room lay quiet, washed in pale morning light that looked no different than the equally pale evening light when I’d grown too weary to keep my eyes open.
I blinked at the almost obscure details, slowly taking in the curtains, polished floor, and mahogany furnishings without immediately recognizing them.
Everything appeared as it should, although faintly muted, as though the world had been washed in diluted ink, draining it of color.
Perhaps whatever was draining my energy and forcing me into long stretches of sleep had altered my ability to see clearly.
My confinement in bed without corridors to explore, my mind betrayed me by wandering to the mysterious Evander, with his snarky banter and the lingering uncertainty of whether he’d been from my dreams…the man who might not actually exist.
For all the visitors who hovered at my bedside as the days melted into one another, he alone remained notably absent, an absence that felt louder than the rest. Though I’d been trying to rid myself of him from the moment he’d caught me scaling the wall, I felt a strange, unwelcome ache at his disappearance, as if something unfinished lingered between us.
A ridiculous notion, especially when the guards’ inability to see him made me wonder whether he was real at all, or merely another side effect of the curse that seemed to have taken hold of me.
In the quiet hours of these restless nights that blurred into one another, I often found myself reliving his smirk and barbed charm, the way he’d bested me as though it had been inevitable.
I despised that he’d won, despised more that I could still recall how maddeningly handsome my nemesis had looked while claiming victory.
In a world that was increasingly blurry and uncertain, his face remained clear in my mind, his mocking smile both irritating and intriguing me.
No matter how long I remained trapped in my room—hours or days, I couldn’t tell—he never reappeared. Not in waking, nor in whatever strange dreaming claimed me each night that offered glimpses of places I felt I should know, but had no recollection of.
I tried to forget him, but his toying smile and laughing eyes lingered…along with the sense he and I had met before, long ago in a forgotten time and place. And yet sometimes, just before the curse dragged me under, I could almost swear I felt him near.
I fought to grasp the wispy tendrils toying at the edge of my thoughts, struggling to hold them long enough to explore them…
but they drifted out of reach, eluding me.
I shook my head sharply, as though the motion might dislodge the thought.
Men who may or may not exist were of little consequence in the face of my current dilemma: finding a way out of this room in order to investigate the castle, and eventually making my escape before I completely lost my identity.
Unlike this dream phantom, secrets were tangible; more importantly, they could be hunted.
I struggled to sit up for what must have been the hundredth time, only for another wave of exhaustion to wash over me.
My body sagged back into the silken sheets with a groan of frustration.
This tug-of-war had waged for hours—me willing my body to move, but being prevented by some unseen force keeping me trapped.
With each act of defiance, I sensed its quiet grip slowly weakening, as though whatever held me did not expect resistance.
Even if I were free to walk the halls, it wasn’t as though I could roam unnoticed, at least not after my expedition the other day.
The healer hovered over me like I was one breath away from collapse, and the guards posted just beyond the door didn’t even pretend to mask their watchful vigilance.
And though my mind had begun to sharpen, my limbs remained weak, each movement slow and frustratingly fragile…
which meant escaping through the window was out of the question.
Curse or no curse, I was still confined. I gritted my teeth. I wouldn’t let some supposed curse tether me. What use was rest when answers lay just out of reach?
Luckily, there were other ways to search. If I couldn’t walk the corridors, I would make the corridors come to me. I began investigating what I could from within the room, particularly the areas the royal family might have touched in hopes the memories hidden within each object would guide me.
I started with the carved bedpost, fingers brushing the smooth wood.
A memory stirred—a hazy flicker of the queen seated at my bedside, stroking my brow with tender deliberation while humming a lullaby too soft to fully hear.
The king stood watching from the doorway, his expression taut with something dangerously close to fear.
But beneath the show of affection and careful words, I sensed… restraint, carefully concealed.
I prodded deeper to explore older memories I couldn’t recall. Seasons blurred past in quick succession—flowers blooming and withering, tapestries changing, candle wax dripping in different patterns, months slipping away while I slept.
None of these recollections contained any hint of deceit or ulterior motives, but that didn’t dismiss the possibility that they didn’t exist, only revealed I would have to investigate deeper if I hoped to uncover them.
Patiently, I sifted further. I wasn’t used to taking such time with my magic, as I was usually in a rush to escape.
Now I had nothing but time and worked to stretch my ability, pushing below layer after layer to find what was significant.
It took sorting through several mundane memories before my efforts and patience were finally rewarded—the soft rustle of fabric being drawn aside, followed by the sound of a section of wall shifting with a low, secretive groan.
My eyes snapped open. Across the room, near where the king had stood the previous evening, hung an intricate tapestry I hadn’t examined before. Golden threads embroidered a majestic stag ringed by roses, its antlers proud and sharp.
My pulse quickened. The curse tightened briefly around my ribs, as if in warning. But I was already rising, ignoring the heaviness in my limbs. No spell would withhold a secret from me. I would find them all.
I swung my weak legs over the side of the bed and tentatively tested my weight, waiting for the dizziness to overwhelm me.
But the strange, peculiar curse appeared to have momentarily released me from its grasp.
I shakily stood, and after checking my balance, took a hesitant step, then another.
With each the exhaustion that had held me bound slipped further and further away.
I pressed my palm against the tapestry’s woven fabric.
Another memory flared to life, a glimpse through the eyes of one of the guards—a torch flickering in the dark, a uniformed arm pushing the fabric aside to press his hand flat against the stone.
A soft click as a section of the wall groaned open, revealing a narrow opening swallowed in shadow.
A hidden passage.
The vision vanished as quickly as it had come, but the echo remained. A smile curved my lips. I knew this place held more than it let on. And now that I’d glimpsed the edge of it, I wouldn’t stop until I discovered the rest.