CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE #4
But I’d never had both at once. The Azete inside of me was as full as could be, and Brennan—Brennan was so still. My heart pounded. Memories of my mother flooding my senses. Her final words. Her insistence that I take it all, take what she gave me. The sacrifice she’d made.
When the door finally closed, I tried to rouse him again, my heart hammering.
“Brennan, I need you to open your eyes. Please. You need to look at me.”
He did, but barely. “So that’s what it’s like,” he said. “To be with an Azete.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to take so much.”
He shook his head against me, unable to keep his eyes open. “It was worth it,” he said. “You were worth it.”
And then he was asleep. I let him keep his head on my breast, and watched him, praying he recovered as the Hermit’s prophecy ran through my mind.
Upon the conception, there will be an end to House Lafir as they know it. Never to rise again. From what I have seen, his life all but ends as soon as the conception is complete.
I pressed a hand to my belly. Was it possible? Had it already begun?
Gods, I hoped not. I reached past the bed, and found a trunk with blankets—the ones we’d been denied for the ceremony. I threw it over Brennan, and then held him close and closed my eyes.
“I love you,” I whispered. But he never responded. He was out, and I did nothing but listen to the sound of his breathing, until it lulled me into my own sleep.
Iwalked through the forest, the Dark Woods, and looked down at my hands. Brennan’s hands. I knew by now what these dreams were. His. Not mine.
He was happy, whistling, his heart beating. But there was a cruel laugh in the air. The growl of a chimera. And a flash of black steel in the distance.
Batrir.
We want the prince.
I needed to warn Brennan. I was supposed to tell him about my dream.
About the chimera’s warning, about Batrir and the black armor.
But how? I was him. I wasn’t even in this dream.
I had no body, no voice, no agency. He just kept walking, moving faster and faster, taking me along with him, having no idea I was trapped in his mind.
He moved through the trees before heading for a familiar hill and an even more familiar cave.
It was where the Hermit had gone the night before.
Where he was keeping the real Olivay prisoner.
Wind rustled the leaves outside, and a pair of blue robins flew into the sky.
Brennan walked through the mouth of the cave, passing the ancient female witch I’d met.
Her purple-red hair gleamed in the firelight, and her dress made of seashells made small tinkling sounds as she moved.
She looked ancient and otherworldly, yet somehow exactly as she’d been when I’d last seen her.
She bowed low to Brennan. And when she rose, she looked into his eyes.
“Did you find her?” she asked.
“She’s right here,” he said, his voice deeper and more ancient than I’d ever heard while awake. He continued on and passed the Hermit, who appeared as himself, not as Lord Brandon.
“So you remembered?” the Hermit asked, bowing low.
“I remembered,” Brennan replied. “I always remember. Every face. Every life.”
No. No!
He walked down a long corridor, the same stone pathway that led to the chamber where I’d seen Olivay. Where she was chained.
I wanted to reach for Brennan, to stop him. To pull him back and keep him from seeing this—seeing one of the worst things I’d ever been part of—had ever done.
But he knew that already, and I couldn’t do anything because I was him. My stomach twisted with pain, and my chest tightened. I didn’t want him to see, didn’t want him with the real Olivay. I was afraid.
He came to the wall where she was chained and picked up a torchlight. All at once the chamber filled with golden light and I gasped.
Because the woman who stood before Brennan wasn’t Olivay.
It was me.
In my original form with ice-blue eyes and honey-blonde hair. Princess Shamhira.
No! No! No!
Brennan rushed forward, pulling me into his arms and kissing the crook of my neck, my cheeks, my lips.
“I missed you,” I heard myself say to him, my voice echoing against the cavern’s walls.
“I missed you, too,” Brennan said. “Orsete.”
Iwoke up with a start, my body covered in sweat. Brennan was still sleeping beside me, beneath our blankets. Shadows covered our bedroom.
What the fuck had I just dreamed—or, rather, what the fuck had Brennan dreamed?
I sat up in the bed and fumbled for a candle.
Something moved through the shadows.
I pulled the blanket up around my chest, my pulse racing. “Hello?” I called. “Is someone there?”
I looked around, staring into the dark, listening for anything beyond Brennan’s soft, even breaths. But there was nothing. Maybe I’d imagined it, or it was a trick of my mind with my nerves on edge from the dream.
I sat back, pulling up the blankets around Brennan’s shoulders, and smoothing back his hair as I tried to get my heart to stop racing.