Chapter 8
“I will do everything that is wrong,
so I can achieve what I know is right.”
— Written entry from Evyen Deyanira’s personal journal (Pre-Division)
Airess
Airess realized she was knocked into the dreamworld when she materialized before a small, circular hut she had never seen before.
She looked down at her dream form, dressed in the same crimson dress she always appeared in.
Her translucent body glowed a golden hue in contrast to the dark night.
The hut was made of oak and straw. Through the tiny windows she made out the faint flickering of a fyre. Smoke puffed out of the chimney.
Airess felt a pulling sensation urging her towards the door. She wanted to resist. She needed to wake up. But deep in her soul, she knew she was being called here, whatever this place was. She obliged, accepting the will of the dreamworld.
Airess walked through the door.
To her right were two cots made up with knitted quilts.
To her left was a tiny kitchenette consisting of an iron stove, pots and pans hanging upon the walls.
In front of her was a fyreplace and a woman sitting in the chair, watching her.
She was a plump, dark skinned Human woman, presumably in her later years.
The woman's body also glowed in a translucent sheen, similar to Airess, but reflected the color of violets. Wrinkles creased around the woman’s brown eyes as she smiled and looked directly at Airess.
Airess stopped in her tracks, her breath hitching. Airess never made contact with others in the dreamworld. She always dreamwalked alone, as if she were a ghost, floating around unnoticed. Unseen.
“My, you're even more beautiful than I ever imagined.”
Airess gaped. Usually, if she did see another dimensional being, they ignored her. Like they couldn't see or hear her.
But not this woman. Her eyes shone with a kindness that felt familiar.
Airess remembered to speak, her voice wavering, “Thank you.”
The woman before her smiled softly, giving Airess enough time to take in what she was seeing.
“Who are you?” Airess asked.
“A dreamwalker, like you,” she said. “You can call me Ima. Please, sit.” Ima motioned a hand toward the armchair across from her.
Wearily, Airess walked forward and sat down.
Ima was knitting, tendrils of emerald and crimson-colored yarn intertwining together as she worked the needles with familiar ease.
“I can only sense so much from here. But I can see you now,” Ima said as she knitted. “Which means you must have gotten out.” The woman said the words more to herself, eyebrows creased, her gaze falling to her yarn.
Airess sat up straight. “What do you mean? How do you know that?”
“Luciena is a place of many secrets, many betrayals,” Ima said. “The Shadow blocks out the Magick of truth, energy of souls, and the river of consciousness.”
Airess shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
The edges of the dreamscape began to blur. Airess' heart rate was increasing in the waking world, her body beginning to wake up naturally. The floor beneath her began to feel unstable, her surroundings blurred, flickering in and out of focus.
This was an aspect of dreamwalking she still hadn’t grasped yet. When her body wanted to wake up, she could do very little to force it to stay asleep.
Ima looked around, as if she also realized Airess was on the brink of physical consciousness. “You’re waking up.”
“I don’t know how to stay here,” Airess said.
“Listen to me, Airess, this may be the last time I have the opportunity to meet with you. Stay with the male, no matter what, and travel to Rune. The Obadiah awaits the both of you.”
“How do you know my name?” Airess asked, opening her mouth to say more, but she might as well have yelled an echo into the void. The dreamscape melted away, Ima’s face disappearing like smoke drifting into the sky.
She fell into the darkness at the speed of light.
Airess opened her eyes, gasping for air at the sudden switch from the dreamworld to reality.
The first thing she noticed was a cold, hard surface against her cheek as she woke up lying down.
Then she noticed the prison cell she was in.
Darkness encompassed her, save for the faint glint from the fyrelit wall sconce she spotted through the steel bars. The walls caging her were made of rock. A floor of dirt lay beneath her, smelling of musk.
Panic set in as Airess shot up abruptly, only to be yanked back by metal shackles bound to her wrists and ankles, the chains connected to the floor. She grimaced at the jerking motion. The shackles were dripping in a luminous green substance that faintly burned her skin.
Her heart sank. Had Taryn taken her here? Had he—
Memories of the explosion, her Magick, came flooding back to her.
Taryn had run after her as she escaped him.
She felt pure fear the moment he dragged her down to the forest floor, and for the first time, her power had come to her aid.
Airess didn’t know how she did it, but she had used her Magick to blast him away.
Had she really done that?
Fear and excitement coursed through her. She held out her palms in front of her and concentrated, trying her best to call to that power that had finally saved instead of damning her.
Nothing came.
Airess sighed in frustration and tilted her head back to rest against the wall, letting out a bitter laugh. Perhaps she would never be powerful, or learn about her Magick. Perhaps she would not live long enough to do so.
She began to hum slowly at that last thought, feeling the music vibrate in her throat. It was the only thing she could do to comfort herself.
A multitude of footsteps thundered down the hallway, cutting her melody short. She made out two male voices conversing with one another, the words becoming clearer as they neared. Airess sat up and stilled in fear. Was the Guild finally coming to retrieve her?
They came into view. Airess immediately recognized the gilded armor of the Luciena guard, sending a wave of nausea through her.
The guards held Taryn up by the arms, bloody and battered, his wrists and ankles bound in chains.
Displeasure coursed through her at the sight of him in pain.
Although he was technically her captor, Taryn had treated her fairly.
Seeing him in this state brought up a confusing feeling she couldn’t quite place.
Airess brought her legs in close, hugging them with her shackled wrists, trying to remain small enough that they could not see her.
“He’s a stubborn one, alright,” one guard muttered to the other, opening the door of her cell. The guards shoved Taryn into the cell, the Fae male landing on the ground with a hard thud. She backed up as far as the chains let her.
“Luciena will pay a heavy price for the rebellion’s most wanted assassin,” the guard sneered, “What we’ve done to you will be nothing compared to what the crown has in store.”
Slowly, Taryn propped himself up to a seated position.
His face finally became visible as he lifted his head, a mop of curls dampened by blood on his forehead.
It seemed he was trying to smirk, but the expression came out grim due to his blackened eye, busted lip, and bloodied face.
Taryn spit on the guards’ boots in response, and lifted his middle finger in the air.
The guard slammed his boot into Taryn's stomach, the momentum sending him barreling backward. Airess expected to hear Taryn scream in response, but he held it in, as if he were too stubborn to give them the satisfaction of hearing his cry.
The guard turned his gaze to Airess for the first time since they arrived, her hopes of seeming invisible vanishing as he perceived her.
“And what a pretty penny you will be, the prince’s bride escapee.
Don’t worry.” The guard gestured between Taryn and Airess.
“You two will be in the capitol by nightfall, and I will have my reward.”
The Elven male grinned greedily as he closed the cell door shut. The sound of the deadbolt locking rang in her head as she watched the guards disappear down the hallway. Airess turned towards Taryn, her eyes sliding down his body.
“Godsdamn,” he said as he gathered himself, groaning as he came to a seat. His back rested on the wall of bars behind him. Taryn tilted his head up, looking her right in the eyes, his silver stare piercing into her very soul.
The two stared each other down, gold and silver meeting once again.
Airess cringed at his face. Blood dripped from his lips and nose, a nasty bruise already visible on his cheekbone. She knew she should relish in the fact that karma had already come for him after he had compelled her, but looking at him now, she felt quite the opposite.
“Fancy seeing you here,” he joked, a smile on his face, as if what he just went through was a long stroll in the woods.
Bringing both bound hands inside the front of his pants, shackles clashing, he fished around in his pocket and brought out a small flask.
With a flick, the cap was off and tossed across the cell.
“You’re drinking?”
Taryn tipped his head back against the cell bars and closed his eyes. “Helps with the pain,” he said simply, and drank.
Airess gaped at him. She couldn’t believe that he managed to sneak a flask into the cell and that he was speaking to her so casually after being almost beaten to death.
This male was inconceivable, and has quite literally become the cause of all her problems. If it weren’t for him, she would have been on the way to Rune by now, hidden away from the Luciens.
Airess tried her best to ignore the simmering anger in her gut.
Taryn set his flask down, leveling a cold stare at her. “Do you want to explain what happened in the woods?”
“I don’t know what happened.”
Taryn raised a brow. “You aren’t a very good liar.”
“I’m telling the truth. I’ve never done that before. I didn’t even know that was possible. I just remember panicking and… well, it just sort of happened.”
Taryn made a sound resembling a Hmm. Airess looked down to her shackled wrists, panic rising in her chest, in her throat, constricting and squeezing her.
She blinked rapidly, fighting away the tears that threatened to come to the surface.
It was a flaw she hated about herself—crying whenever she felt angry or panicked.
Airess swallowed the feeling down. She wouldn’t cry, especially not in front of him.
“I can’t go back,” she whispered.
“Why? Why did you leave in the first place?” Taryn asked the question like it was on the brink of his mind, the question eager to be asked.
“It wasn’t planned,” Airess confessed. She wasn’t sure why, but she vaguely explained the events directly after the engagement ball explosion.
Perhaps it was because she needed someone, even if it were him in this lonely, twisted world.
Airess made sure to leave out the details about The Obadiah.
She hadn’t had time yet to even think about that, or what Ima had said in the dreamworld.
“And your seamstress orchestrated all of that?” Taryn asked in disbelief, taking another swig of his flask.
“Yes. She knew—” Airess stopped herself before she divulged too deeply into her past with Arzhel. “She knew what I went through there. That is why I can’t go back. He’ll kill me.”
“Who will kill you?” Taryn pressed, his tone laced with a hint of urgency Airess didn’t understand.
“The prince,” Airess chuckled bitterly. “Perhaps the queen, too.”
Not wanting to speak of the matter anymore, she changed the subject as she stared at the green substance dripping off of the chains. “What is this? It burns.”
“Donstenyte,” Taryn supplied. “It's a poison. It can mute out Magick entirely, and given the quantity of it, there’s not a chance in hell we would be able to use Magick to escape.”
Great. As if things couldn’t get much worse.
A beat of silence passed before Taryn spoke, “I’m sorry.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry for compelling you, for taking you against your will. I should have never done that. I should have told Eryx no.”
Airess folded her arms, remembering who she was talking to. “So then why did you do it?”
He looked away. “It wasn’t voluntary.”
“Who is Eryx?”
Taryn’s jaw flexed, as if the question triggered something within him. He huffed out a breath. “The leader of the Mrkynian Guild. The man who sent me to find you.”
Airess weighed the name in her mind. Eryx. She had never heard of that name before. Why would he want her? How did he know about her power that apparently everyone but her was convinced she possessed?
Airess finally understood what she sensed when she opened her Sight to Taryn’s energy.
The way Taryn felt repulsed by his own actions confused her at the time, but now, she realized it was because they weren’t truly his actions.
Perhaps he too was compelled. Taryn said taking her wasn’t voluntary.
Was he a prisoner to someone else, like her?
Stay with the male, Ima had said. Had the dreamwalker meant for her to travel to Rune with him? While Airess still had every intention of finding her way there and claiming her freedom, she wasn’t so sure about Ima’s advice.
“Your accent,” Airess pointed out. “You’re from Rune?”
Taryn locked eyes with her, lifting his brow. “Yes. Why—”
Footsteps echoed down the hallway, cutting his reply short. Airess sat up, eyes wide in fear. Taryn craned his neck to look down the hall before turning back to her.
“If there is any way you can conjure your power like before,” Taryn whispered, “Now would be the time.”