Chapter Fifteen
THE SAR DYēUS is there again when I close my eyes.
I hate him for it. This time though, he lies in his bed, asleep. The babies are wailing. I don’t know how he can sleep through their screams. At least in the twists and turns of the caverns back home in Nevoba, the sounds are muffled enough to fade into the background.
I pace the room like a caged creature. This is no dream. I understand that much now, but I don’t know in what capacity. I don’t know what I’m doing that’s bringing me here. It’s clear I can’t talk to Ozias and Atlanta, but I need to know more about it. Somehow.
The Sar Dyēus shifts slightly in his overly large bed and even that action sets my teeth on edge.
No. It does no good to stay here. I need to leave. My eyes travel about the room and lock onto the balcony that looks out over the Sere, towards the mountains.
Tilting my head, I step outside and my hands gliding over the smooth stone railing, solid beneath my touch.
I frown at that. The previous two nights, the only things my hands have been able to feel with any solidity was him.
I look out over the edge. Above, the gods eyes are an ever watchful presence in the sky.
Below, I can see only the mist of the clouds, and the deep, unending blackness of night.
Hoisting myself onto the balcony’s railing, I swing my legs over and slide down until my toes reach the landing on the other side.
Holding onto the ledge behind me, I peer down, the height taking my breath.
If I jump, maybe I can jolt myself awake.
I fill my lungs with air and lean further out.
My fingers cling to the stone. All I have to do is let go.
As my fingertips set to release, an unexpected voice reaches my ears.
“Don’t.” Zhoric’s baritone is soft in its depth, but the command rings harsh through the night air.
My blood turns cold. I slowly pivot my head towards his bed.
He’s sitting up now, propped on one muscled arm, the other reached out towards me.
The smooth planes of his bare chest and lines of his abdominal muscles catch the silvery light from the twin moons outside his window.
A tear-dropped shaped hole in the center of his chest swallows all the light, and I recognize immediately, intrinsically, for what it is.
The god power is a large, solitary dragon scale.
I know I’m staring, but I can’t seem to tear my eyes away.
He has no scars, save for a few faint lines above his heart.
So different from the many scars I’ve seen on Ozias’s skin, on Atlanta’s, and Issa’s and all the other dragon shifters I’ve ever seen in close detail.
Though, beyond his flawless skin, which rubs me the wrong way, he has always been a terrifying, beautiful anomaly. Completely inaccessible. Until now.
My gaze slips back to his face, but his hasn’t moved from mine. “Did you just speak to me?”
Getting up from his bed, he ignores my question.
He wears only loose, low-slung pants, his bare feet silent as he approaches me with careful steps, his gaze purposely elsewhere, examining every inch of space around me, but never landing on me.
“Anything you do here will reflect back on your physical self.”
My eyes widen and I reel myself in until my lower back hits the railing. I glance back down. I’m not desperate enough to leave this dream to find out whether he’s telling the truth.
“Why tell me?” I say over my shoulder. “I would think that after killing one of your elites you’d be happy to be rid of me.”
If he’s surprised by my admission, he doesn’t let on. “I’ve been known to suffer from bouts of insanity. Continue, if you are intent on death after all.”
Turning my body so I’m facing the room again, I hold on tight and lean back, glancing behind me to the drop below. He watches me, eyes tense.
“So this isn’t a dream? If I let go, I die?”
He waits a beat. He doesn’t answer my first question. “You wouldn’t awaken on the other side.”
The other side. He must mean where I am in my dragon form in the Realm. “Why?”
His slow steps take him to a column where the balcony meets the outside wall.
It takes me a minute to notice that he’s inspecting a spider web tucked into the high corner of the column.
“Mind walking is like that web.” My fingers tighten on the railing.
Atlanta said those words. Mind walking. “It’s an intricate, delicate thing that works wonderfully for its intended purpose.
But,” he runs his fingers through it, the tendrils breaking and drifting the breeze, “any careless hand, any greater act, can loose the threads to the wind.”
I pull myself in and climb over. On solid ground, I lean back against the railing and cross my arms. Though this form isn’t physical, I can sense the rapid beat of my heart. “And what is the intended purpose? Of mind walking?” The words feel at once strange and familiar on my tongue.
Finally, he looks me directly in the eye. The moment our gazes meet, a tide rises in me, swift and boundless, terrifying and thrilling. “Connection.”
I swallow hard past the tension in my throat. “And what’s connecting me to you?”
Almost as if he can’t stop himself, his eyes travel across my body, and even though my form isn’t real, it burns all the same.
What is happening? I must tense up enough that he notices, and, like a startled hare, his focus returns to my face before skittering away.
I catch the longing in his expression before he wipes it clean, devoid of all feeling, all life.
His brows lower. “Nothing that I have not already destroyed.”
“So then why am I here?”
“I do not know. Nor do I wish to.”
“You may not want to, but I do. You claim to have destroyed something, and yet here I am. Does that make the all-powerful Sar Dyēus a failure or a fraud?” I immediately bite my tongue, his words about my bodily safety coming back to me swift and sure.
Then I remember my hands wrapped around his throat.
How he didn’t struggle for air, how his skin didn’t depress beneath my touch.
Throwing myself off the balcony may harm me, but we can’t seem to physically affect one another here.
His eyes stay on me now, like he’s daring me to say more. When I don’t, a long blink and turn of his head is enough to tell me he’s shutting me out. “Leave, Kaisa. You have found your freedom.”
A shiver wracks my body at the sound of my name from his lips. I cannot tell if it’s a pleasant one or not. “I’m free am I?” My voice raises. “Stuck in the Realm? Knowing my sister, my mother, my people are the way they are because of you?”
The silence rings louder than my words, pounding in my ears.
“It’s all I can allow.”
I sneer. “You’re a monster.”
“Then do not make the mistake of chaining yourself to me by continuing to come here. Stay away, Kaisa. Find a way to live a life you are proud of.”
I laugh, harsh and sharp. “That advice coming from someone like you is an insult. I should kill you for all the things you’re proud of.”
His mouth opens, then slowly closes, the muscles in his jaw jumping. One brow glides up his forehead, mouth tight against his teeth as he says, “Get out.”
I step up to him, so close that if we could touch, he would feel the heat of my words on his skin. “Make me.”
He glares at me, eyes narrowed. Then he moves past me and plants himself down on the ground. “I have better uses for my energy than to force you out,” he answers.
I walk around and sit in front of him. “But you could. You did before.”
He doesn’t answer me.
“Right?” I prompt.
Again, his answer is silence.
“You’re ignoring me.” I pause, then say as realization sets in, “Again.”
“I should be glad you aren’t a complete fool.”
The flare of my nostrils is the only answer I give him, but he doesn’t see because his eyes are closed. Then, I feel the surge of his power, sense a fluctuation of energy behind me. I turn and look, but all I see is the dark night sky and the gods eyes. And, I’m still here.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, gesturing around the balcony. The first time I came to him, he was doing exactly this. Is it some kind of meditation, like Ozias has been guiding me through?
“I think the better question is what are you doing here?” He opens his eyes again, and because I’m sitting directly in front of him, they lock with mine immediately and my breath lodges in my throat.
I let my head fall back against the balcony railing. “Despite my best efforts, I can’t seem to stop myself from coming. I turn into a dragon, I fall asleep, and then I’m here.”
“You haven’t alerted any of the Realm’s inhabitants you see me? Ozias perhaps?”
I keep my mouth firmly shut and I think I see the ghost of a smile play across his lips.
“So you do see the uselessness in asking your enemy questions.”
“You were once my king. A man who sealed me with a vow of protection,” I counter.
“And now you know the truth of it.”
“You won’t deny it? Even in the slightest?” He doesn’t answer. “Would answering me reveal some great secret I could use against you?”
“Perhaps.”
At the same time, we hear a child cry out. We both tense, and he winces before his face hardens a fraction. My curiosity piques again and it feels dangerous, treacherous. He’s not at all like what I expected him to be. Then again, I never expected to get close enough to know him.
“Why?” I ask.
Again, I’m met with silence.
“The babies? The crying? Why do you allow yourself to…” I open my hands and twirl them around in the air, looking for the right way to phrase what I mean.
“Hear it?”
“Yes.”
“What would you have me do?”
“Silence them?” I offer.
“That’s rather bleak, even for me.”
A surprised laugh bubbles out of me. It’s not a funny thing to joke about. However, I’ve been known to use macabre humor during difficult times and hearing it from him catches me entirely off guard. He grimaces, but I think it’s a kind of smile. I think he’s amused.