Chapter 3
The Dreaming
MAX
“Hide. Quickly,” my mother whispers, shooing me toward the pantry under the stairs.
Her long red hair is braided to one side, the tip brushing against the skirt of her cotton dress. The windows are condemned, wooden boards nailed across them, leaving the kitchen in dim light.
“What’s happening?” I ask, breathless. “Where’s Nick?”
“He’s already inside. You have to get in there, too, and stay real quiet.” She kisses my forehead. “I love you so much, my crimson flame.”
I’ve never seen that look on her face before—a mix of quiet acceptance and terrible fear. Her green eyes glint in the dark, the faint scar on her cheek catching what little light filters through.
“Mother, please. Hide in here with us.”
Tears wet her round cheeks. “I can’t. They will never leave you alone, not as long as I’m—” She cuts herself off. “You get in the pantry with your brother, darling. And whatever happens, don’t say a word until they’ve gone. Vae seris.”
I can’t disobey, not when she uses the Voice.
She closes the secret door and drags the hall table back into place. Nick is tucked into the corner, arms wrapped around his knees. No one can know he’s in here. No one can know he exists.
It isn’t our first time hiding in a space this small, but we’ve both grown a lot since last time. Dust coats my fingers as I crawl toward him, the air thick with the smell of flour and rot. On this side of the pantry walls, bloody runes crawl across the plaster, glowing scarlet.
The front door bursts open with a sickening crack of wood. Four or five sets of deliberate footsteps spill inside as the Reds invade our little cabin.
I catch glimpses of them through the gaps in the wooden walls—katanas strapped to their backs, jeweled scarves tied across their brows, hair as red as mine and my mother's.
The priestesses of the New Order, as Mother calls them.
The reason we move every few months, live off the grid, and always, always avoid mirrors.
“Please, there’s no need for violence, Pauline. I’m ready to surrender,” my mother says.
My heart hammers. Surrender? Hells, no. What is she doing?
“Where’s the child?” the woman asks with an impatient sneer.
My knuckles turn white, my nails digging into my palms.
“She’s safe,” mother says. “In a place where you won’t ever find her.”
A slender Red priestess with auburn hair walks forward. “We’ll find your devil spawn, Sierra. We’ll find her and return her tainted blood to the forest where it belongs.”
“Damn you, Lillivere,” Mother spits at the newcomer. “We were sisters, you and I.”
“May the Goddess purify your wicked soul, Si,” Lillivere declares.
I can’t speak or move.
Mother is still visible through the slits between the planks, but I screw my eyes shut. I don’t want to watch. I know what comes next.
But I still see her through my closed lids, her red hair unfurling as her severed head rolls away, farther and farther, leaving an endless trail of blood on the white and seafoam tiles.
Heavy footsteps pound outside, strangely quiet after the thud of my mother’s head on the kitchen tiles.
Moments later, a man storms inside. He remains near the door, where the cracks between the boards are too narrow to peer through, but his looming shadow snuffs out what little hope I had left.
“Where is the little witch?” he barks at the women, who tighten their hold on their katanas.
“Sierra knew we were coming,” Pauline mutters. “The child is gone.”
“Well? What are you still doing in here? Search the woods. The girl can’t have gone far,” the man says.
His voice is powerful without being loud. I’ve heard it before, though it’s much, much angrier now.
“I don’t take orders from any man,” Pauline spits in response.
The man’s hand clamps around Lillivere’s elbow. “Remember what we agreed, Lilli. You got your traitor, but the child is mine.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll find her. Find the girl,” she orders her comrades.
Rivulets of cold, cold blood crawl like worms through the boards and under my skin, wiggling, writhing for a way in. I look down at my palms, stained scarlet. Frost-bitten.
Then the room shifts. The boarded kitchen falls silent, drenched in moonlight. A man stands where my mother had been. His face is hidden in shadow, but wings—vast and white as snow—unfurl behind him.
“Come to me, little Maxine. Don’t be afraid.”
I don’t know if he’s a guardian angel or if he’s come to take me to the heavens, too.
I wake up drenched in sweat, my heart pounding at my temples.
Nightmares were a constant part of my childhood, but it’s been years since I’ve relived my mother’s murder in such vivid detail. Memories I buried long ago are only now clawing their way back to the surface.
Gasping for breath, I hug my knees, waiting for the undertow of the dream to fade.
Dreams aren’t just idle wanderings of the mind.
Visiting the Dreaming while we sleep nourishes the well of magic in the Shadowlands.
For an exiled witch like me, it’s the closest I ever come to going home—to Faerie, to the motherland where witches are hunted.
Dreaming is like brushing against the life I might have lived, had the Red Priestesses not risen to power and scorched the heart of the Red Forest.
Exile didn’t just strip us of our homes.
Witches can’t come into their full power away from our lands, not really.
Our magic is rooted, bound to soil and stone as much as blood, and once we were driven out, that connection thins to a fragile thread.
As long as we’re forced to survive on barren soil, we remain diminished, unable to reach the depths of our power.
Lady is curled against me, her soft purring steadying my heartbeat.
I scratch her sweet spot and whisper, “Thank you for last night, luv. You saved my life.”
She yawns and presses into my hand as I pull her into my lap, the warmth of her fur anchoring me back to this world.
The happy chatter of birds and the blaring sunshine feel wrong drifting in through the curtains drawn wide on either side of the window.
The last leaves of the rowan tree cradling the Victorian house tremble in the morning wind, ready to break from their stems at any moment.
The forest I painted as a teenager still spreads across the walls of my old bedroom—towering trees with mystical canopies that reach for a painted night sky, bathed in imaginary moonlight.
It was never just decoration, but a well-thought-out haven I built for myself, a refuge from the reality outside these four walls, away from a world where my mother had been murdered.
Every brushstroke was a wish for safety, a spell against grief.
It used to help lull me to sleep, but it never quite warded the nightmares away.
Whenever I visit as an adult, I can’t help but remember simpler days, when all I needed to escape the horrors of my past was the crinkle of paper and the soft glide of a book cover.
I rush down the staircase, careful not to step on the second-to-last creaky step. The front bay window frames the iron gates, but there’s no trace of mist or monsters. Nothing beyond the double French doors that open to the garden, either.
The wound in my leg burns, the deeper gash left by the creature's claws in my calf and hamstring bleeding through the gauze. I'm going to have to fix that, and soon.
My phone weighs heavy in my pocket. It’s still early, but I’ll have to call in my absence from work. I’m supposed to be in surgery all week, and my throat burns at the thought of letting my patients and mentors down. First my fiancé, now my career. I’m messing everything up.
The few friends I have—and my fiancé—are all unaware of Faerie, witches, and monsters.
They’re oblivious to anything that doesn’t fit in their tidy mortal world.
The coven only meets when absolutely necessary, keeping barriers between us on purpose in case someone falls to the enemy, which means no real socializing.
It kept me pretty isolated growing up, but I’ve finally found a place where hard work made up for my quirks, and I’ve poured my heart into my career.
To heal people and fix them as much as they can be fixed.
Whatever lie I come up with, it’ll have to be simple and believable.
For better or worse, I have a ton of experience in the cover-up-your-witch-arse lies.
From the first moment Mabel enrolled us in secondary school, Nick and I learned how to tell a convincing tale, but this is different.
I’m trying to build something new, to be someone else. I don’t want to lie to Lachlan.
My fingers cramp around my cellphone as I spot the bronze lantern I smashed last night.
It lies neatly on the dining table, good as new, and my heart hammers.
The blue stained panel—the very same one I had to pry out of my bleeding hand—reflects the sunlight.
I check my bandaged hand, my mouth open in a mix of surprise and outrage, but I certainly didn’t imagine the whole thing.
I know I swept up the stained glass and tossed it into the fire, along with the rags.
My hands cramp around the back of a kitchen chair, and an unfamiliar bite of power registers. The magic is faint and subdued, almost impossible to grasp, but it’s there. Someone else is in the house.
Bloody hells.
Cold sweat beads along my brows. “Who’s there?”
“Hi,” a voice replies.
My heart somersaults, and I search the living room for the source of the sound. It feels like whoever’s speaking is right in front of me, and I paw at the air. Nothing. I check behind the sofa, then the drapes, but there’s nowhere else to hide.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you,” the voice adds.
Unlike the evil phantom’s telepathic whispers, this voice is warm and more human. It’s deep and clear, the kind of masculine drawl you read about in fairytales. The rich, appealing tone of a beast hiding in some mystical castle in the middle of an enchanted forest.
I make another pass around the room, wondering if something small might have escaped my notice—the likes of Percy, my godmother’s Faeling.
“Who are you? Show yourself,” I croak.
The childhood fears most mortals outgrow still live in me, and goosebumps rise on my arms. Monsters aren’t metaphors.
Nightmares and beasts don’t vanish when the lights come on.
Some are imprisoned in old realms, eager to escape, while others are simply weaved into flesh by powers beyond my understanding.
Dread coils in my chest. Did I dream a nightmare into existence—give it just enough shape to follow me home? Or did I catch the eye of some dark spirit on my way back?
One careless wish, one unguarded thought, can allow shadows to bleed into flesh and track the scent of longing and desperation into the waking world. And this one wears a voice too perfect and too enticing to belong to anything safe.