Quinn
The first thing I heard was the steady drip of water. The world seemed to halt as I realized where I was…and who was before me.
Tobias lay on the cell floor, shivering. The metal mask that hid his face no doubt leeched what little warmth he had been able to retain. Blood soaked through the back of his thin tunic, his chestnut hair overgrown and matted like he hadn’t been allowed to bathe for some time.
Rage coursed through me, my blood alive with it, my magic clawing for release—demanding someone pay. I hadn’t ever been here in person, but I knew without a doubt where we were: the cells beneath Morehaven. Aviel had already paid for this with his life, though Silvius was still out there.
Which meant this had to be a dream…no, a nightmare. I couldn’t even see the edges of his cell where they disappeared into a dark fog. But if it was a dream, and I knew it, why wasn’t I waking up?
“Tobias?”
It was like an electric shock went through his body. Tobias shot to his feet, his eyes wild as he stared at me. “Quinn…no.” Each word sounded like it cost him even as he struggled to continue. “He’s…c-coming.”
A chill ran down my spine at the abject horror in his voice.
“Tobias, it’s okay,” I said, even as I knew it was ridiculous to say so. This was a dream, after all, and the emaciated figure before me was a figment of my imagination. The False King was dead and Tobias was free—though this nightmare had once been all too real.
There was a telltale screech of metal on metal as a heavy door slid open. Tobias’s entire body went taut, his breathing becoming labored. In one quick movement, he pushed me behind him, his head whipping side to side as if to find a way out of the locked cell.
He felt real, his touch sending a spark through me that woke up every one of my nerve endings. My heart clenched at what must be coming as I watched him tremble.
“It’s just a dream,” I said aloud, needing to reassure him as well as remind myself. This wasn’t real, even if there was something different about it. Something I felt like I should recognize, like a word on the tip of my tongue.
“I…won’t…let…him…hurt…you,” Tobias gritted out.
A crackle of familiar light skittered along the dank stone. I could feel Tobias’s flinch even as his grip on me tightened.
This isn’t real, I thought over and over. Except it still felt real to me.
“He won’t,” I promised. “He can’t hurt you anymore.”
He shook his head. “I’m not the one I’m worried about.”
I needed to wake up. Tobias would be beside me, asleep and unharmed, if I could only open my eyes.
“It’s okay,” I repeated even as unease curdled in my stomach. “You’ll be safe when I wake up.”
“Quinn!”
?
The garbled sound of my name yanked me from the nightmare. I sat upright in bed, breathing hard.
But the yell that woke me wasn’t a part of my dream.
“Tobias?”
He was tangled in the sheets, his neck twisted so his face was half-smothered in his pillow. His body trembled like he had in my nightmare, each gasping breath cutting off like he couldn’t get enough air. Then his mouth opened in a silent scream—
I was across the bed before I knew it.
“Wake up,” I said urgently. “You’re safe, okay?”
“Q-Quinn,” he breathed, and my heart stopped. Because he didn’t sound relieved. He sounded terrified. “Please…no.”
“Tobias, wake up,” I demanded, taking his face in my hands. He felt so cold…
His eyes flew open, light flaring from each fleck of gold. The next second, his hands wrapped around my wrists, tearing mine from his face. His eyes were wild as he scanned the empty room.
“It’s me,” I said staying completely still so as not to seem like a threat. “It was just a dream.”
Tobias blinked, his grip on me loosening. “Quinn?”
He looked more lost than I had ever seen him. His hands covered his face, baring the white scars on his wrists where those shackles had dug in for years.
I knew what he had been through, but seeing it in my nightmare was another thing entirely. That dream may not have been real, but Tobias had lived that reality.
I hadn’t even known he was alive to save.
“I’m sorry,” Tobias whispered brokenly. “I…I shouldn’t have slept here.”
“It’s okay,” I said, repeating the same words from my dream.
Carefully, I covered his hands with my own, gently prying them away from his face.
“No, it’s not,” Tobias said dully. His eyes remained downcast, his hands trembling as he fought for control. A full body shudder ran through him, then another.
“It was just a dream,” I repeated quietly, stroking the back of his hands with my thumbs in soothing circles. I didn’t dare call on my magic to help calm him, not when my rage still bubbled too close to the surface to be sure which form it would take.
“No, it wasn’t,” Tobias snapped. His face twisted in unadulterated anguish.
“I was trapped in that cell, trapped in that mask, waiting to be tortured and broken. Telling myself that I wasn’t afraid and knowing it was a lie.
” His whole body was tense, ready to snap.
“It wasn’t a dream; it was a memory that happened so many times I lost count.
The same nightmare I always have, except it was so much worse, because I thought—” his voice cracked “—I thought this time you were trapped in that hellhole along with me.” A sob ripped from his throat.
“It felt so real, Quinn. I-I thought I finally failed you.”
The world seemed to slow to a stop as the implications of our shared dream finally hit me.
I had dreamwalked to him—and I knew the only way that was possible.
If I was being honest with myself, I had suspected this for some time now, though with everything going on I hadn’t dared give into that hope.
But Tobias was shaking so hard that I pushed that truth from my mind.
He needed me. Everything else could wait.
“Aviel’s dead,” I said softly. “I’m safe because of you. And you are too.”
Slowly, I shifted forward, carefully wrapping my arms around him. Tobias was barely breathing, as if afraid this was still a part of his dream. Then he sagged into my arms.
Silent tears ran down his cheeks onto mine, my heart breaking at the reason why he learned to cry so noiselessly. I held him more tightly even as my own tears overwhelmed me.
Gently I ran my fingers down his arms, circling along his back, like my touch could free him of whatever memory had held him in its grasp. His hands gripped me almost convulsively, before he started moving them up and down my spine. Comforting me, I realized, despite his own distress.
I didn’t pull away until he did first, his breathing steadier. My voice was barely a whisper as I finally asked the two questions that I hadn’t had the courage to voice before now.
“How did you stay sane? And how didn’t you break?”
He was silent for so long that I thought he might not answer. My heart clenched at the thought that he may have donned that mask yet again. That after everything, he was still about to shut me out.
When he did speak, his voice was raw—and so soft I had to lean closer.
“There was nothing to do in that cell but be stuck in my own head,” Tobias said hoarsely.
“Occasionally there were other prisoners, but they never…they didn’t last long.
When I was in Soleara, Pari taught me the basics of mental shielding to keep my mind safe.
” He blew out a long breath. “I knew what Aviel wanted to use me for, and why. He wasn’t exactly hiding who he was after he locked me away, not when he was trying to extract any information he could from me. ”
He paused, looking uncertain. The silence stretched so long I wasn’t sure he would speak again until he whispered, so softly it felt like a secret, “So I created my own mental prison, recreating each cell I stared at…and spent every waking moment compartmentalizing everything I had to hide behind those bars. Everything that he could possibly use to find you and Eva, the truth about Soleara, and anything that could be used to hurt those I loved was painstakingly hidden, each dangerous thought sealed away where no one could reach it.” He stared past me at the wall, but I knew he wasn’t seeing it.
“At first it was to hide what I knew from Aviel. Then it became a way to put a barrier between myself and the pain until I couldn’t feel anything anymore.
I learned to bury the thoughts I couldn’t escape behind lock and key, learned to stow away my feelings until it was safe.
Except it never was…and now I don’t know how not to. ”
My hand tightened on his, but I didn’t dare interrupt. To hear him explain why he had been forced to cage his heart stoked an unimaginable fury in my soul, a cry for justice.
His voice hardened. “Every night when…when he was done with me, I fortified those walls. I sealed away my memories and blocked the emotion behind them, knowing they could doom everyone I loved. I let that mask turn me to ice to make sure that I didn’t break, even as my body was broken.”
I had wanted to see what lived behind the walls Tobias had so carefully built for so long. I should have realized it would break my heart.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“I’m not.” His thumb stroked my inner wrist, pressing down on my pulse point. He let out a soft sigh, as if the proof of my heartbeat calmed him. “I’d do it all again, if it kept him from finding you.”
I sucked in a shaky breath. “If I had known what was happening to you…”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” Tobias said quietly. “The thought of you in there with me…what he would have done to you, to Eva…” He shuddered. “He told me his plans for Eva in far greater detail than I ever let her know. What he did manage to do pales in comparison.”
My stomach knotted itself tight. I had been the one to heal Eva after she escaped Aviel in Soleara. If he had won…well, we were all lucky it hadn’t come to that. But the fact that Aviel taunted her brother with how he planned to use her made me want to scream.
A flicker of red glowed at my fingertips. I closed my eyes until that red haze disappeared.