Chapter 29 - Castle of Dreams
My finger traced the bulls on the door of the Duke’s chambers. Why did the bulls always have to be rearing? Could they not have a nibble of grass or a nice walk with a friendly cow? Seemed exhausting to always be fighting.
I let out a breath. I needed to quit stalling. The cup of hunter’s root cream would get cold if I stayed out in the hall.
Derrick needed to eat. I needed to get into his mind and command him to free Fraleigh and sign a reformation for Brietta.
I had taken on the role of the Duke’s mistress to get close to him. Everyone expected me to, no, wanted me to go past those doors, but after what had happened between Derrick and I on the Darkest Night…I was still afraid to.
The sound of muffled sniffles crept through the hallway. A door flung open.
“Damn it, Pearl, stop crying!” Sapphira yelled from her room. “None of us are going to get any fucking sleep!”
The frame shook as she slammed it shut. And there was my signal to quit stalling.
I stared down the largest, meanest bull carved in the center of the door. That pull that had tugged at my ribs the minute I caught sight of those carved doors intensified, beckoning me in.
I let out a breath. Whatever happened behind those doors would be for our freedom.
I gently knocked on the door. “Derrick?”
The door did not click open, but soft notes of a harp floated into my mind like dandelion seeds.
My white flame danced to the slow tune. Letting the music guide me, I slowly pushed open the door as I answered the call of Derrick’s inner self.
Even in the dark, I marveled at the starlit splendor of the Duke’s bedroom. The room was even larger than I expected, with multiple clusters of couches and chairs, but the gigantic canopied bed on the far wall stole my attention.
My feet whispered across the floor as I moved to the bed. The sheets and pillows were undisturbed.
“So, you found me.”
My heart nearly jumped out of my throat. My braid swished over my shoulder as I turned to find Derrick sitting on the floor in the shadow of a large wardrobe.
I furrowed my brows, but quickly smoothed my face. If he was spooked, I needed to calm him down.
Careful not to spill my cup, I squeezed between him and the wardrobe and joined him on the floor. I was in my nightgown, but he was still in his splendid outfit from the ball.
“What are you doing down here?” I asked softly.
He chewed on his chapped lip. “Uncle Ragnar said this is the safest place for me, but he is a liar. This is the room where my father and grandfather were murdered, and I am next. I know it.”
His inner self had beckoned me through the bedroom door, but his frightened delusions kept me out of his mind. Maybe a gentle correction was all he needed to quell the paranoia.
I placed my hand on his arm. “Your father was not murdered. He lost his balance and fell off the balcony.”
His throat trembled. “Even still, I want to be as far away from that damn balcony as possible.”
I looked across the room at the thin doors with panes of blue and green glass that must have led to the balcony. “Are the doors locked?”
His arm tensed beneath my hand. “Not sure.”
I rose from the floor and carefully dodged furniture on my way to the balcony doors. I found the lock and turned it closed.
“There,” I said with a gentle smile that I hoped Derrick could see through the darkness. “You will not fall off the balcony tonight.”
Silence was the only response. Maybe securing the room even more would help.
I crossed to the bedroom door. The gleam of a silver tray on a low table caught my eye—a loaf of bread sat on it, not a single crumb touched.
I pressed on the door and glanced at the wardrobe. “You are afraid of being murdered but you left the door unlocked?”
Derrick peered around the wardrobe and then the gleam of a blade caught the blue and green light from the balcony doors. “I was going to kill the murderer before he could kill me.”
I bit my tongue. “Derrick, no one is going to—”
“I already killed a man today. What is one more?”
My throat trembled as the image of Derrick plunging the Conqueror’s spear through Brandt’s chest flashed in my mind.
I could not drown in my failure. I was the North’s last hope. I had to get into Derrick’s mind so he would free Fraleigh.
I let out a slow breath and turned the lock closed. I joined Derrick in the shadow of the wardrobe and offered him the cup. “Here, while it is still warm.”
Derrick backed away. “What is that?”
“Your mother’s recipe.” I pushed the cup forward. “You have to put something in your stomach.”
His eyes went wide and he shook his head.
He must have thought it was poisoned. I lifted the cup to my lips. “Look, it is fine—”
“No!” Derrick leaped forward, but I held the cup in the air so none of the drink spilled. “I will not let you poison yourself for me!”
I grabbed his face with my free hand. “Derrick, it is not poisoned! Your father is gone! No one is left to poison you anymore!”
He looked at me like he had just fallen backward. The left side of his face twitched again and the knife fell with a clatter as he uncurled his white-knuckled fist.
Damn it, I lost my patience. Maybe I could fix it.
I shifted the drink to my left hand and put my right arm around Derrick’s back.
I gave him a soft kiss on his sharp cheek. “Do you trust me?”
“I trust no one but you, Serafina.”
Out of all the people in the Dukedom, I was the only person the new Duke trusted?
I thought I would be excited to use that trust to my advantage, but instead my heart sank like lead.
The irony was nearly as cruel as I was. He trusted no one but me and I was only there to manipulate him.
I glanced at the knife on the floor—a bread knife. “Then please let me take care of you. I know you have not eaten or drank since…since you were last poisoned, but you will die if you keep this up.”
His mouth formed a tight line as he stared at the floor.
I had to push him further. “If you die, you kill Brietta. Do you want that?”
He finally accepted the cup with shaking hands and lifted it to his mouth. He sipped cautiously at first but then desperately tipped the goblet back, gulping down the cream like it was nothing but air.
He stared into the empty cup and licked his lips. “Reminds me of Mama.”
And he never even got to tell her goodbye.
I leaned against his shoulder. The melancholy harpsong played again as soon as my forehead touched the side of his neck.
Suddenly Derrick was not a killer, but instead the scared teenage boy I had met at Ravenwood Manor. Even though I had only seen him as ripe fruit on a low branch back then…I just could not coldly flail him open and control him. He was too vulnerable, it…it felt wrong.
Damn my heart’s desire! Why did my emotions have to drive my magic?
I gritted my teeth and held my breath. Regardless of how I felt, I needed to get through to him. Getting him off the floor would be a good start.
I rose to my feet and held out my hands. Derrick looked up at me with heavy eyes before glancing at the knife on the rug.
“Leave it,” I gently ordered. “You are safe with me.”
His face softened but he did not smile. His hands, tight and dry like he had spent hours scrubbing them raw, wrapped around mine and I pulled him off the floor.
His heartbeat pulsed in his wrist—a sign of life.
Derrick was getting better, but he needed to rest. “We need to get you to bed.”
His thumbs ran over the backs of my hands. “Does that mean you are staying?”
It was a question, not a demand. Even still, the obligation of a Duke’s mistress weighed on my chest.
But I chose this. I chose this.
As my answer, I stood on my toes and unclasped his cape from his left shoulder. Then his right.
I had already been with Derrick once. I could do it again if it meant Riyan got to walk the earth again, if Fraleigh could be free, if Brietta got her reformation…
The Hyton Blue cape fluttered down, pooling at his ankles. I held in a breath as I moved to unfasten the collar of his doublet.
He gently grabbed my hands before I could touch him. His shadowed eyes looked into mine. “I know what my new title means. What it means for us.”
That he owned me…and my mother. He could do whatever he wanted to either of us, regardless of whatever role I called myself.
He released my hands and unfastened his collar, not taking his eyes off me. “But I expect nothing of you. I could not even want that after last time when we were interrupted…” He glanced to the side and let out a breath. “I just do not want to sleep alone. I hate admitting this but…I fear what I will see once I close my eyes.”
Riyan had told me something similar about the giants coming back in his nightmares. Derrick may have not slain actual giants, but maybe his giants were different.
Maybe they were even bigger than I could even imagine.
I crawled to the center of the massive bed and sat on my knees. I pulled on the thread at the edge of my sleeve and listened to the rustling of fabric as Derrick undressed.
A weight dropped in the bottom of my stomach. How many times had Mother done the exact same thing? In the exact bed?
But this was different. We were just sleeping—nothing like the Darkest Night.
My mind quieted when Derrick pulled the curtains of the canopy closed, casting us in complete darkness. The mattress shifting with his weight and the sound of his breath were the only evidence that he was even there.
I slipped under the blankets. He wrapped his arm around my waist and linen brushed against linen as my nightclothes rustled against his. He laid his cheek against my head and let out a low, slow breath.
I had left my Nordingaard crystal in my room, not wanting to risk Derrick finding it in case we had gotten…close with one another. Still, even though my reliable trinket was no longer on my skin, my heartbeat slowed down and my mind stopped spinning.
Derrick and I had clung to each other through sheets of parchment for seven years, what made sheets of a bed any different?
The notes of a harp brightened the darkness. The door into Derrick’s mind was wide open.
My eyelashes fluttered down as I followed each vibration of the magical harp strings like they were each a small tether. The vibrations wrapped around me and pulled me into Derrick’s mind.
I opened my eyes to rolling fluffy clouds as far as the eye could see. Over my shoulder was a tall castle made of ink and paper with bright red turrets and blue banners, like it had been lifted straight out of a faerie book.
The drawbridge over the inky moat lowered into the clouds. Derrick was on the other side, standing in front of the massive castle doors.
That castle was not mere decoration. Whatever was past those doors had to be the inner workings of Derrick’s mind.
I had to get inside to issue my command to free Fraleigh.
I crossed the bridge—it wrinkled like paper with every step—until I stood in front of Derrick on the castle stairs.
Well, not Derrick, but Derrick’s inner self. He wore simple black from collar to toe, his curls were loose, and flecks of stardust glittered on his cheeks and forehead.
He was not Alastar XII, he was…
“Hello, Midnight.” I glanced at the sweeping iron chains fortifying the castle doors.
He crossed his arms. “No! I have to keep the monster in.”
The monster?
Suddenly he grabbed my face. “Your radiant light is so rare and devine, what shall I do if the stars never align?”
I searched his face for an answer as he squished my cheeks. What was he talking about?
His eyes shone with urgency. “A midnight sky is bleak, but your light can shine, though what if our two stars never align?’
He was little more than a faerie speaking in riddles, one who lived in his own world.
But…Derrick’s mind was his own world.
This was the type of reality Brietta could bend with her poetry, or Annalisa with her paint. I only thrived in a reality that was logical and tangible, with a grip on the fabric of simple truths.
Although…maybe I did not need a paintbrush or a pen to work magic here.
I pinched the air and pulled down—a beautiful silver needle appeared between my fingers. With a wave of my hand, a glowing white thread appeared in the eye. The thread trailed into the tumbling fluff of the clouds farther than I could see. It never ended.
A crackling noise shook the air. Midnight jumped and turned toward the castle. A crack zig-zagged out of the doors and crept toward us like a bolt of lighting, cutting through the clouds as if they were stone.
“Oh no!” he cried. “The monster is coming!”
The crack raced for me and I dropped to my knees out of instinct. I gripped the cloud beneath me like a sponge and drove my needle through right as the crack reached my hand. The damage stopped.
I quickly stitched the cloud back together, weaving the thread of infinity until the foundation of the castle was completely repaired.
My fingers released the needle and it disappeared. Midnight helped me to my feet with a smile. “I wish I could let you in—all the way in.” He glanced toward the chained doors. “I just have to keep you safe from the monster.”
I pinched my magical silver needle. I could slay any monster if I got access to Derrick’s mind, but frightened Midnight would have to open the doors.
Maybe I could somehow make Midnight less frightened of the monster.
What if I healed a fresh wound in his mind?
I wrapped the tail of the thread around my finger until it formed a loose coil. Then another, and another, until I crafted a head of curls bleached by thousands of sunrises. I sent the thread soaring through the air, weaving a dress that smelled of lavender and powder, then clear eyes that saw a bright future, and finally hands that had planted the seed of a new world.
The luminescent outline of Freya Hyton stood on top of the mended fracture in the clouds. She opened her arms to her son. “I love you too, Midnight.”
His eyes glistened brighter than his cheeks as he wrapped his arms around his mother. “I love you, Mama. Goodbye.”
I glanced over my shoulder—one of the chains over the doors had dissolved into dust.
I smiled, but I was fading. Making an illusion of Freya had exhausted my magic and I had no energy to loosen the remaining chains.
I floated out of the dream as easily as I had entered it and opened my eyes to the dark nest of the Duke’s bed.
Derrick was vulnerable and broken, but as his breath slowed against my hair and his heart thumped steadily against my back, I let myself smile.
I still had a castle to invade and a monster to slay before I secured Riyan’s freedom, but at least Derrick would spend one night in a dream.