Chapter 7
Chapter
Seven
-LIL-
The sheets stuck to my skin, red and black satin swirling together to form a whirlwind of pain and suffering. My hands kept slipping as my trembling fingers tried to pull myself along the bed, inching towards an escape.
Get off of me!
Please… please no more. No more.
“Lil.”
Please stop…Please.
“Lil!”
My eyes burst open as I was jostled awake.
“Get off me!” I screamed, kicking Rai away from me. I wouldn’t endure it again. I would fight him.
“Lil, it’s me, it’s Dainan.” He said, removing his hands from me. “It was just a dream.”
Dainan? Why is Dainan here? Gods, he looked so much like Rai.
“Dainan.”
“Yes. It was only a dream.”
Only a dream. I brushed the back of my hand across my forehead, wiping away the cold sweat that had made a home there. A dream. It was just a dream. The fluttering in my chest didn’t stop. I knew it would be several minutes before it calmed. Same as most mornings.
“Sorry,” I muttered. Rising to my feet, I cleared off dust that had made its way onto my lap for however I had been asleep.
Dainan stood back, assessing me. His gaze did a slow sweep from my bare feet to my matted hair.
“Impressed by what you see?” Bending down, I reached for the shoes I’d kicked off before going to sleep, lamenting my fortune as I put them on once more. May my feet one day forgive me.
“You’re not my type.” Dainan’s hands slid into his pockets.
The blunt nature of his remark took me by surprise.
There had always been rumors surrounding Dainan at court.
A worshipper of women, always interested in the newest thing, no one keeps him for long.
I had believed the gossip without giving it much thought.
But pausing now to stare at the prince, I couldn’t recall him with anyone. Not until Brida.
“I should think not. I’m far too crass for you.” Self-deprecation had become my form of self-preservation, and I offered Dainan a wink.
“Crassness has nothing to do with it, Lil. There is one for each of us. Only one.” His weary expression returned before he made his way to the path.
Only one. And he smells like the forest.
Glancing upward, the flashes throughout the sky were more vibrant than when I had fallen asleep. I wondered how the owners of these memories would feel about their desires, despair, wishes, fears, lives, deaths, being shown for all in this realm to see. However many were here to witness it.
“It’s sad when you think of it.”
“What makes you say that?” Dainan took a step beside me.
“This is someone’s entire life. They’re born, and in many cases, that’s joy,” I pointed upward to two parents crying happy tears before they disappeared.
“They grow, they experience love,” I said as a man held the face of his beloved.
“They have children of their own.” Children ran, laughed, playing across the sky.
“And then, loss.” The withered face of the same man from before, laying with flowers atop him, resting in his hands, waiting to be burned, was all the image showed.
“Over in the blink of an eye. Human lives are more fragile. Fleeting.”
An ache formed in the center of me. Like whatever was left of my heart formed a crack.
Dainan nodded, watching the images cascade across the brilliant sky. “It’s why humans and Fae separated themselves. To find the one your soul desires and have it ripped from you in a short time, it’s a kindness and a curse.”
“What must it be like to know that your time is so ephemeral?” I said before realizing.
“In some instances, it can make life more enticing, the world more alive, your food richer. You have such limited time that it requires you to make the best of it. To live to your potential, to love,” He whispered.
“It is both a beautiful and cruel gift. Time is a thief, and the provider of joy. An assassin in the night, and the long burning flame of lovers.” Running a hand through his hair, Dainan lowered his gaze.
“Quite poetic, Your Highness,” I said as a young girl with blonde hair and aquamarine eyes looked down on me from above. The image lingered longer than the others, as if refusing to let go.
“A friend of yours?” Dainan asked.
Perhaps one from another life.
I lowered my gaze, offering Dainan a small smile. “Shall we?” I gestured back to the path.
Dainan nodded and followed suit, making his way beside me, looking no worse for wear than he had when we’d gone to sleep.
“Is it odd to not have your shadowy companions by your side?”
“It’s quiet. I don’t remember a time without them.” His tone was more strained than it had been.
“Must be nice,” I said, “to feel as if you’re never alone.” To never have to suffer in the silence.
“I’ve been alone the majority of my life, despite what’s said about me, few have ever been close.” He brushed a few loose strands of the Luchien hair behind his ears.
“I know what it’s like to never be accepted for who you are.” A woman with a mind of her own. Her own ambitions, ideas. Not a bride price. “I’m sorry you haven't been seen for who you are.” And part of me was sorry for the role I too had played in it.
“Do you want to talk about what happened earlier?” Dainan’s gaze fixed on the horizon, providing me the privacy to contemplate his question. Allowing me to dive into the depths of myself to pull out the answers, give words to the fears, the feelings, the emotions that had been burning inside me.
The wounds Rai had inflicted, the visible and invisible—they had all been sheltered away behind the wall in which they could not harm me. Save for the few moments of sleep when they unfurled from the deepest recesses of my mind.
“No,” I whispered. Those were my secrets.
“Should you change your mind—”
“Have you always smelled like the oceans?” I cut Dainan off before he could finish. While I appreciated his sentiment, well, part of me did, I didn’t want to go there. My wall was in place, it was firm.
I lifted his suit jacket to my nose. “You would have been better suited to the Court of Reflection if that’s the case. Unless you love eating fish, in which case it would have been a rather depressing day for you. Wait, shit.”
“What?” Dainan turned, confused by my ramblings.
“Am I still going to like the taste of fish now that I’m officially a Court of Reflection member?”
“Is this what you’re most concerned with right now?” He let out an exasperated breath. “You cannot tell me that is what plagues you here, while we wander in a different realm.”
The Lost Seers were figures of legend, and with everything that had happened in the last two days, Dainan was correct. My love of fish was not important. But it remained important to me.
“Come to think of it, I haven’t been hungry.
” An oddity for me, save for these past few months.
Most days, it had taken the majority of my strength to lift a glass of water to my lips.
Weight had fled from me the way leaves flee their trees in Durum.
Where there had been muscle and strength, bone was now visible.
My uncle, and husband, had worn me down.
“Is there anything you can’t eat? What’s your court like?” I knew little of the Court of Shadows, other than what had been told to me from Rai. He had tried to bring me into the House of Shadows to show me his rooms there, but we had never made it inside. Something about an “insipid door”.
“What do you mean?”
“What’s it like to be a member of the most feared court?
Did you have a choice?” I’d always desired to know more about the courts.
Each time we visited Azmeer it was a tantalizing taste of what could be.
Witnessing the odd magic being used, something I craved for myself, knowing the likelihood of it being anything other than the Court of Reflection to be slight.
“It’s warm.”
“Are you serious? It’s warm? That’s it?” I scoffed, kicking a stone ahead of us, leaving trails of dust behind it.
“Alright. It’s very warm,” he said with an easy smirk. I wonder how many people have seen this man smile. Laugh?
“How illuminating. Thank you for furthering my education.” Would I need that education here? Would it be possible just to speak to the Seers and receive the answers I sought? Or would they require something in exchange?
“It’s similar to the House of Shadows within Azmeer—made from Mount Kaiver itself. Fiery veins flow throughout the walls, lighting the court. We are never without light, which as it so happens, is convenient if you like to stay up and read.” He turned his gaze down to me, “Which I do.”
“I know someone else who likes to stay up well into the early morning reading,” I murmured, “It’s no wonder you two found each other.
” That and she looked like she belonged in the Court of Shadows.
I had thought so from the moment I’d laid eyes on Brida.
Her coloring, her hair, her eyes. I had been surprised to hear her say she was from Escalia.
“Active volcanoes surround the Court of Shadows. Each room from within the court has a view of one. You can see the lava dancing, being spewed into the skies at night. As terrifying a sight as it is to see, there’s beauty in it.
To know that even though we believe we have control, it could snap.
And everything we have made, everything we have built, could easily be taken away. ”
If only it had taken Rai away.
“Did you grow up there?”
“My childhood was spent moving around Eldara.”
I wondered what that childhood must have been like. To have been the third son of a beloved king. A king who was said to have loved his mother more than the actual queen. Had she feared for her son? Had the king?