47. Cassiel #3
Has Wren summoned these? Is she turning this dream into a nightmare?
“Are you doing this?” I ask her.
“I don’t… I don’t know,” she admits. “I don’t think so. I don’t want this, and I know it isn’t real—”
That doesn’t seem to matter. Their eyes lock onto us.
“Run,” Wren says.
They surge forward in a wave of fractured motion, too fast, too jagged, closing the distance in a way that ignores space entirely.
Behind them, the scene collapses.
The table splits, stretching into impossible angles. The walls bend inward. The ceiling drops and vanishes all at once.
And the children—
My head snaps back.
My children. Where are they?
“Wait—”
I fling out my arms, protecting the space where they were, but there aren’t here, they aren’t anywhere.
Only Wren seems to understand that. She yanks my hand hard.
“They’re there—” I argue, even though they aren’t. My heart feels what my eyes can’t see.
“They’re not real!”
The spectres lunge.
Wren doesn’t give me a second chance to choose. She drags me back, pulling me into motion, and we run.
The world fractures around us. Corridors slam into existence where there were none. Doors appear mid-stride, forcing us to veer, to stumble. I wrench one open—
—and it leads to a staircase that climbs sideways into darkness.
Wren pulls me back, shoving open another door, but only light spills through. We burst into a room that’s far too small to exist inside the castle, walls pressing in, ceiling low enough that I nearly hit it—
The spectres tears through the doorway behind us.
“Wren—!”
She twists, throwing out her hand. Power gathers in her palm, the sparks of fire, but when she unleashes it, flowers blossom instead of flames.
They burst into existence mid-air, a spray of soft petals and curling stems, blooming wildly in a riot of colour that makes no sense in the middle of this chaos.
Wren stares at them. “That’s—”
A spectre tears straight through them. The petals scatter uselessly.
“Not helpful!” I shout.
“Not on purpose!”
We run again. The dream won’t hold still. The floor shifts beneath our feet, turning slick, then soft, then solid again. At one point, I’m certain we’re running uphill—until I glance back and realise the corridor is tilting downward instead.
The spectres don’t slow. If anything, they’re gaining. Their forms stretch as they move, limbs elongating, snapping back, their armour flickering between past and present, whole and broken.
Riverspire is closest. His eyes burn with fire.
“Release me—” he calls, voice splitting into echoes. “Release—”
We reach another door, but there’s nothing behind it. Just a black, endless void. I skid to a halt.
Wren nearly crashes into me. “Move!”
“There’s nowhere—”
The spectres close in.
No space left. No path forward.
The world narrows to that impossible dark beyond the doorway.
I freeze, a thought forming in my mind.
The dark.
None of this is real. It’s all in our heads.
I tighten my grip on Wren.
“Trust me,” I say. “Close your eyes.”
She nods, not arguing, and shuts her eyes fast. I shut my own and pull her into the dark. Corridors and senseless space dissolves. There’s no sound, no obstacles, nothing but us—
And the spectres, still breathing hard, clawing their way towards us.
How are they still here?
“Cassiel!” Wren screams.
I keep hold of her hand, and don’t open my eyes. I run, knowing, for the first time ever, that I’m not going to collide with anything.
But I will if I stop.
Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop—
“Cassiel!” cries another voice.
It’s not Wren’s. I know it, but it’s younger than it should be. A child’s voice that should be an adult’s.
A small hand slips into mine and squeezes.
“Trust me,” whispers the voice.
I still, because I do. I trust that voice more than I trust myself, and even if that hand is small, I know it, too. It held mine as I learned to walk, helped me hold a blade, clutched my knuckles as my world went dark.
It’s the realest thing in this world, apart from Wren.
A chasm opens beneath us. We fall down, down, into the vast, empty space. Wren clings to me, breath rushing out of her. I clutch the other hand, not wanting to let go, not daring until we land, and it’s jerked away from mine.
I suck in a breath. The air is different here, more fragile, but fresh and easy, like we are standing in a garden. Birdsong twitters above us, the air is sunlight-warm, but the ground is carpet soft.
I open my eyes.
We’re standing in the castle nursery. Two small beds and a cradle sit at one end, where the window ought to be, but the window and most of the wall are gone. The stone gives away to a forest. Branches and vines spill into the room, spreading across the ceiling. Flowers pour from toyboxes.
The rest of the room is exactly as it was. Small, warm, untouched by the distortions that swallowed the rest of the dream. The blankets are the same. The faded rug. The toys scattered over the mossy floor and the bright little animals painted along the walls—foxes and rabbits and prancing deer.
A small figure steps forward. My breath catches.
“Evander?”
He shouldn’t know who I am. He’s just a child. It’s possible, I reason, that he thinks I’m our father.
But why did he save us? Why does he look…
Like my Evander.
The boy’s face lights up like a lantern. “Cass!” he cries.
And he runs into my arms.