29
The two weeks after leaving Prins had been agony waiting for an update from Liss and Isaac. I hadn’t waited for Liss to tear apart the library in the cottage underground, pulling out any tome from the stacks that I thought might help me with deciphering the key spell or learning more about dream walking.
So far, I had come up empty.
Tess hadn’t left my side despite libraries ‘not really being her scene’ and she combed through the books with me day and night to pass the time. We studied the spells in the Kotova grimoire, searching for anything that might help us to stop Donika and eliminate her dark creatures.
Zion was in and out, and we weren’t sure where he was spending his time when he wasn’t in the cottage. It had to be difficult for him, returning to a place filled with so many memories, both good and bad. I felt closer to my mom spending time here, knowing that she had once slept in these rooms, pored over these books, and walked these halls.
Each day that passed left a pit in my stomach as we didn’t come any closer to deciphering the binding spell. If we weren’t able to bind my storm magic, it would be useless when we finally made our move against Donika. I would either burn out from using too much, my storms would turn on me and steal my magic, or I would become the bloodthirsty shell I had during the last battle.
None of those were options when I faced Donika. I needed to be ready. I was anxious that Donika would make a move against us soon, having seen our weakness in numbers during the battle at Prins.
Tess snuck off with Puck, leaving me alone in the library. The afternoon sun beamed in from the window high above me, warming the side of my face.
The library had vaulted ceilings three stories high, with ladders to access the books higher up. I sat at a table in the center, memorizing the siphoning spell from the Kotova grimoire. I read the words over and over. If I could understand this spell, maybe I could understand how to dismantle Donika’s Noctani.
They wouldn’t be easy to kill, and I dreaded the day we would face them in battle.
The heavy library door creaked open, but I didn’t glance up from the book of shadows. It had to be Tess, returning to help me. Saanvi and Kenna hadn’t spent much time with us since arriving at the cottage, and Warrick was nowhere to be found. He was taking the battle at the safe house particularly hard. I suspected he had lost a loved one in the melee, but he hadn’t been around for me to inquire about it.
A hand grasped my shoulder, and I turned in surprise, my arm immediately moving to block and shield defensively.
“I guess I did train you well,” Nik laughed, rubbing the arm that I had blocked.
My eyes met his, and warmth pooled in my core, an extraordinary weight lifting off my chest.
He was ok. He was alive. And he was here.
“I—I’m sorry, you surprised me is all. I didn’t know you were on your way, I hadn’t heard from Isaac or Liss…” I trailed off.
He let out a soft hiss, his hand moving to his abdomen.
“Are you ok? Here—” I moved to pull the chair out next to me.
“I’m ok, Diana,” he replied as he took the seat I offered.
I swiveled to face him, and his knee bumped mine as he did the same. He moved his hand to my knee and gave it a squeeze. “I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine,” I replied.
“That’s exactly what every guy wants to hear,” he laughed, wincing when the movement caused him another surge of pain.
“Should you have traveled this far?” I asked, my brow furrowed. “You don’t appear healed enough to have traveled at all.”
“Isaac and I rode on horseback. Much faster,” he replied, lifting his shirt to show me the bandage wrapped around his waist. There was a small spot where red bloomed across it, but otherwise the wound was much smaller than I had anticipated.
“And your shoulder?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Good as new,” he replied, moving the neck of his shirt down to show me the wound where the arrow had pierced him.
This one was almost healed, not even requiring a bandage. He held his shirt there, and my eyes drifted to the tattoos that peeked out from his chest. He removed his hand, letting the shirt pull back into place with a grin.
“You should be resting,” I pointed out, “have you picked out a room yet?”
“Right across from yours,” he replied, a smile in his eyes. “The one next to you was already taken.”
I cocked my head to the side giving him a sarcastic look. “How can you be so glib? You almost died. You—you stopped breathing. I watched helplessly as you stopped breathing and there was nothing I could do about it.”
“You did do something about it, Diana. You saved me. You almost gave up your life ember for mine, and that has got to be the dumbest thing you have ever done.”
I reared back at his words.
“I couldn’t stand by and do nothing as you bled out on the dining room table in front of us.” I shook my head, willing the tears that stung the back of my eyes to retreat.
“This war cannot be won without you. You are the strongest witch we have and the best chance of defeating Donika. Alastir didn’t envision me ending this war, he saw you. Istmere would go on without me…but without you? What would happen to the people here?”
“I wasn’t worried about that in the moment,” I replied, my gaze moving to my hands clasped together in my lap.
As a queen…I should have been thinking about that. My first thought should have been for the people of Istmere…but it wasn’t. My first thought had been that I would give up anything, even my own life, for Nik.
He reached across us and grabbed one of my hands, pulling it against him. I could feel his heart beating furiously under my touch. “You were worried about me?”
My gaze met his and his mouth turned into a wicked grin. “Be serious, Nikolai.”
“I am being serious,” he replied, his eyes darkening.
I snatched my hand back and shot him a scolding glare, but his grin only deepened.
“You have no idea how scared I was, that I was going to lose you.” My voice was barely above a whisper.
His eyes were smoldering as they held mine, so much passing between us that neither of us could put into words. I had loved him, then hated him, then loved him again, and the emotions were battling each other inside of me. I would give anything to know what he was thinking in this moment.
The library door burst open, Puck and Tess spilling inside. They were hunched over in a fit of laughter until they saw Nik and I sitting together at the table.
They both sobered quickly.
“Aren’t you supposed to be in Prins, mate?” Puck asked, walking towards us.
Tess gave me an apologetic half-smile. At least she was able to realize when she was interrupting something now.
“Isaac and I traveled back today,” Nik replied, bumping his knee against mine again as he turned towards Puck and Tess.
“And Liss?” Tess asked, grabbing a seat across from me.
“She will be here tomorrow, there was something else she needed to take care of,” he replied.
“How’s the studying going?” Puck asked, his eyes roving over the Kotova grimoire. I could have sworn I saw it shake, threatening to close out of the corner of my eye.
“I’ve found nothing of value,” I admitted. “I need Liss’ help to decode the key spell, and I haven’t found anything in this library about dream walking. If I had the powers Corian had, we would have even more of an advantage against them. There are too many damn books in this library.”
Nik glanced around, realizing for the first time precisely how large this library truly was. “Indeed.”
“I’ve made some progress with the translation for the key, but not much. Latin was never my strong suit, and I don’t think it translates word for word.”
“What have you got so far?” Puck asked, craning his neck to see my handwritten scribbles in the notebook.
“We know it’s a binding spell, and that it requires a bloodline to bind, but I think this also says you must bind yourself to another person. Another Shade. That’s all I’ve got,” I replied.
“That should be easy, there’s no lack of Shades around here,” Puck replied with a laugh.
Tess elbowed him in the side and shot him a glare that said he was certainly not as funny as he thought he was.
“We can help search for the dream walking books,” Tess offered, pushing her chair back and moving towards the ladder.
“But this man needs some rest,” Puck replied, pointing at Nik as he moved around the side of the table. “You are in no condition to pore over these books all night.”
“I’m not sure that requires much physical effort…but the travel did take a lot out of me,” Nik replied, moving to stand.
He cradled his abdomen with his hand as I caught him wince again.
“We’ll fill you in on what we find,” I assured him with a smile. “Go get some rest.”
“I’ll catch up with you later?” he asked, his eyebrow raised.
“Sure,” I agreed, nodding.
Puck helped Nik to his room, though I was sure it was only so they could talk alone. Nik was more than capable of walking across the hall by himself. Tess climbed the ladder and began tossing down any books that had to do with dream magic.
This was going to take all night.
Luckily Zion popped by with coffee for us right before midnight and we drank it as if it were a lifeline. Saanvi and Kenna returned and went straight to bed, exhausted from patrolling. Warrick was still nowhere to be found.
“This is it!” Tess announced, jumping up from her chair.
It ground against the floor with a screech, the sound sending a chill up my spine.
“It’s what?” I asked, peering at her from over my book.
My eyes were bleary, my entire body tired from sitting in the uncomfortable library chairs all night.
“A whole chapter on dream walking!” Tess pushed the book across the table towards me and joined me on the other side.
I blinked back my exhaustion and studied the paragraph she pointed at, running my finger along the words as they threatened to blur together. It was way past the time when I should have gone to bed.
Dream walking is a rare ability for Shades and is thought to be genetically linked. This trait usually manifests within bloodlines. Dream walkers are not only able to see the past, but they are able to see events currently happening, in another place.
My eyes met Tess’. We hadn’t known that. How would I be able to see the past? I kept reading, Tess peering at the text over my shoulder.
Dream walkers can physically touch, remove, and alter physical objects and people when they are in a current event. A dream walker can take an object or a person out of the dream with them.
I could take a person with me? Like a portal? That could be immeasurably valuable, if only I knew how to do that. When I had taken the grimoire…I hadn’t even realized I had done it.
A dream walker can determine the precise location of the event they walked into by leaving a token either in the location or on a person present, then channeling magic into that token.
To take objects or people out of a dream one would simply secure the object or person and wake up, but waking up is not always easy as dream walking is not always intentional. Often times a dream pulls you into an event on its own, but you can dream walk intentionally.
To wake up from a dream you have been pulled into you need to be self-aware that you are dream walking, or have someone on the outside wake your physical body.
To dream walk intentionally, one needs to draw on their ember of magic, think of the person or place they want to walk with, and recite the dream spell. The only caveat to this is that if another dream walker is present where you walk, they will be able to see you and know that you are there.
When you dream walk, those around you cannot see you except those with the same dream walking ability. If a dream walker is connected to a non-dream walking Shade, that is the only way a person without this ability might be able to see and touch the dream.
You cannot pull another person into the dream with you against their will…
“I’m going to assume the dream spell is somewhere in this text?” Tess asked, her brow furrowed.
“I hope so,” I mused, shaking my head. “This has all the information we have been searching for, this is amazing, Tess.”
Tess grinned down at me, happy to have finally found something useful to us. It had only taken us almost three weeks.
“I’ve got to study this, but I’m too tired to do it now. We need to keep it somewhere safe.”
“Especially since it doesn’t appear to have a mind of its own like the book of shadows,” Tess pointed out.
I nodded. “Yes. In the wrong hands this could be dangerous. My only consolation is that I know Corian isn’t watching us right now, or spying on our council meetings. If he were, I would know he was here.”
“Agreed,” Tess replied. “At least there’s that.”
“To track our location Corian must have left a token at the townhouse.” I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose.
Had I seen anything that appeared out of place when Corian had seen me at the town house? Anything that might have been a token he left behind? If Donika was able to speak with me in the dream, that meant she and Corian were connected somehow.
This book also confirmed Corian hadn’t pulled me into the dream against my will after all, he was simply dream walking in the location that I was already physically in. They must have been searching for us and happened to get lucky.
“But the townhouse wasn’t close to the new safe house, how would Fletcher have found it? He did say Corian sent him, right?” Tess asked.
“He did,” I confirmed. “It must have been luck? Unless he somehow placed a token on my person, and I had no idea. Once he found out we were in Dragon’s Hollow, maybe he sent soldiers to search for us. Maybe someone saw one of us going there. I’m not sure.”
I pressed my pen into the spine of the book to hold my place and gently closed it, setting it atop the Kotova grimoire to bring it back to my room.
“There’s too much to go through tonight, it’ll have to wait until tomorrow.” I grabbed the books and pressed them to my chest, making my way towards the library door as I stifled another yawn.
“What did I interrupt with Nik earlier?” Tess asked as she held the door open for me.
Our voices lowered now that we were in the hallway, only separated from Nik by the bedroom door.
“It was nothing, we haven’t spoken since…” my voice trailed off as I met Tess’ gaze.
“Since you almost sacrificed your life for his and destroyed any chance we had of defeating Donika?” Tess offered with a sarcastic smile.
“Yeah…that,” I replied curtly. “But it was nothing.”
“Whatever you say, witch,” Tess replied with a wink.
I opened the door to my bedroom with my elbow and tucked the two books at the bottom of my underwear drawer. I lit the fire in the fireplace, took a long soak in the claw-foot tub. By the time I wrapped myself in my robe and prepared for bed I was restless.
It had to be past three in the morning at this point, but despite my better judgement I found myself sneaking across the hall, my hand poised to knock on the door across from mine.
I opened my mouth to say something, but I couldn’t gather the courage. I dropped my hand back to my side and shuffled back across the hallway, my slippers scuffling against the stone floor.
I paused with my hand on the door handle, glancing back at Nik’s door once more over my shoulder. There was no way he was awake at this hour, and whatever it is I wanted to say to him could wait until morning.
I wasn’t even sure what it was that had brought me here, had pulled me towards his door.
With a sigh I turned the knob and returned to bed.
Sleep didn’t take me until close to five in the morning. When it did finally pull me under, I could only dream of black tourmaline eyes, lifeless and unending, with a shock of white-blue hair.