Chapter Two
Elysia
My eyes snap open and all I feel is loss.
Not the slow, aching kind. This is sharp—like something vital was taken from me the moment I surfaced into wakefulness. I don’t know if it’s the loss of his touch, or the sharp contrast from how I feel every other morning.
I should feel rested. That’s how it’s always been in the mornings … my limbs light, thoughts clear, and my mind tingling in a way that was a sign the Dromin had fed well, as the Elders had told us as kids.
Yet this morning my muscles are throbbing with exhaustion and my head feels heavy. My skin is damp with a sheen of sweat, despite the chill lingering in my limbs, as if I’d slept outside.
Even still, I feel the warm energy of the Dromin, as if his presence followed me back, burrowed into my chest. The phantom brush of fingers against my cheek still lingers, and I raise my own to trace my skin, needing confirmation his hand is no longer there.
Fractured pieces of our encounter come rushing back until every detail sharpens: every bone-deep tremor of fear as I was hunted, every sulfur-laced tendril of air, every whispered word from the stranger cloaked in light.
I clutch my worn blanket tighter around my shoulders, as if it could smother the unwanted memories of the Valgys and will them away.
It wasn’t a dream. It was a nightmare.
I don’t have any previous experience to know that with such certainty, but the stories from our childhood stay with us.
We were warned of the Nithrin, cloaked in shadow and silence, slipping across the Sacrum mountains to our territory to feed on the untouched dreamers.
Once they’d driven the humans on their land to the brink of insanity, they’d come for us, unable to influence their broken minds any longer and in need of new minds to feed on.
They were only cautionary tales used to frighten us into obedience when we acted up—or so I thought.
“If you ever wake up cold, with your heart racing and your mind aching,” the Elders said, “you’ll know a nightmare has struck and the Nithrin are afoot.”
Exactly how I woke up.
My chest constricts, a slow, creeping tightness that coils around my ribs like my fear is trying to squeeze the breath from my lungs. Yet the more I try to push the feeling down, the more it sinks its claws in.
Maybe those stories weren’t just meant to scare us.
Maybe they were meant to warn us.
I thread my fingers into my scalp and tug on the roots of my hair, just enough to ground myself.
The sharp pull does nothing to ease the pressure building behind my eyes.
No one I know has ever admitted to experiencing this phenomenon, but maybe someone in town can explain this.
Or at least they can convince me I’m imagining it.
I press the heel of one hand against my chest, willing my heartbeat to settle. The ache of fear and confusion doesn’t fade … it deepens, tangled with too many impossible truths.
The same way I know it was a nightmare, I also know he is a dream-keeper. The two truths don’t make sense together. Is it possible a Dromin and a Nithrin both touched my mind last night, but only the Dromin chose to show himself?
The confusing thought makes me drag my pillow to my face, stifling the groan building in my throat. The sound still escapes, low and strained, but it’s muffled enough not to wake my parents or my sister.
If they heard me now, they’d come rushing in, and I can’t explain this, not yet. Not when I don’t even understand it myself. The last thing I want is to instill this same fear into them.
I throw off the blanket and sit up, scowling at the weak protest of my sore limbs.
My thoughts return to the Dromin. That inexplicable pull I felt when I saw him and the warmth in my chest that shouldn’t exist now that I’m awake.
It should be the Valgys haunting my thoughts, but it’s him, and I don’t know what that says about me.
After tossing the pillow back to the bed, my eyes instinctively drift to the window, searching for a distraction in the soft indigo horizon. The night sky hasn’t yet fully surrendered to dawn, but a faint glow signals the sun’s approach.
A muscle in my jaw tightens as I pad across the room, bringing my threadbare blanket with me and wrapping it tighter around my shoulders as I stand in front of the window.
I don’t have long until I need to meet Pat at sunrise, but the confusion in my mind won’t let me focus on getting ready for the day just yet.
I need to make some sense of this—the nightmare and the elf who visited me.
His blinding white light I saw couldn’t be mistaken for a Nithrin—I’d stake my life on it—but to that end, why did he choose to appear and speak to me?
It breaks multiple laws we have in place.
My brow pinches with the thought that brings forth.
If a Nithrin was near enough to influence my mind, that would also be a breach of the laws.
The Vothia Empire is split in two, east and west, divided by the towering Sacrum Mountains.
The elves live above us, atop massive cloud systems that mirror our own borders—Dromin in the east, Nithrin in the west. Each court feeds only on the humans beneath them.
That’s the agreement. That’s what maintains the balance.
There are so many things we don’t know about the ways of the elves, but that we know.
Why would anyone break the laws to visit me?
The question clings to my thoughts as I turn from the growing light of the sun rising and begrudgingly begin my morning routine. My hands move on instinct, tightening the laces of my work leathers, securing my boots, and braiding my hair. All the while, my mind drifts back to his words.
Don’t conjure this nightmare again, Little Dove. I’m starting to wonder if you did it just to force me into revealing myself to you.
I can’t help the scoff that escapes my mouth. He said that as if I had any say over my unconscious thoughts, considering the elves’ magic is supposed to control them every night without fail and shape them into our dreams.
Yet the rumble in his tone makes a traitorous, aching part of me wonder if I have the ability to summon him … and if I could do it again.
I splash cold water across my face in the washbasin, hoping to chase away the thoughts swirling through my mind … but they cling.
That wouldn’t be possible, though. An elf isn’t allowed to visit the same human more than once a year, to prevent attachments on either side.
My hands tighten to the edge of the counter and I nibble on my bottom lip as part of my confusion begins to shift into fascination.
That visitation limit would only matter if the elf in question wasn’t willing to break laws, and he already had in other ways. In our dreams, under no circumstance is the human or Dromin allowed to speak to the other.
Not only did he speak to me, but there had been a playful cant to his words and tone … not to mention the warmth in the nickname he’d murmured.
Little Dove.
A spark of intrigue and … desire blossoms in my core. I bite down on my bottom lip hard and take a deep breath. I don’t know if his clear breach of the laws is what’s drawing me to him, or if there’s a connection between us that I can’t place.
The absence of his presence this morning hit me hard, in a way that shouldn’t be possible if he’s a stranger.
A plan hatches in my mind then, offering a small sense of peace to my tumultuous thoughts since waking.
I’ll quietly inquire to see if anyone else has experienced a nightmare, but the last thing I’m going to do is report these broken laws to my elders like I’m supposed to.
A rebellious part of my mind wants to prove that it’s not me conjuring this Dromin …
but him returning out of desire and not duty.
I snatch up the satchel containing my tools for work and swing it over my shoulder, but pause at the door.
My eyes drift to the warped floorboards of our little cottage, the scent of my mother’s lavender oil lingering faintly in the air.
That nightmare … those images of my family lying dead return with sudden panic gripping my stomach.
Breathe, Elysia. They’re safe.
It was only a nightmare, and as terrifying as that is, I have to remind myself that they still aren’t real.
I quickly escape from our modest cottage and run down the trampled path of grass I’ve taken every morning for the past twelve years.
As the forest thins and wind sweeps against my bare arms and face, a chill rolls through my body.
The fall cycle is nearly over, the air biting with its warning of winter and a reminder that my family will need supplies soon.
I haven’t quite made enough from my work rotation to get the items on the list I’ve made for my parents. They give my sister and me everything, forgoing their own necessities, so it’s my turn to give that same love back.
My mother’s boots are threadbare and my father’s coat has been patched by my mother more times than I can count. Our meals are beginning to have more vegetables and starch than meat.
I see their diminishing income every day.
Her hands aren’t agile or quick enough for the seamstress business she once had, with younger women my age taking over more than half of the customers she used to have.
Then there’s my father and the back injury he never recovered from as a woodworker out in the surrounding forest. Forced to let his partner take over the everyday orders and help as he feels able, the majority of our family income has dissipated.
Brambles catch on my satchel, tugging me back like the world itself is trying to delay me. This cycle, the farmers left this plot of the forest to harvest the elderberries from last, allowing the bushes to run rampant.
I growl under my breath and untangle it quickly before breaking into a run. The sky is beginning to shift to lavender and I know if I don’t get there soon, I will never hear the end of it.
“By the gods,” a familiar voice calls out, laced with amusement as I crest the final rise. “I thought I’d have to send a search party.”