Chapter Seven
Elysia
I’m running again.
This time, the mist is thicker, heavier, and clinging to my skin like wet silk. My boots slip on the bloodied ground as I tear through the familiar paths of the village. The cottages are dark, windows shattered, and the scent of copper and death lingers in every sharp intake of breath.
I round a corner and see black tendrils of smoke billowing from the thatched roof of my home. The door hangs off its hinges, smashed to pieces.
“No, no, please,” I murmur, tears brimming in my eyes.
I stumble through the doorway, choking on ash, while the heat of the flames licks against my skin. Inside, everything is wrong.
My father lies slumped against the hearth, blood seeping through the patchwork of his coat. My mother’s weaving is strewn across the floor, soaked with crimson. Penelope’s doll lies near the doorway, its head snapped sideways. A single ribbon dangles from the little hand that still clutches it.
My breath catches as I see Maggie standing in the center of the room. Her thin frame seems even more fragile beneath the flickering light of the fire, her eyes glassy and distant.
She stares straight at me and speaks in a voice that isn’t hers.
“You came back just like me,” she says, voice hollow. “Broken and defeated.”
I stagger backward. Her voice cuts deeper than the fire’s heat.
“You weren’t enough,” she whispers. “Now we all pay the price for that.”
The shame is immediate. I try to deny it, to push it down, but it’s already blooming in the hollow space beneath my ribs.
“No,” I whisper, “No, I … I tried, I—”
I want to scream, I want to beg for another chance, but no words come. I drop to my knees, my palms scraping the floor. The weight of it all presses down, smothering me.
Then everything shatters.
The fire fractures like glass, its light collapsing in on itself, and the smoke peels away in curling ribbons, vanishing into the ether. The walls, the blood, the grief … they all fall away, until there’s nothing left but a strange and endless stillness.
I’m not in my home anymore.
A cool mist pools across the smooth stone beneath my bare feet, faintly luminous beneath some unseen light.
The air vibrates softly against my skin, like the world itself is exhaling.
The pressure in my chest lessens, though it doesn’t fade entirely, and something within me still clings to the terror from before.
Until a subtle shift prickles across the back of my neck.
I’m being watched.
Not in the threatening, sinister way that once clawed at my spine, but in a way that feels strangely familiar.
I turn, slow and deliberate, already half certain of what I’ll find.
He stands veiled in shadow, a stark contrast from the blinding light that had once kept me from seeing him. There is no magical paralysis this time, no external force weighing down my limbs or keeping my eyes from opening.
Only a stillness between us, suspended and pulsing, waiting for one of us to reach out and break it.
I can’t see his face, but I don’t need to.
His presence alone quietly disarms the lingering fear from the nightmare.
He shouldn’t be able to do that without a word or lifting a finger.
Why does it feel like he holds so much power over me? My feet shift uncomfortably beneath me, feeling the weight of a stare I can’t even see.
Is this how all humans feel in the elves’ presence?
“You ran toward your fear this time,” he says, voice low and threaded with curiosity. “You’ve never done that before.”
The remark lands with more weight than it should, not because it surprises me but because of the certainty in his tone.
There’s an unspoken truth layered behind those words …
that he’s watched me longer than I realized.
That I’ve possibly had more nightmares or dreams with him in them than I know of.
I wrap my arms around myself, not out of fear, but instinct. It’s an unconscious attempt to shield a piece of me that still isn’t sure I should trust this deep sense of security he instills.
“I suppose I’m just finding a new strength within,” I say quietly, the words falling from my lips before I can think better of them.
He tilts his head slightly, a motion so subtle it feels more like studying me than a reaction. It’s like he’s considering how the pieces of me have shifted since the last time we met.
“That kind of change doesn’t happen without reason,” he finally responds, calm and certain. “Care to elaborate?”
The mist at our feet ripples, disturbed by a current I can’t see.
I thought I wasn’t ready to explain to anyone the weight pressing down on me, the truth of what the village asked of me, or what I’m about to give up. I convinced myself it was better carried in silence, safer if no one else could see it.
Yet my mouth opens, ready to share it with this elf anyway. Just before the words can escape, I stop myself.
Maybe it’s the subtle influence of his magic … this ease and trust that shouldn’t exist between strangers. Maybe it’s just me, aching for someone to see the burden of what I’m carrying. Either way, I can’t let it slip. Not yet. I want answers before I offer any more of myself.
“Where are we?” I ask, my voice hushed, unable to shake the stillness pressing in on all sides. “Shouldn’t I be in a nightmare? Or a dream?”
“This is your mind,” he says softly, and somehow the simplicity of the truth takes me off guard. “There’s a heaviness lingering in it that is entirely of your own creation.”
I shift slightly, but I don’t step back.
The shadows begin to waft and I turn with them, not wanting to take my eyes off his figure as he moves behind them.
“You act like you know me,” I murmur, turning on my heel. “Intimately.”
The words leave me before I can stop them, and my cheeks flush with heat. It sounds ridiculous, saying something like that to a stranger, but it doesn’t make it any less true.
“I wish I could understand my mind and why I’m having these nightmares.” The admission falls from my mouth as I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear and stare directly into where I assume his eyes are. “And why do you keep appearing in them?”
He halts as I drag my bottom lip between my teeth.
“You’re the one calling out to me,” he says, a flicker of amusement threading through his tone. “I merely answer, Little Dove.”
The nickname shouldn’t make my stomach flutter, but it does.
I find the edges of my lips lifting, drawn by the soft weight of his tease. A rare spark of levity in a world that’s only felt heavy since the first nightmare struck my life.
“Yet I know you’re breaking laws to be here,” I whisper, the words soft but sure. “And by speaking to me.”
He steps closer, the mist and shadows shifting around his form. I search for a glimpse of his face, but the shadows wrap around him in swirling, deliberate protection.
“I also want to know why you’re having nightmares. You’re an anomaly in a carefully crafted system that never has variances,” he admits, exhaling sharply. “What is it about you?”
The genuine concern in his voice startles me, but more so, the way he breathed out those last five words like a whispered prayer.
A truth lodges itself deep within my chest, dangerous and undeniable. I don’t know who he is, or what he wants, but I trust him in a way that is beginning to frighten me more than it comforts me.
I shift my weight, heart pounding harder than it should while asleep. “This nightmare you interrupted felt different than the other night. It felt like … a warning.”
His form doesn’t move, but the air itself seems to tighten around my skin.
“It felt like I failed everyone,” I say quietly, my voice catching as the words start to tumble out. “I came back like Maggie. Empty. Broken. Everyone else paid the price for that.”
I don’t know why I’m admitting any of this to him, as if he knows Maggie or cares to hear my thoughts.
He seems to stiffen, his fingers flattening to his side.
“You’ve been taught to fear nightmares,” he says eventually. “But they’re just dreams in a darker mirror. Some think nightmares are made-up fears, but often they merely reflect an ugly truth you don’t want to face.”
An uncomfortable itch crawls down my neck, beneath my skin, and I shiver at his words.
“There weren’t any dreams at all last night,” I murmur, glancing toward the far edges of the mist. “Not even a nightmare. Just … nothing. A void.”
My unspoken question lingers, waiting to see if he will trust me with information the way I have him.
It’s what I need from him, if I’m to believe that whatever this pull to him is might be my own feelings, not influenced by his magic or a deception of some kind.
I need something real from him.
His silence lasts longer this time and I wonder if he’s reached the limit of what he will discuss, but he doesn’t disappear or even move. So I wait, feeling like we’re at an impasse that he has to decide to cross or not.
When he finally speaks, his voice is quieter. “The elven courts were called to assemble. Dromin and Nithrin both, for an emergency gathering.”
My spine stiffens. “Because of the Queen’s death?”
“Yes.” His reply is slightly clipped and hesitant, but he continues after a breath. “She was honored beneath the Goddess’s light.”
I try to study him, but there’s nothing to study.
Just that same shifting silhouette, veiled in shadows that never quite settle.
Light moves strangely near him, never touching, never revealing.
It’s driving me quietly mad not to see his face—every expression, every emotion hidden behind a shifting shadow.
His continuous visits and now the information he’s revealed tell me he feels the same ease between us that I do. Maybe I’m not crazy for finding comfort in his presence and sharing pieces of my life.
“That’s why there were no dreams?” I press on, uncertain whether I’m pushing for too much … but I’m too scared that I’ll never have a chance to ask these questions again.