She did it
Raphael was wrong. Although the dream is in our minds, we have no
control over it. Our fantasy of escape is just that—a fantasy. The Dream
Stalker let us think we were escaping, like a cat toying with a mouse, but
we’re still there. Our bodies are still in the Château des Rêves, enfolded in a
terrible nightmare. Sooner or later, the dark prince and his guards will find
us. Fear crackles through my nerves.
If I know I’m dreaming, can I force myself to wake? I pinch myself, but
that doesn’t help. Pain is real in this nightmare, and it’s not a way out. If we
drown here, I feel disturbingly certain that would mean the end for us.
What does the Dream Stalker want? I’ve heard his thoughts for years.
He craves pleasure and beauty, but he always feels alone. If I’m in the
château right now, as I suspect, could I slip into his mind as I accidentally
did before? Maybe—only then—we can find a way out of this nightmare.
The thought of going anywhere near him, much less his thoughts, scares
the shit out of me. I’ve already come close to losing my sanity by invading
too many people’s thoughts. It would be dumb to risk drowning in a sea of
consciousness again, but do I have a choice? Not if I wish to escape this
nightmare.
Gripping the slippery wooden edge of the boat, I close my eyes and
focus on the magic inside me, the frenetic, high-pitched, violet magic that
allows me to hear another person’s thoughts.
As I summon it, I recall the way the prince’s mind felt as it touched
mine. Dark, brooding. Obsessed with sex.
I channel my telepathic powers at that mind and feel something brush
my thoughts, a shadow of another entity. Dark. Alluring. Seductive. But
right now—above all—furious.
But it’s hard to concentrate with the boat heaving up and down,
threatening to spit me into the void.
Slade then?
And then...nothing.
No sounds at all.
My heart races and my stomach roils, while fear squeezes me in its
nefarious grasp.
Then, the doorknob jiggles. Just once. Like someone tested to see if it
was locked. A second later, I see the handle fall away completely,
disintegrated into grains of golden sand.
I tense as the door swings open, and a silhouette appears in the
threshold like a demon stepping out of hell.
The dim light of the room shouldn’t be enough for me to recognize
who it is, but I know. I think even in the pitch black, I’d know.
Because I can feel it.
Just like when I was on that hill, his power seems to travel from the
ground and soak into my feet. Another wave of nausea roils through me,
making my fingers curl tighter around the bars as King Ravinger himself
steps into the room.
All the air in my lungs dissolves like that doorknob did, and my body
freezes in fear. He steps in almost boredly, without even squinting in the
dim light, as if his eyes don’t need to adjust to the dark.
Maybe that’s because darkness lurks within him already.
Walking forward, he scans the room methodically. He’s wearing neat
black leathers with a high collar shirt, and a barbed crown of branches sits
proudly on his head. They look withered, petrified, like they died long ago
and then hardened in a molded polish.
He stops in the shadows, a few feet away from my cage, but I don’t
need him closer to see how his gaze hooks onto me.
His are deep green eyes, like rich moss right before it’s about to turn
brown. Life, right before death. Richness, right before rot.
But it’s the markings on his face that I can’t stop staring at. They rise
out of his collar, trailing up his neck, curling over his jaw, like roots
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Freedom is introduced into the human machine by postulating tiny swerves in the soul atoms. "It is this slight deviation of the primal bodies, at indeterminate times and places, which keeps the mind as such from experiencing an inner compulsion in doing everything it does and from being forced to endure and suffer like a captive in chains."
Carthage: Reflections of a Martian
Thy expected alien
Am I.
Weird of shade
And doomfire face:
All thy senses
Cry to my
Mourning mysteries
Which yesterday
Were commonplace.
We sit at Sunday breakfast
And I smell the dust of Carthage.
It drowns the spang
Of our automatic toaster.
That strange woman across from me
Smiles, butters two slices.
Her smiles arouses a multitude in me!
Her smile...
Frightens us.
I must look away!
Out the window beside my arm,
Sunglow warms a brick walk.
Grass, a tree, a planting of forsythia.
It is spring.
In the spring...
The earth is covered with dust.
"torveld's servant is better supplied than you are," was all laurent said.
"i don't have sleeves to carry handkerchiefs in," said damen. "i wouldn't mind being given a knife."
"or a fork?" said laurent.
he was aware, not for the first time, of a fundamental inability to communicate with laurent. it was not only that he was navigating a foreign language. it was as though laurent was an entirely other species of animal. he had nothing but the stupid hope that somehow laurent would change his mind.