Chapters (45)
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
A blush came to her cheeks and she cast sidelong looks at Calypso and Talon. She had a sudden thought and pulled the flask of moonlight mist off her belt. “If you drink this, Lord, it can tell you better than I could.”
“Tell me what?”
“How . . . how you dreamed me . . .”
“I? I went to sleep to forget your deceitful race. I would never dream a faerie such as you.”
“I know. That’s just what Bellatrix said.”
He wavered. “Bellatrix?”
“Aye.” Magpie held out the cordial.
“That scent of nightspink . . . ,” he began.
“Please just drink it,” she pleaded. “It helps you remember your dreams. Then you can tell me I haven’t dreamt it all myself!”
The Magruwen was still so close. Magpie, Talon, and Calypso were breathing raggedly, choking the hot air down in gasps and the flavor of their own scorched hair with it. Then the Djinn reached out his arms, took the flask, and tipped it into himself. A hiss of black steam issued forth where liquid met fire. He dropped the flask into the tidal smoke and said, “Moonlight” heavily, before drawing closed his vertical eyes with a sigh.
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FOUR
The Magruwen hadn’t seen moonlight in the four thousand years since he’d buried himself under the earth. The taste of it from the bottle flooded through him and he experienced an intense craving for light, any light—sunset, starlight—and for horizons and wind and a feast of open sky. The cave seemed to be closing in around him.
Then the potion took effect. The first he knew of it was the remembered touch of Fade’s mind curled against his own.
Fade’s was the first life he had ever dreamt, when the world was yet a bare young orb, unpeopled and ungreen. And until the dragon’s terrible death their minds had touched, like two countries with a shared border. After the dragon was ripped away from him—screaming, hot wind and hot blood—one edge of the Djinn’s mind lay ravaged and bereft, a cliff that fell away to nothingness. But in dreams the Magruwen became whole again, for there Fade’s mind met his as it always had, even across the worlds.
So in his fury with this world and its treacheries, he had chosen sleep.