Knox has no choice but to take the rapier that blooms in his hand and cut the shadow down. It lies limp at his feet, and he steps over it, his eyes on the throne. But another shadow interferes, wailing with such intensity that he cannot bear to hear it, and he pierces its heart. The second shadow crumples, and he steps over it, nearly to the dais steps, where the throne waits.

And yet a third shadow rises. It screams and fights him. He cleaves it in two, and it lies at his feet. At last, he thinks. He has defeated the challenges and he alone has earned the throne.

He claims the chair.

As soon as he is seated, the rapier in his hand vanishes, and the shadows who are crumpled on the floor are exposed for what they truly are: his wife and his two daughters. They lie dead in pools of blood, destroyed by his hand, and Knox lets out a wail that never seems to end.

He wants to claw out his own eyes. He wants to cut out his own heart. If only he had seen them, he cries. If only he had seen their faces, and not their shadows. . . .

The nightmare captured me, and I was shaken, desperate to escape its icy hold. Of all the dream records I had read in Hereswith, no one had dreamt of the fortress in the clouds. And yet I could still taste the brisk air of the mountain castle, feel the cold flagstones beneath my feet as if I had walked Knox Birch’s nightmare. I closed my eyes and I saw a glimmer of blue on the walls, and I could hear the distant echoes of lives long lost. I wondered what it had been like before the curse. Why had the seven members of the duke’s court killed him? Had one of them desired to take the throne from the Duke of Seren? Was the duke cruel as some of the legends spun him to be?

I couldn’t bear to read another word.

And I shut Phelan’s book.

Later that afternoon, I walked beside Phelan, learning the winding bends of the streets he guarded. The town houses were well maintained—some were extravagant with their ornate window casements and gates with finials dipped in bronze and lush gardens in the front yard. I wondered about the inhabitants who lived behind each door. The mere notion of trying to learn a horde of new names and faces was overwhelming, and I eventually looked upward, to the reassurance of the sky. It was overcast, threatening rain, and there was a slight chill on the breeze. I imagined Hereswith would have felt her first frost by now, and the leaves would soon change.

“Do you ever dream, Mr. Vesper?” The question slipped from me, soft and genuine.