by May Dawson
“Good morning.” Her voice is soft, untouched by the kind of grief and bitterness that has me blinking away tears now.
I give up and use the heel of my hand to wipe the blur out of my vision. I have to shake off this overwhelming sadness and figure out what the hell is going on. I shouldn’t be back here, not even in my dreams. My lips part, but I don’t what to say.
I don’t want to ask her if she’s a ghost or a vision, if she’s real or dead. Whether she is or not, I want her to stay.
She sounds fond when she says, “You’ve been asleep for a long time. I’m glad you’re finally waking up.”
Am I really home? Or is this a dream? Outside, the ocean waves crash onto the shore, and above them the sky is brightening. Sunrise washes the sky with shades of gold, and when I look up, I can glimpse the deep blue of night just beginning to yield to the sun.
“You’ve forgotten so much,” she says. “But it wasn’t your fault. Your magic isn’t the only thing that was taken from you.”
When I turn to her, she smooths my hair back from her face. Her face is a blur, just the way it is in my memory. I can remember the smooth, dark blond hair pulled back into a chignon, but her actual face, her expression, is lost in time.
“You can remember me,” she says, and her smile—just for a second—comes into focus. She has a plump, red lower lip, a pronounced cupid’s bow, just like mine, and her smile is wide and sudden and gorgeous. Then I lose it, and I can’t quite remember what it looked like anymore. “What did I say when you were a girl?”
I frown, shaking my head. I can’t remember. It seems impossible to speak in my own dream. My chest aches with the strain, my throat suddenly parched.
Then the memory pops to the surface of my mind as suddenly as a rabbit springing from the woods and streaking for safety.
My mother used to play hide-and-seek with me in the forest at the edge of the sea. I was scared to go very far into the darkness of the forest. Instead, I flitted at the edges, where the grass grew thick beneath the sparse canopy and the salty scent of the sea air hung heavily in the air. My mother would pretend she didn’t know where I was as I giggled. I’d hide behind one tree trunk and then dart to another as she spun around, pretending to always look in the wrong direction. When she’d find me, she would sweep me up in a hug. She’d press her cheek to mine as she hugged me, and that scent of honeysuckle and lotion would wash over me, and she’d whisper promises…
“You said we’d always find each other,” I echo, after all these years. My voice sounds stronger than I had imagined it would.
“So come find me, Tera my love.” She rises and heads toward the window, but she glances at me over her shoulder. “Come home.”
The sunrise glints off the ocean, and I squint, and she’s lost in the bright glow. I’m alone, and as soon as she’s gone, I feel something watching me. My hands tighten on the covers. There’s something dark at the edge of the room, something terrifying and monstrous, and if I turn and look at it, it will spring at me…
I startle awake. This time, I’m in my own room. Penny nuzzles my face, whining softly. I pull her up into my arms, comforted by her warm weight against my chest.
Stelly isn’t in the bed across from me. I’m alone, and I can’t bear it right now. I get up, feeling as if the thing that watched me is dogging my heels even now. I pull my sweater on over my tank top and grab my key off the desk, then grab Penny up again before I run for the door.
The hall is dimly lit and quiet; it’s early.
Or I’m in another dream.
I pinch my wrist to see if I’m dreaming. It hurts. Okay, genius, not a dream.
I run down the hall to Airren’s room. My heart is hammering in my chest, but when I knock on his door, no one answers. I knock again, a little louder. For Airren not to open the door, for him not to be there when I need him, seems so unlikely.
I head for the stairs, stopping at the top to turn back, hoping he’ll be standing in the doorway to his room with his hair rumpled and a grumpy expression on his handsome face. But the door is still closed. I rush down the stairs to the seniors’ hall, and Cax and Mycroft’s room. My knock comes out more like a desperate pounding. What if there’s no one else in Rawl House? That doesn’t make sense, and yet I can feel this feverish terror of abandonment washing over me…
The door is wrenched open. Mycroft fills the doorway. His eyes widen as he sees me. “Tera?”
“Morning.” Now that he’s right here in front of me, I know I’m acting unhinged. But my heart is still pounding so hard that my chest aches. I try to offer him a bright smile. “Sleep well?”
“It’s barely past five in the morning,” he says, patiently…patiently for Mycroft, that is.
“You get up early, don’t you?”
He nods curtly, stepping back from the door. “I don’t want to get soft like those civilians around here. I was about to head to the gym.”
He is indeed wearing a gray t-shirt that hugs his muscular shoulders and pecs, and long black shorts. When he turns away from me, I can’t help looking at the shape of his ass and lean thighs in those shorts.
“Cax,” Mycroft says. “Tera’s broken. Wake up.”
“I’m not broken.”
“Civilians who are awake at five in the morning are almost always broken.”
“Would you stop going on about civilians?” Cax grumbles, sitting up in bed. He rubs one long-fingered hand across his face. “I need coffee before I deal with condescending Marines.”
Mycroft rests his big hands on my shoulders, and they’re a comforting weight. Then he steers me toward Cax. “I assume Tera needs to talk about feelings.”
Cax is shirtless in bed, and I can’t see what he’s wearing beneath the covers draped over his waist. He’s leaner than the other two, who are big and muscled, but his abs are well-defined as he props his elbow on his knee. “Mycroft. Eventually, you are going to have to grow up and admit you have as many feelings as the rest of us. It doesn’t matter if you hide them.”
“I think it does,” Mycroft disagrees.
Cax picks up the covers, inviting me in. “Come on, Tera. It’s a cold morning.”
I slide in beside him. Despite his claims, Mycroft doesn’t leave; he sits at his desk across the room, clearly eavesdropping even though he doesn’t want to be directly involved.
“You are hopeless,” I tell Mycroft.
He flips through a book, pretending he didn’t hear me.
Cax draws me into his arms, and I lean my head on his warm shoulder. As he nuzzles his face into my hair, I relax. My nightmare feels far away now, as if I escaped the thing that was chasing me, and I don’t want to talk about it. I can’t quite recall my mother’s face again, but I remember the quick flash of joy I felt when I saw it again.
My eyes heat. I push my head under Cax’s chin, so he won’t see the shimmer of tears in my eyes. He wraps his leanly muscled arms around me, holding me tight as Penny curls up at our feet.
“I’m here when you want to talk.” Cax’s lips brush my hair. “If you ever want to talk. It’s okay if you don’t.”
“I had a nightmare,” I say softly. “Except…I’m used to those. I don’t know if this was just a nightmare.”
“You shouldn’t be used to nightmares.” He squeezes me tighter. “We can get you a sleeping draught that will make sure you don’t have nightmares. Or you could just sleep with me, where you know you’re safe and sound…”
His tone is gently teasing. He doesn’t believe that this was a vision.
“What happened?” Mycroft demands. “In the dream?”
He believes there’s something strange. Relief floods my chest. I didn’t realize I wanted someone to take my dream seriously until he spoke.
“I was in the house where I grew up. And my mother was there.” I’ve been clinging to the thin hope the True left me with, that my mother disappeared when I was a child to return to spying for the Crown. But the woman in that house was a ghost, I know i
t, and my chest aches. “She told me that I’ve forgotten everything. She said that some of my memories were taken as well as my magic. That I need to come home.”
“Maybe it’s not your mother,” Mycroft warns. “Maybe someone else wants you to go back to that house, Tera.”
I think of the basement where my father and his men performed their dark magic, of broken spines and bloody handprints, and the sunken grass covering the graves between our house and the sea.
“Promise me you won’t go there alone,” Mycroft says, a rare, desperate note in his voice.
“Of course not,” I say. “Why would I go anywhere without my three overprotective but occasionally charming bodyguards?”
My light tone makes me feel better, as if faking cool can make it true.
“Flattery will get you…coffee,” Cax promises, his voice low and husky in my ear. “Mycroft, would you make us some?”
“Do a latte run,” Mycroft tells him. “I want something sweet this morning.” He pauses, then amends, “Please.”
“Look at that. You’re going to be civilized enough to go to the ball in no time,” Cax teases, but he hugs me one more time, dropping a kiss into my hair, and then rolls out of bed. His back muscles ripple as he pulls his shirt over his head.
Mycroft grunts. We all know he doesn’t want to go to the ball.
“And I know you’re just trying to get rid of me,” Cax says to Mycroft as he heads for the door. “I don’t mind. But I do want it noted that you aren’t fooling anyone.”
Mycroft grunts again.
Cax shakes his head. “I don’t know why I love you both.”
Then the door clicks shut behind him.
“He is exhausting,” Mycroft says, and I can’t tell if it’s affectionate or not. I’m still trying to figure it out when he crosses the room to me in a few quick strides.
He studies my face carefully with gold-flecked brown eyes. “What aren’t you telling us?”
“I need my magic back.” My voice is soft. “I can’t go home without it. I can’t take care of myself without it, and I have to figure out what happened…”
To my mother. To my father. To myself.
There was a portrait of the three of us that hung in my father’s study. In the painting, my mother smiles down into my face, and my gaze is focused on her as if she’s the center of my world. My father stares out, his eyes filled with pride, his arms protectively circling my mother and me.
It’s strange to think that maybe that picture was always a lie, or maybe we all loved each other deeply and truly before we were torn apart and scattered to the wind. Before my father chose to tear the world apart, and us with it.
“You’ll get your magic back,” Mycroft says with a confidence I never feel. “We’ll go now. Skip school and go.”
“Skip school?”
“It’s just a day.” Mycroft shrugs. “But Tera…”
“Yes?”
“You don’t need magic to take care of yourself.” His big hands settle on my shoulders. “Magic helps, sure. But you survived for years without it.”
“I survived without magic…in a world without magic.” And I barely survived, at that.
He shakes his head. “What it takes to survive is mindset. Fight. The resilience to get back up again when you do get beat. And you’ve got all that, Tera. I’ve been teaching you something about technique, how to fight back more effectively. We’ll keep working on it. But you’re already tough.”
I wouldn’t have imagined anyone would see me as tough. And, as if to prove him wrong, my eyes flush hot. The way he seems to see me is a nice way to imagine myself. I tilt my face up, willing the tears to dissipate before they fall.
Mycroft kisses me.
It’s a soft, tentative kiss. Almost as soon as his lips have brushed mine, he pulls back. He regards me uncertainly, as if he’s gauging how I feel.
Mycroft has kissed me again after his chilly, furtively-caring behavior. I can’t make sense of him, and I’m not sure I want to try anymore.
But when he kisses me, it feels like shimmering bubbles of magic are rising through my chest.
“You’re worth more than you realize,” he tells me softly. “I hope someday you see what I see.”
It’s a strange, but sweet, thing to say, and I cock my head in response. There’s something on his mind.
His lips part, seeming to know he’s just given away too much, as if he’s about to say more.
Instead, he kisses me again.
“You’re crazy,” I murmur into his mouth, but despite myself, my fingertips curl into his shoulders, feeling the warm solidity of his body against mine. “I hope you know that.”
“Crazy about you.” His lips trace the shape of mine, pressing the side of my mouth, the bow in my upper lip. “I hope you know that.”
“Even though you act…” I can’t finish the sentence because it’s going to break open this rare, sweet moment, and I don’t want him to stop kissing me.
He hesitates. “I’m sorry.”
Those words surprise me. I’d never expect Mycroft to apologize. My lips part—to respond? To invite him in? Sometimes I don’t know what I’m doing when it comes to Mycroft.
His hands catch on the side of my jaw, holding me still, as if he can’t bear to have me pull away now. His forehead rests against mine, just for a second, and he exhales slowly. He looks as if he’s holding himself back.
Then his lips crash against mine. As soon as his lips are touch mine, I kiss him back just as hungrily.
I guess I was inviting him in.
Only time will tell if that’s a mistake.
Chapter 7
“Are you all right?” Airren brushes my hair back from my face, frowning, and I can’t tell if he’s worried about me or if he’s cataloging my swollen lips and mussed hair from what turned out to be a wild makeout session. Mycroft might pretend to be the Emotionless Man, but the hungry need when he kisses me feels like something else.
Airren’s eyes flicker toward Mycroft and Cax. Is that an edge of jealousy?
“I’m fine. Just a nightmare.”
“Or a vision,” Mycroft says. “Someone could be invading her dreams.”
“Did you check for traces?” Airren’s fingers against my hair tighten, a faint pressure against my scalp, and I feel prickles of magic vibrating under his fingertips.
I pull back, frowning at him. He knows I hate anyone brushing against my mind. But his expression is laser-focused, and not on my feelings. He’s in protective mode.
“It had been too long,” Mycroft says. “Those traces only linger a minute or two after the dream. You know how the subconscious is.”
“Sorry,” Airren says gently, as if he’s finally read my face. “If we knew where the vision was coming from…”
As his words sink in, I feel gutted. I was too stupid to think about that. Maybe the dream was my mother trying to get a message to me. Or maybe this is another True trick. By the time I reached their room, it already would have been too late. But if I could wield magic myself, I could have chased those traces down.
“Tera,” Airren says, his thumb stroking the curve of my cheekbone. His eyes are intent on mine, worry flaring in his deep blue eyes no matter how calm his voice is. “The best cure for uncertainty is action. Go pack. We’re going to hunt down the man who took your magic.”
“And then what?”
“Then we’re going to get it back,” he promises me, but there’s a dangerous edge in his voice that says his plans go beyond recovering my magic.
I don’t want to hurt the man who stole my magic—those daydreams have faded behind me—but despite my worries about reining these men in, it warms my chest that Airren wants to hurt him for me.
Sue me, I have some growing to do as a human still.
I whistle to Penny, who runs up my arm and onto my shoulder. My shoulder ducks under her weight before she wraps herself around my neck, her front paws on one side and her head tucked against it, her
little body pinning my hair to my shoulders. I wince as I draw my hair up from my collar, shifting carefully to keep from knocking her off.
“She’s getting big,” Cax says. “She’s going to have to learn to walk on her own.”
She knows how to walk just fine; she likes to be carried, and I like to carry her. I feel miffed on the dragon’s behalf. “Before we know it, she’ll be flying.”
We don’t really know what exactly Penny will be like in the future. The lore is limited and dragons have been mostly extinct for generations, and to be honest, I don’t care. I think she’s perfect. I kiss the furry little bridge of her nose.
I head for the hall, to go up and pack for our trip, but before I close the door behind me, I hear Cax say, “And to think half of Avalon is terrified of that little cutie.”
The door’s already in motion, so it clicks shut behind me before I can hear whatever Mycroft starts to say in response. I don’t want to eavesdrop—that is to say, I don’t want to be caught eavesdropping—so I move on.
When I open the door to my room, Stelly’s back is to me. She kicks the drawer of her dresser shut in a rare fit of pique, then straightens, her lips falling apart when she sees me.
“Are you all right?” I ask.
Her lips purse. Then her face fractures. She bites down hard on her lower lip, looking as if she’s barely holding back tears. “No. The guys won’t let me go with you.”
“What do you mean, won’t let you?” My temper flares on my best friend’s behalf even though I find it hard to believe that’s what has her crying. “Were you really that excited to meet the prince?”
“Rian?” she asks, smiling in disbelief through her tears. “No, I don’t want to marry a prince, Tera. The tight-laced life of a queen is not for me.”
“Okay…”
“My mother’s ordering me home during break.” She shakes her head impatiently. “We haven’t been getting along lately.”
“Maybe going home is a good thing, then.” As much as I wish I could have Stelly by my side, her family is more important. “You two can work things out.”
She rolls her eyes, sniffling. “You don’t know my mother. The only way of working things out is to do things her way.”