The dancing light of the lantern illuminated the hallway a few feet, and she peered down the hallway cautiously. Seeing other lanterns lining the walls at intervals, she crept forward with the key clutched in one hand.
The corridor seemed to twist and turn nonsensically; it turned left four times in a row, so that she was convinced it must have circled back and overlapped itself, but she passed no intersections with other hallways. Once, she stepped around a corner and saw a long, unending hallway, then looked back at the way she had come to see only a short hallway behind her, with no exit visible. She narrowed her eyes in irritation, then looked toward the way forward, which now turned again to the left.
It’s herding me like a mouse through a maze. She hissed out a frustrated breath. Does that mean they know I’m here, or is it always like this?
Although she refused to try to see the diagrams again, some memory of them remained. If she concentrated, she knew which turns led onward and which to a trap.
Finally she reached a door at the very end of the corridor. The door was of heavy wood and solidly reinforced with bronze straps like the exterior door.
She hesitated, and then turned to explore the rest of the corridor, hoping there was a way out.
There wasn’t. All the exits had disappeared, leaving a feeling of desolation and unnatural silence.
Claire stood in front of the cell door with a sense of trepidation. This wasn’t normal fear, with her heartbeat pounding and a chill sweat between her shoulder blades. This was something else, some sense of danger unknown and unknowable, perhaps not meant to be known.
What if he’s not in here?
What if he is?
She turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open.
Chapter 18
The lamplight fell on him, and he flinched away, hiding his face.
His hair was matted and longer than she had ever seen it. The white-blond strands were dark with dirt and grime. The smell was appalling, a mixture of excrement, urine, and sweat that filled her nostrils and made bile rise in her throat. His wrists and ankles were bound with manacles that appeared to be made of crystal or clear glass which had cut into his pale skin, dried blood layered atop half-healed scars. He crouched at the furthest extent of the chains, his arms upraised to hide his face.
“What have they done to you?” she whispered.
His head snapped up. “You!” he breathed.
With soundless speed, he lunged at her, his face contorted in rage.
Claire screamed and stumbled backward. Her foot caught the edge of one of the flagstones, and she fell. He fell atop her, his hands scrabbling frantically, dirty fingernails clawing at her. She hit him with an elbow to his jaw; his head snapped sideways, then back.
He bit her shoulder, teeth cutting into her skin, and her scream of terror turned shrill with pain. He writhed against her, his arms somehow wrapped around her waist and shoulders in a bizarre mockery of affection. The long fingers of one hand pressed against her jaw, pushing her face toward his. His teeth snapped, and he made a strange sucking sound, as if he meant to simultaneously drink her blood and kiss her.
The pendant on her necklace slid heavily over her neck. She gripped it in her right fist and twisted to hit him as hard as she could. The metal made a sickening thwack as it connected with his temple.
A burst of light behind her eyes blinded her.
All four walls were covered in chalkboards.
The floor and ceiling were white, and there appeared to be no door through which she might exit this strange prison.
Claire spun slowly on her heel, studying each wall.
The king stood in the space she had looked first, which had been empty a moment ago.
He looked different, though it was hard to say exactly how. His eyes were a clear, brilliant blue-gold-silver that sparked in the fluorescent lights. His face was thin and hard, his mouth set in an expression she couldn’t read.
“Well. Here you are,” he said finally.
She studied him, neither of them moving.
He looked so strange partly because he was wearing an old-fashioned straightjacket of thick canvas. Both arms were contained, the buckles fastened securely. Beneath the straightjacket, he wore white and blue striped pants that looked like they had been issued by a hospital. His feet were bare, and his bone white toes curled against the chill of the concrete floor.
“Where is this?” she asked.
“A dream, of course.”
“But you’re here too. I didn’t imagine you here, did I? You’re really here.”
He turned to look at the walls, his eyes flicking over the blank chalkboards. “I’m not really here at all. Neither are you.” He shot a sharp glance over his shoulder at her. “You’ll have to do better than that.”
“All right. Why are we here?”
He shifted his arms slightly, indicating the straightjacket. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“You tried to kill me.”
He frowned. “Don’t you think you’d be dead if I wanted to kill you?” He turned away. The bones of his shoulders stood out sharply beneath the rough canvas, and unexpected pity twisted in her heart. “Not even that much faith in me.” The murmur barely reached her ears. “I must not have played my part well enough.”
She stepped closer, studying his profile. Surely it would be safe here, in a dream. “Why are you wearing a straightjacket? Are you insane?”
“Mad as a hatter.” He gave her a sideways look, then bared his teeth at her in a soundless growl.
She skittered backward, heart racing. “Were you always insane?” she whispered. “Or just recently?”
“It has been a rather long time, I think, although it is difficult to judge the passage of time when one is… bound… as I have been.” He arched an eyebrow at her and turned away. He paced slowly around the room, studying the chalkboards, floor tiles, and ceiling with unhurried grace. “This is quite an improvement, I must say. Thank you.” He glanced over his shoulder at her, a smile lighting his face.
The spark in his eye made her heart twist uncomfortably within her breast. “What do you mean?”
“It’s like a palace,” he murmured. “Spacious. So clean and bright, so richly appointed.” He spun on one bare heel to take in the entire room. “Such enchanting company.” He grinned at her, his eyes glittering with madness. “Though you don’t belong here. You shine with the light of a thousand suns in the void.” He swayed as if in a wind, bare toes clinging to the tile.
Her mouth felt dry, and she murmured, “They sent me to free you.”
“Is that so?” He looked around again, his eyes wide and wondering, teeth pulled back from sharp, white teeth. “Which they do you mean?”
“Fayley and the fairies of your court, I think.”
He snorted softly and looked around the room again. “Feighlí, you say?”
The silence drew long, and the king turned slowly, his eyes flicking over the walls.
“Fire in your blood,” he said under his breath, not looking at her. “Always been there but never lit before.”
She didn’t know what to say, and after a moment, he gave her a calculating glance, just a quick flash of blue from beneath his white-blond lashes.
“To free me,” he murmured. “Did you have a plan to get me out, or did you jump headlong into this ridiculous scheme?”
“It’s not my ridiculous scheme,” Claire muttered.
The king smiled, as if her irritation amused him. “Of course not,” he said gently. “You always plan things in such precise detail.”
She studied his face, trying to determine if he was being sarcastic or not, and he looked away, studying the walls anew. He shifted his shoulders against the confining canvas and glanced at her again.
She cleared her throat. “I have no idea how to break you out of here.”
“Nor I, or I would have done so already. The first step would seem to be the breaking. I’m broken already. Breaking the prison is difficult�
�� but I may be able to do that, now that you’re here. Perhaps afterward the ‘out’ part will be more evident.” His eyebrows drew downward. “I think you won’t break, no matter what, but you might squash, which would be bad. So soft and fragile, despite the flame and steel. Untested. Perhaps…” His eyes flicked over her, lingering for an instant on her chest, where the pendant rested. “You’ll have to stand close.”
“To you?” Claire’s voice cracked.
A strange, terrible mirth shone in his eyes, and he murmured, “Very close indeed.”
Claire edged closer, then stopped a little more than arm’s length away. “Or what? What will happen if I stay this far away?”
“Nothing whatsoever,” he said mildly. “I won’t break anything.”
“I’d wake up. And so would you.”
“Probably.” He turned his head, looking at her slightly sideways. “Eventually.”
“What would happen if I just left? Could I do that?”
He seemed, to her eyes, to grow a little more pale. There was an eternally long silence in which Claire wished wildly she could take back the words. I didn’t mean to be cruel! I could never leave him in that hole, no matter how much he terrifies me!
“I leave that to your magnificent imagination,” he said, his voice flat.
The words seemed to twist around inside her, cutting away some shred of anger, leaving regret in the bleeding space where she’d harbored her resentment.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
He closed his eyes, and something in his face, so hard and cold and alien, seemed to soften. That almost imperceptible change gave Claire courage to step forward.
“Closer,” he breathed, a tiny hitch in his voice.
Claire edged forward until she was so close she could feel the warmth of the air around him, smell the frost and ozone scent of his skin. He leaned forward, his wild, moonlight-pale hair just brushing her cheek.
Then the world broke apart.
Chapter 19
Something pressed upon her, angular and limp. It must be him. She strained to push him aside, and he flopped bonelessly to the stone floor. He was unexpectedly heavy, and she realized why when she heard the thunk of stone sliding off him to the stone floor, along with the soft sound of stone dust and smaller rocks tumbling from his back.
She fumbled for the lamp, feeling dirt and rough stone beneath her bruised fingers. There were rectangular stones too, and gradually she came to the disconcerting conclusion that the room had collapsed around them. Shattered bits of glass sliced her fingers. She couldn’t tell how badly they were bleeding in the darkness.
A faint breath of cold air told her where the exit was, though she couldn’t guess whether the hallway was still standing or whether the air came from some collapsed portion of the wall.
The lamp was useless, and she resigned herself to feeling her way through the dark toward the air. The hallway was more or less intact, and a faint glow of light at the end hinted that the exit might be accessible.
She carefully made her way back into the collapsed prison cell.
She shrieked when her questing fingers touched the nightmare king’s standing form. He stood swaying in the darkness, and he flinched at her touch.
That tiny movement gave her the courage to say, “Come with me.” She wrapped her fingers around his wrist, the manacle cold against her skin. She tugged him forward gently.
He stumbled after her.
She didn’t look at him, focusing on finding the enormous stones littering the floor before she tripped over them. He followed blindly. His wrist felt horribly thin beneath the thick crystal of the manacle; her fingers grew sticky with blood.
They rounded a corner, and she continued without looking back.
At last they emerged from the dusty darkness of the tunnel into the star-swept darkness of a breezy midnight.
Claire breathed a sigh of relief and turned, with some reluctance, to face the nightmare king. She dropped his wrist, facing him from a distance that still felt too close.
His expression was lost in shadow.
“I don’t know what to do next. Only I think we should probably get away from here.” Her voice shook; the sound of her fear, the raw edge in her voice, caught her by surprise. I thought I’d at least sound brave. But I just sound terrified and exhausted. He frightened her as much as anything else she had faced. Now, atop a desolate hill under a million unfamiliar stars, battered and bruised and thirsty, she wasn’t even sure whether she had done the right thing in freeing him.
He said nothing for so long that she licked her lips, wondering whether she should say something else.
Then he crumpled forward into the grass with a thump.
Claire listened for sounds of pursuit. The night was quiet but for the faint rustle of the wind in the grass and the distant trees. The rubble shifted with a low rumble and then the sound died away into silence again.
The nightmare king lay awkwardly, his face mashed into the grass. One arm was beneath him, the other by his side, as if he had not attempted to break his fall. She knelt beside him, holding her breath until she could hear a faint, disturbing rattle in his exhalation.
At least he’s alive. I think that’s a good thing.
Exhaustion swept over her. The starlight shone down cold and clear and merciless, silvering the blades of grass beneath her. The blood smeared across her palms and between her fingers looked nearly black. She looked at the king again, at his matted hair thick with stone dust and crusted dirt, at the blood dried dark behind one ear. His shirt was worn threadbare across the shoulders and at the elbows.
She couldn’t think; the day had been a thousand years long and her body and mind rebelled against another demand. She couldn’t very well carry him, she didn’t know where she was going, and she was too tired to stand up anyway.
So after one last, cursory look around, she curled up a short distance away and closed her eyes.
The nightmare king sat in the corner of the chalkboard room, still wearing his straightjacket. He leaned his head back against the wall, his strange blue-gold-silver eyes following Claire as she walked slowly around the room.
Old writing was barely visible on the chalkboards, as if it had been vehemently erased but not actually washed with water. Claire tried to read it, but nothing was legible; faded swoops of elegant writing blended with what might have been mathematical equations.
“Is this your mind?” she asked.
The king did not immediately answer, and she glanced at him. He was staring off into the distance.
That’s what they call a thousand-yard stare. “What did they do to you?” Claire whispered.
The king’s gaze did not waver. His mouth was set in a tight, narrow frown that seemed, to Claire’s eyes, to be either angry or regretful. Perhaps both.
“Can you hear me?”
His gaze flicked toward her, then away. “Sometimes.” His voice echoed strangely, as if the chalkboards flung back the lowest tones with greater force.
“Is this your mind?”
“Not exactly.” His narrow, bony knees were drawn up in front of his chest, and he looked down, studying the thin fabric drawn tight over them. “But I made it, and it is mine, and I let you in.” He did not look at her. “We sprung the trap. We’d better leave soon.”
“The trap?”
He thunked his head hard against the cement behind him, once, and again, and then a third time even harder.
Claire cried, “Stop it!”
Again and again in a rhythm that made Claire’s insides turn upside down.
What if he dies while I’m stuck in this nightmare? Will I die too? Will I be stuck in this room with his corpse forever?
She screamed as he did it again and lunged across the room to grab his head with her hands, straining against his convulsive pounding.
Claire was reminded that it was a dream when her hands slid into his hair. The white-blond strands were fine and soft, the back of his head matted wi
th crusted blood. How did I not see that before? This is an old wound. She hauled him away from the wall, pressing her knee into his shoulder to keep him from thrashing free.
The back of his neck showed the strain of wiry muscles through paper-thin skin. The canvas of the straightjacket had rubbed the skin raw in several places.
Abruptly he stopped moving altogether. She froze, wondering what he was doing, whether he was dangerous even now, whether she was helping or hurting him. He shuddered, as if her touch were unbearable to him, and she pulled away.
Claire watched him warily as he sat motionless.
The silence drew out for long minutes.
Finally Claire said softly, “Your head is bleeding.”
His gaze slid toward her, fixed on her throat for a moment, then slid away. “Is it? I hadn’t noticed.” He smiled as if thinking of something long past. “I didn’t think you would come.”
“I didn’t want to.”
His lips tightened. “I imagine not.”
The silence was like a living thing, coiling around Claire’s heart more tightly with every passing moment, until she thought she would weep.
Finally he looked up, and the blue-gold-silver of his eyes meeting hers felt like a spark through her body. “They’ll be coming. We sprung the trap.”
Chapter 20
Birdsong floated on the air like dandelion seeds, carrying easily in the clear, cool breeze that rustled the lush grass. Sunlight warmed Claire’s cheek.
She sat up, looking for the nightmare king.
He was gone.
A crack shattered the peaceful air.
The rubble of the collapsed prison tower spread over the hilltop. Claire could not identify the tunnel through which they had escaped the night before; no part of the structure seemed intact enough to walk through. Huge pieces of granite were tumbled over each other like so many discarded building blocks.
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