Before the Dawn

by Kristal Lim

Trevor scrounged up something for Meran to wear and then decided to make a late breakfast. Raven, who still seemed to be brooding, followed him into the kitchen and looked irritated when Trevor just ignored him and concentrated on preparing some food instead. His little silent drama actually lasted up until the scrambled eggs were done, but then he finally broke.

  "Who does she think she is anyway?" he suddenly exclaimed. Trevor merely raised an eyebrow at Raven's belligerent tone. "I never deliberately intended for things to come to this point. It was not like I decided to cast that first enchantment years ago purely because I wanted some kind of amusement. No, if blame is to be cast somewhere, she actually has her share of it! She was the spoiled little princess I overheard wishing for true love and romance, and I merely gave her what she asked for! I thought a few nights of dancing in the underground with the Lords of the Strangelands and she'd have enough romance to last her ten lifetimes!"

  Trevor looked at him disapprovingly. "Man, I don't think you're getting her point right," he said as he divided up the eggs into the three plates that contained the slightly overdone bacon pieces he had fried up earlier. "You could have not granted her wish. You could have just ignored it as the fancy dreams of a young girl and moved on to other stuff. But you didn't. You technically started all of this. Now she's a mess and God only knows what Aline has become in all the time she's been with your brother. And don't forget that there are people out there, like me, who had our minds played with so we'd forget all about people who were important to us. I don't remember a thing about what happened except for what you showed me, but I saw enough to make me certain that you owe us your help."

  What Trevor didn't say out loud, what he didn't even want to think about too much, was how Raven's memories of him and Aline had made him feel. It reminded him of the pain he used to see in Vera's eyes after they lost their baby, like something integral to herself had been ripped away. And he had not felt the same way then. He knew at the time that he was missing something because he just couldn't seem to feel the loss as keenly as she did. Now, maybe he was going to find out what that missing thing was. Maybe it had also been ripped away from him all those years ago and he had just forgotten all about it.

  Meran showed up in the kitchen then looking freshly showered and slightly saner than the last time they saw her. She gave Trevor a twisted little smile. "Thanks," she said, "for the clothes."

  He nodded. "No problem. Here. Have something to eat." She quickly helped him set up the small kitchen table and they both sat down. She ignored Raven the whole while, which caused the black-haired Prince to scowl at her fiercely, but Trevor decided to give the guy a break for now and invited him to join them with a look and a gesture.

  Raven’s mouth settled into firm, thin lines before he condescended to sit down with the two humans, brushing back his coat like it was a fancy cape and adjusting his collar as he did so. Honestly, Trevor thought that the guy was acting like a real ass. But he was too hungry to make a comment about it at the moment, so they all spent the next several minutes in silence while they ate. Well, Meran and Trevor ate. Raven just sort of pushed his food around his plate and nibbled on the smallest bit of scrambled egg he could spear with his fork.

  Trevor’s food was more than half gone by the time he felt ready to talk again. "So," he looked at Raven, "how soon can you get me to where Aline is?"

  Raven's eyes slid to Meran, who was still intent on ignoring him, before he chose to answer. "Tonight," he finally said when Meran refused to meet his gaze. "It's Samhain and the doorways would be open. It would make it easier to slip you into Silverhaven without my having to cut a way for us to the underground." He looked thoughtful for a moment before he continued speaking. "You know, it is a very great coincidence working in your favor that seven years have gone by since Benwyr first cast the enchantment that set things in motion."

  "Why do you say that? What's the significance of that?" Trevor asked.

  "Because it is the way of our magic that for a spell of this kind to last, it needs to be renewed every seventh year while the doorways are open. You may not remember it from last time, of course, but it took three nights for Benwyr to work the enchantment, and he still needed to cheat so your precious Aline would allow herself to be ensnared by it. So you have two nights left to find a way to break it before the fourth day dawns." He frowned. "Events falling into such a pattern don't do so by accident. I think it's my mother's meddling again. I wonder what else she has done."

  Meran spoke then, but not to Raven. "I'm going with you," she told Trevor.

  Before he could even say anything, Raven had already reacted to her statement. "You most certainly are not!" he snapped. "You will stay here where you will be safe."

  She just looked at him with an expression on her face that froze the air solid between them and very calmly replied, "I'm going to help my friends. If Trevor, who doesn't even remember Aline, has enough of a heart to help her escape from the Prince, then how can I just sit somewhere and be safe when I know he'll be risking his life?"

  Raven seemed to be struggling for words as he and Meran glared at each other. Then his gaze flicked to Trevor, who stared back at him curiously. Trevor then felt his stomach lurch as if it had been hooked by an invisible force and, in an eye blink, he discovered that he was now sitting in the living room and the magic that had transported him there was rapidly dissipating. "And stay there!" he heard Raven yell in his head before he even thought of standing up from the couch.

  "Asshole," Trevor muttered under his breath. Then he nearly jumped out of his skin when a sharp ringing sounded. He realized it was his cellphone and he took it out of his jeans pocket to answer it. However, he hesitated for a moment when he saw the name flashing on the screen. Taking a few deep breaths to steady himself, he finally answered the call on its fifth ring and said, "Hello, Vera."

  He heard her let out a soft sigh. He thought she sounded sort of relieved. "Hi," she said softly. "I was afraid you weren't going to pick up."

  "I almost didn't," he admitted. He felt a heaviness settle in his chest. "How have you been?"

  "Recovering," she answered with a little catch in her voice that he knew always happened whenever she tried to smile as she talked. "How about you?"

  Oh, man. Where should he even start? So, instead, he just told her, "I moved back to my old hometown, the one I lived in when I was sixteen, you know. I needed to get away from things."

  She was very quiet for a minute and he just listened to her breathing. He wondered why she had called him. Her letter had made it clear that she never wanted to have anything to do with him again, but here she was on the other end of the line. Finally, she spoke again, and what she said really surprised him. "Be careful, Trevor."

  "What? Why?" he asked, confused. "What do you mean 'be careful'?"

  "I–I'm not really sure." She gave a nervous little laugh that was quickly smothered by another long silence. "But," she hesitated for a second before continuing, "But I had this dream about you, and you were in danger for some reason. And you looked really young in the dream, and the dream seemed, I don't know, real. It was really strange. I woke up feeling like I just needed to talk to you. Just–it's silly, I know, but promise me you'll take care of yourself." She paused, as if she was getting enough of the strength to keep talking and, after a short while, she said something that must have cost her a lot to say, "I do still care about you, Trevor. And I want you to be happy. It took some time, but I just finally realized that I wasn't the one who could do that for you."

  "Vera, don't." He closed his eyes when a sudden familiar pain stabbed at his heart. "Listen, I'm sorry I couldn't be better for you." And he really was sorry. He had loved her so much. "What I did, how I failed you just when you needed me, I can't even begin to say how sorry I am for that. Believe me, if I could have done it, I would have been exactly what you needed. But I–" he stopped. He didn't really know what to say anymore because he knew there were no words that would make it all better betwee
n them.

  "It's all right, Trevor," she said, and he hated the fact that she sounded like she was comforting him. He didn't deserve that particular kindness from her. "Just promise me you'll look after yourself, okay? And, this feels important for some reason, but I also wanted to tell you that what's been lost, well, you can't ever really get it back. So, just remember that, and be careful, all right?"

  Her last few words sent a chill through his body. It took a while before he found his voice in order to give her a response. "Take care of yourself, too," he managed to choke out before he said, "Goodbye, Vera." And he knew it was the last time he would ever say those words to her.

  She didn't even say goodbye. She just hung up without another word and he sat there looking stupidly at his phone for several minutes, feeling like crap. After a while, he got up and decided to check if Raven and Meran had killed each other yet. He found Raven on his knees, holding on to her hands like he was begging her for something, while Meran gazed down at him with a doomed expression in her eyes. They both looked incredibly anguished, and Trevor backed away from the kitchen door without attracting notice to himself. He was certain that there was a story between those two, and he didn't think it was one they wanted to share with anybody else.

  He didn't know what to do with himself after that. There was no way he could do any writing with the way he was feeling right now, and anything else he could think of doing seemed pointless. To his surprise when Meran gently shook him awake later, he found he had fallen asleep at his desk. A glance at the clock told him that he had slept most of the day away and it was now on its way to early evening.

  "I'm sorry," he apologized to Meran somewhat sheepishly. "I haven't been a very good host. I hope you made yourself at home while I was asleep?" He tried to wipe the drool on his chin without being too obvious about it.

  She laughed a bit. "Oh, it's all right. You looked exhausted, so I didn't wanna wake you earlier. Then I just spent the past few hours catching up with the rest of the world on TV."

  He stood up a bit unsteadily and yawned. "Well, it's almost dinner time. Pizza okay?"

  She brightened. "Sure. I've missed it!" She hovered nearby while he placed the order, as excited as a kid when he repeated her request for extra pepperoni. Briefly, he wondered if Aline would be this girlish when he would finally meet her, and he really hoped so. It would mean that she had held on to at least some of her innocence. The doorbell rang just as they finished ordering the pizza, but before either one of them could answer it, they heard the door being opened and a high-pitched chorus of "Trick or treat!" echoing throughout the house. Then they heard Raven's aristocratic, "What is your meaning?" and they hurried to rescue the kids before he impulsively turned them into gremlins or something worse.

  Trevor grabbed the candy from where he had stashed it and threw the bag over to Meran who quickly raced to Raven's side. By this time, he was sounding outraged. "What do you mean I have to give you candy or you'll play a trick on me? Young man, I assure you, the being who can trick this old Trickster has not been born yet! And will never be born, if I have something to say about it!"

  Meran elbowed him aside quite ruthlessly. "Here you go, guys," she said to the confused-looking children with a bright smile. She then dumped several handfuls of candy into the bags and hollow plastic pumpkins they held out to her and sent them on their way.

  "Why did you give them those sweets?" Raven wondered. "If they had played any tricks on us, I would have punished them severely for it."

  She rolled her eyes. "They weren't actually going to play any tricks," she told him. Then she went on to explain the whole idea of Halloween to the immortal Prince. It was hilarious to see him froth at the mouth over the irreverence and "blasphemy humans commit against mystery and magic" by "trivializing the mystic essence" of something or other, and Trevor quit listening when Raven went into a tirade against humanity and all their sins against the earth.

  "This is why humans have lost their magic," the Prince concluded triumphantly after several minutes of his angry monologue. "You people show no respect for the mysteries and powers of the earth."

  "Yeah, bad humans," Trevor agreed absently as the doorbell rang again. It was the pizza guy this time, and they decided to just eat in the living room so they could easily answer the door when other trick and treaters would drop by. Two more groups of kids showed up while they were eating (again, it was just him and Meran enjoying the food), and when they had eaten their share, they got Raven's uneaten slices and gobbled them up too while he looked at them with distaste.

  At the end of the meal, he stood up. "Well then. Have the two of you satisfied your animal hungers now?" he demanded. "The night's getting older and we need to be moving on if you still wish to go to Silverhaven."

  Meran and Trevor stood up too, and got ready for the trip as best as they could. Their preparations, though, began and ended with Raven waving a hand over them and muttering something to transform their clothes into more suitable ones for his brother's Court. Trevor soon found himself dressed up in a fancy outfit like the kind in period movies, though the various pieces came from different eras, while Meran looked stunning in an amber-colored ball gown that seemed to break up light and reflect it in rainbow colors. Raven, for his part, was no longer dressed up like some kind of romantic punk. Instead, he was wearing rich-looking formal clothes like Trevor’s, except that everything was in his usual black. He looked them over carefully after working this little spell and he nodded, satisfied. "You'll both do. Come." He held out a hand to Meran and she took it. She then turned to Trevor and offered her hand. Taking a deep breath, he enfolded her smaller hand into his bigger one then looked at Raven expectantly.

  "What now?" he asked.

  Raven smirked. "Now? We walk."

  He took a little step sideways and slipped into a gap between overlapping realities then disappeared. Before Trevor could gasp out in amazement that he was suddenly able to perceive the different shifting layers of many, many worlds, Meran tugged at his hand and they both followed after Raven.

  ~~~

  Chapter 22