Dream King by Elise Knight
29
Istood up, my nerves ragged at the admission I was about to make. “I might have made the doors move and gone to see my mother in her dream. I fell and was dragged along the ground with the wind. The lake water has cleared up most of the damage, though.” I held my breath and waited for his anger, but it never came. In fact, he looked confused more than anything else.
“I’m surprised you were able to make the doors work in that way. I didn’t think it was possible for a human to do so. And to survive the wind...”
“You aren’t angry with me?”
He stood up to join me and took my hand in his. “I was angry when you first told me that you went to the doors, but that was because I was scared you’d get hurt. There is no way I’m going to let you go there alone again, but I understand your wanting to see your mother. You’ve not seen her in a long time. I should have thought of it myself.”
I arched a brow, two very distinct and separate forces fighting each other within me. It was his fault that my mother was locked in her own mind. At least, I thought it was. Aethelu told me not to blame him for it, but if not him, then who else? Still, his expression was not of a man who’d just been caught doing something wrong.
“My mother. She’s...” I choked up, hardly daring to speak. If it turned out that it was Dream that had done this to her, I knew my whole world would collapse. I knew he was capable of awful things. Things I’d forgiven him for. Hurting my mother was not something I’d ever be able to forgive. “She’s not woken up in over a year. I found vines keeping her door closed. I had to hack at them to be able to get in. I almost didn’t make it out.”
Dream sighed a long heavy sigh and closed his eyes. For an excruciatingly long second, I thought he’d slipped back into unconsciousness. “Everything I’ve done with you is wrong. Literally everything.”
I opened my mouth in shock. “Is that an admission? Did you do this to her?” My heart pounded as I waited for him to answer. At least this time, it was mercifully quick.
“No,” he shook his head strongly. “No. I didn’t do that. I would never do that to her, nor to anyone else.” He took my hand in his. It was surprisingly gentle. I wouldn’t say comforting because whichever way I looked at it, my mother was still sleeping. “You saved me more times than I can count. You’ve looked after me while I’ve been incapacitated, and you kissed me, all the while thinking that I would do such a thing to your mother?”
“You were a monster. I didn’t know what to think.”
He sighed. “But you saved me. First from the wolveries, second from death at the hands of the savagara, and thirdly, from myself. Why would you do that to a man you thought was a monster?”
Tears began to form in the corner of my eye. I hated crying. It showed weakness. Mostly the only tears I cried were the angry kind, but I wasn’t angry now. I didn’t know how I felt at all. Confused mostly. “You were the most beautiful monster I’d ever met.” Fuck, that sounded so shallow. And it was so wrong. It went way beyond how he looked. “I mean, I saw something in you that you keep so well hidden. I think for a long time you’ve been this monster you think you are. You certainly fooled me when I met you. It took me a while to see beyond the big angry man you show yourself to be, but I did see it. I see you now.”
His expression looked pained. “I did not trap your mother in her own dreams, nor did I trap anyone else, but your mother is there because of me. It is my fault.”
I pulled my hand back swiftly. Hadn’t he literally just told me that he hadn’t done it, and now he was confessing to the deed.
He shifted his position, and I saw a brief wince of pain pass over his features. “My brother’s magic is what’s causing those vines to spring up. There is nothing I can do to stop it, though it was I that started it.”
“What? Why? How?” so many questions, I could barely get the words out.
He sat down and patted the sand next to him. “I know I told you that I haven’t seen my brother in many years. That wasn’t strictly true. About a year ago, he came to find me.”
I nodded, understanding where this was going. “It was a year ago my mother went to sleep. The whole world did.”
He grimaced. “I know. He came to me out of the blue. I’d not seen him in so many years; I barely recognized him. He looked nothing like me, despite the fact we are identical twins. His hair was short and tidy, his clothes were refined. He was thicker around the waist than me from a life of eating well. I hoped that he’d changed, that maybe we could reconcile, but he was arrogant and sick in the head like my mother. He’d come to tell me that our mother was sick, possibly dying.”
He laughed then, a soulless laugh that twisted my insides. “I didn’t care. Why should I? She’d shown no interest in me for so many years. I told him I had no interest in seeing her. I don’t know who was more surprised. Me at him for wanting to see her, or him at me not wanting to. Anyway, It didn’t matter. He didn’t stay long, and he went to visit our mother alone. At least I assumed he did. I’ve not seen him since. I don’t even know if my mother got over her illness. I assume she did because the Dark Court is still running, but I don’t know for sure, nor do I care.”
“I still don’t understand what this has to do with my mother.”
He paused for a second. “It was a flippant remark. I told him that many years prior, I’d sought out and killed the man that killed our father. He was incensed. Not at me so much as at the entire human race. I think he was more upset that he hadn’t gotten to the man and done the deed himself. I suspect he had wanted to kill him and hadn’t been able to find him. Sheer pride in his own abilities led him down a dark path, one even darker than the one he’d already started. The very next day, vines sprouted up, stopping up every door. Every damned one.”
I shook my head at the awfulness of it all. “You don’t need to tell me anymore. It’s barbaric.”
He nodded, his face ashen. “Yes, it is, but you must know what happened next. Otherwise, you will only be left wondering.”
“Fine,” I conceded gruffly. My mother was in a hospital ward because some prick got his pride hurt. Maybe I should hear all the details, after all.
“I spent a week fighting my brother’s magic,” he continued. “He was much stronger than me, mainly because he’d spent years perfecting it in his palace. It took me seven days, but I was able to counteract some of it. Not all, though. There are hundreds of thousands of doors still shrouded in vines.”
“My mother being one,” I added.
Dream cast his eyes downward, but not before I saw the anguish in them. I followed his gaze, then let out a howl. Blood was seeping through his makeshift bandages.
“There’s something I need...”
“Not right now,” I shouted, jumping up. “Look at you. You need to get in that lake. Now!”
He didn’t resist as I pulled on his hand. His face twisted in pain at the exertion, and he let out a groan as he got to his feet. He clutched his chest as I half helped, half dragged him to the water’s edge. I didn’t bother taking our clothes off. My dress and his trousers were soaked to the skin within seconds, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was getting his chest submerged so the water could do its magic. We waded in until it was deep enough, and then he bent his knees and let himself fall into the water. He let out a whoosh of air as his injury was submerged. I had a second of panic that black water filling up the chest cavity might not be the best idea, but by the look of bliss on his face as he lifted his legs and began to float on the water’s surface, he didn’t seem to mind.
I leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the lips. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, and his eyes fluttered open.
“Feeling better?” I asked.
“When you are here, I always feel better. Something shuttered over his face, and his smile dropped. I recognized that look. I’d seen it once too often over the past few days. It was a precursor to him telling me I shouldn’t kiss him or it was wrong, or, god forbid, “I can’t do this.”
I began to untie the bit of dress I’d used as a bandage. Partly to get him to shut up before he started, and partly because I wanted to see for myself what the water had done to heal him.
“I’m going to need you to stand up. I need to take a look at you.”
He managed to upright himself without my help. Only the top half-inch of his trousers showed above the black water. He could almost be naked under there for all I could see beneath the inky depths. Naked and...
Focus!
Gingerly, I pulled the bandage from around him. I had to reach behind him to grab the other end resulting in my face brushing against his. My hands felt around his back, lingering on the unbroken skin there. He pulled in a sharp breath as I trailed my hand across his skin, making sure not to touch the damage at the front. He was way too wide for me to reach all the way around, so I had to let one end of the bandage go.
His breathing came fast now as I stood before him, hardly daring to look down at his chest.
My own breathing matched his as I took in the detail of his lips. Lips I’d tasted not ten minutes before. Lips I wanted to taste again. He put his hand to my cheek. Such a small thing, and my body responded effortlessly to his touch as a bolt of electricity traveled deliciously through my body to my core. I pressed my hips forward to find his. Beneath the layers of clothes, I felt his hardness. Somewhere in my lust-addled mind, I must have been aware of his chest because I leaned back ever so slightly so I wasn’t touching that part of him. I found myself locked in his gaze of molten need and desire, echoing back the very thing I was feeling about him.
“Aren’t you going to look?” He asked huskily, and my breath caught in my throat.
God, I wanted to.“Yes... oh, you mean your chest.” I didn’t blush easily, but I felt the heat rise to my cheeks as I realized my mistake. I gasped when I took in his chest. It was still a horrific mess, but it had begun to heal around the edges. The hole where I’d seen inside him had closed up, and the skin around the injury was beginning to knit back together. He took my hand in his, and another jolt of electricity ran through me. He put my fingers to his chest where the skin had healed. “See. Getting better.”
I looked up to find him gazing down at me. The lust in his eyes hadn’t abated at all.
“We need to re-bandage that,” I muttered croakily. He leaned forward and planted his lips on mine. This time, there were no unsure movements. He knew exactly what he was doing. I ground my hips against him, eliciting a groan from him. Without thinking, I let my breasts graze his chest. He jumped back in pain.
“I think maybe we should think about getting you healed before...” before what? Before he changed his mind or before he fucked me senseless?
I let the sentence drop and took his hand as we both walked back to the beach. He collapsed in the sand, his breathing deeper and slightly wheezy. His eyes fluttered shut.
“You still ok?” I asked, drying him as best I could with the last of Aethelu’s dresses. I couldn’t seem to keep the bloody things clean or dry.
He murmured and nodded slightly though he didn’t speak. The accelerated healing process must have wiped him out. I ripped the dress into long strips and carefully bandaged him up. He moved when I needed him to and let me wrap the bandage around his chest, but by the time I finished, he was fast asleep, a light rumble of a snore escaping his lips. I stood up and pulled my wet dress over my head and threw it on the rock I’d used to dry my clothes last time.
“Hey,” I said, nudging him awake gently with my toe. “You know I’m going back to do the doors again tomorrow, don’t you? I’m going whether you tell me to or not. Just putting that out there.”
He grabbed my ankle, causing me to topple over, then he grabbed me so I was caught in his arms. I fell asleep, my back half an inch from his chest and my ass pressed up against the front of his pants. His arm kept me warm as I drifted off.