Dream King by Elise Knight

33

Aethelu stared at me wide-eyed, her mouth open in shock. I stood trembling and let the gun drop to the ground. Silence rained down on us as no one spoke. I couldn’t speak. I could barely register my own thoughts. Tour’s lifeless body lay at Aethelu’s feet.

“Aethelu wasn’t the only one who knew I was here,” I croaked. “Aethelu, you told me Tour hadn’t been with you for very long. When she landed on the savagara’s shoulders and cawed into its ear, it didn’t bat an eyelid. Surely, it would have attacked her unless...”

“Unless she was the one that had guided him here,” Aethelu whispered, her voice cracking. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know, but it all makes sense. She came to me not long before I met you.” Her eyes widened, “She was the reason I was out in the forest that day. She’d been out, and when she came back, she urged me to go for a walk with her. She was flying toward your clearing when you fell out of the tree.”

“I saw her when we came out of Gladys’s dream!” I exclaimed, remembering the flutter of pink I’d seen. I’d not thought much of it at the time. “Not long before the first savagara attacked you.”

“How could I have been so wrong?” Dream said, eventually, picking up the gun from where I’d dropped it at my feet. “Nightmare always did like fancy things. The bird must have been watching me for months.”

Aethelu nodded slightly, her face still registering the shock we all felt.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, kicking its lifeless body away from her as though it might taint her if she stood close to it any longer. I ran to her and wrapped my arms around her as we both descended into sobs.

“I have been a fool,” Dream said once we’d both wrung ourselves out. “Aethelu, please forgive me.”

“There is nothing to forgive Your Majesty.”

He walked over to us and took her hand. “Ana pointed out to me once that you feel that you have to do my bidding because of my position.”

“I also pointed out that you are an ass,” I reminded him.

“That too. I will not deny it. I offered you my gratefulness before, but if what Ana says is true and you fought a savagara to save her, then my gratitude will never be enough.”

Aethelu, ever the lady, held her head high. “I assure you, I don’t expect your gratitude or your forgiveness. Though if it makes you happy, Your Majesty, I will accept both.”

Dream nodded slightly. “It is with that in mind that I’m making a formal request for you to accompany Ana and me back to my palace and be Ana’s lady in waiting. If that doesn’t suit you, you may come along as a confidant to her. Please be assured that the choice is entirely yours, and you should base it on your decision rather than my title.”

“Palace?” I croaked.

Dream shifted his eyes to me. “I have been thinking of going back home for a while now. I have spent most of my life out in this forest. I cannot ask you to do the same. I want more for you.”

He took my hand in his. “I’m asking that you come with me and be by my side as I go back to my rightful position ruling the Dream Court. It is time I went back and did the job I was born to do. Just like I said to Aethlelu, the choice is yours. I only ever wanted the choice to be yours. I want you more than I ever thought it possible to want anything, but I will not force that life onto you. If you do not want to come with me with all your heart as I want you to come with me, then I will respect that.”

“I do want it!” I said, falling into him. I wanted to be with Dream more than I wanted to draw breath. He held me tight, kissing my head with butterfly kisses. Once upon a time, I was a girl with no dreams. Now I was living a dream come true. I was going to live in a palace. It was a fucking fairytale.

Aethelu cleared her throat behind us. Dream opened his arm wider and brought her into the hug. I wasn’t sure who was more surprised, her or me.

The three of us strolled slowly back to the clearing. My heart had never felt so light, so alive.

“The palace will be a mess. I have not lived there for many years. We will need to bring in more staff to clean up.”

“I can help with that, Your Majesty,” Aethelu offered.

“No. I’ve offered you the place in the palace court as a lady, not as a servant. I cannot expect you to serve us. We will have staff to fulfill your needs. I only want you there as a friend to Ana. As a friend... to me.”

I caught the flush in Aethelu’s cheeks. “It is a great honor, Your Majesty, but I have always worked. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I didn’t.”

“But it’s not necessary,” Dream continued.

“Actually, I think it’s a great idea.” I piped up between them. “You want Aethelu to come with us as an equal, right?”

Dream scratched his chin. “Yes. An equal. That’s what I’ve been trying to say.”

“Well, let her work. I’ll be working. If you think that the pair of us will sit around all day doing nothing, then you are wrong. You said yourself that the palace will be a mess. Then let’s clean it all up together. I have a feeling that Aethelu might like to paint something for the walls.”

“I’d love it!” Aethelu grinned.

Dream looked like he was defeated. “Aethelu, how about I make you Artist in Residence?”

I’d never actually known what a swoon was, but I got a full grasp of its meaning as Aethelu did just that. She drew her hands up to her heart and pulled in a deep breath, grinning from ear to ear. I almost expected her to do a twirl on the spot and break into a song. I understood how she felt because I felt the same way. Dream had rescued both of us from our shitty lives, but we had rescued him too.

I was just daydreaming of how I’d look in a ball gown in the middle of a palace when Dream caught hold of my arm.

A swish of blue in my peripheral vision was my only clue as to what was going on. It all happened so fast. The blast of the gun, the sound of yelps and growling and teeth gnashing together. Dream ran so quickly with me that in a flash of black and blue and then red, it was all over.

We were in a dark room. Four walls, two red doors. The one we’d just flown through had slammed shut behind us. The one in front was open. It took me a moment to register what was through it.

My home. My shitty, crappy apartment where my hopes and dreams had long ago come to die.

“What’s happening?” I screamed out, trying to catch my breath.

“Savagaras. More of them. I counted at least five prowling the clearing. The only way I could get you away from them was to bring you through the red door, so that’s what I did. This is a barrier between our worlds. The savagaras will not be able to get to us here.

“Aethelu!” I screamed, trying to run past him to get back to her. There was no fucking way I was leaving her behind. Dream caught hold of me, blocking my way.

“She’s safe. I teleported her back to the village. I couldn’t do that with you, so I brought you here.”

Panic danced in my chest, but knowing Aethelu was safe calmed me a little. “So what now? We stay here until the savagaras go?

He wouldn’t look me in the eye. His own eyes were downcast, shuttered. My chest tightened as I waited for him to respond, to say anything. When he did, his words cut me like a knife. “You will go through that red door. I’m taking you home.”

“You mean you brought us home, right?” He had to mean that. There was no other option that wouldn’t completely destroy me.

His voice was measured and dull like all the life had been sucked out of him in the last five minutes. “I have to go and sort out the savagaras. I don’t think they’ll attack me if they know you have gone. You have to go.”

My mouth fell open. “Go? Go where? I’m not going anywhere without you!”

He looked crazed with grief, echoing the pain building up inside me. He couldn’t be serious.

Anguish filled his voice. “You know why I can’t go with you. My world would get darker and darker until there was nothing left.”

“So let me stay with you in the Night Realm,” I pleaded, my agony increasing with each moment, searing my heart.

He shook his head, and in that small movement, my world shattered.

“I can’t do that. My brother will kill you. I’ve tried keeping you safe. I thought I could, but I can’t. I never meant any of this to happen...” He quientened for a second. I wanted to reach out to him. To grab hold of him like I did when he was sick. When I’d wanted to keep his soul inside his body. Except now, his soul was broken...destoyed.

“He isn’t ever going to stop looking for you, and when he finds you, he will kill you.”

Tears fell down my face as pain squeezed my chest. “Why? Why does he hate me so much? He’s never even met me.”

I’d never seen him look so tortured, so desolate. Those black eyes of his no longer held stars; they held eons of pain. Pain that I could never hope to extinguish.

When he spoke, his voice was low and filled with torment. “Ana, it was your father that killed ours.”

Shit.I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It explained everything. Why Dream had brought me here and why he had hated me so much at the beginning. It explained why his brother had set out to kill me and why my mother’s door was one of those with vines on it. He hated me because of who my father was.

“I barely even remember my father.” All of it made sense, and none of it made sense. “I’ll go and talk to him. I’m not my father. I’ll make him see...”

“See what, Ana? All he’ll see is the daughter of the man that destroyed our world. You have to go back through the red door.

“You’ll come to me, though? You’ll come and see me.”

He didn’t answer. He was a man as broken as I was. The pain was agonizing, and the longer I drew it out, the worse it was going to get.

I nodded slowly and stood. I needed him. I needed him so badly that kissing his cheek and knowing it was the last kiss between us hurt so much more than all the pain he put me through when we first met. This was the type of pain that would leave scars that would never fade.

He moved to kiss my lips, but I pulled back. I couldn’t bear it. One more touch would slay me. I turned and walked to the red door, knowing that when I went through it, I’d never be coming back.

Every part of me screamed in agony as I took the step through the door. It closed behind me, leaving me alone in my apartment. The time on my clock read ten past two... only moments after I had left, and yet, it felt like a lifetime ago. I didn’t need to turn around to know that the red door was already gone. I flung myself onto my bed and dissolved into howls of anguish. The grief like nothing I’d felt before. Not when my mother became ill, not when David left. All of that faded into nothing compared to the gaping wound in my heart left by Dream.

I closed my eyes and pictured him as I left him. Alone, destroyed. It was heartbreaking, overwhelming. I closed my eyes and did everything I could to fall asleep so I could be with him once more.