Page 22 of Lord of the Forest

He stripped off his clothes, threw back the sheets on his bed, and climbed in. It still felt peculiar, being in the bed, but he was starting to understand the attraction of a loosely-filled horsehair mattress, with soft linen sheets both above and below one’s body. He still didn’t see the sense in putting on some special garment in which to sleep but made sure to always close the drapes on the bed, and spare the housemaid’s blushes.

When sleep eventually came, it didn’t last long. He awoke to engulfing darkness, the echo of a cry in his ears, and the sensation of a delicate hand shaking his shoulder.

In an instant, he’d seized the woman’s wrist. “That had better be you, Lady Elaine, as I’m not ready to interrupt my rest for anyone else.”

“Foolish fellow. Of course, it’s me. I needed to silence you before you awakened the entire household.”

“What’s amiss?”

“You were crying out in your sleep.”

He sat up, now able to make out Clemence’s shape in the gloom. His night vision had improved massively during his years spent in the forest.

“A nightmare?”

“Aye. Can you remember what you were dreaming about?”

He closed his eyes, loosened his grip on her wrist, and—for a reason he didn’t care to examine—enfolded her hand in his.

“Ah.” It must have been that recurring dream, the one which usually left him shaking and sweating—a cold sweat born from fear.

“I don’t like to talk about it.” This was the secret he most needed to be kept hidden. Yet—would it not calm him, help banish his demons, were he to trust someone enough to share it? Had this woman not proved her worth, and her loyalty, time and time again?

“I don’t like to tell you. You will abhor me.”

“I could never do that. You can have done nothing that would make me hate you.”

“You sound so sure.” He could already feel the stabbing pain in his ribs, the dryness in his throat that always followed the vision—or the memory that disguised itself as a dream.

“Swear you’ll tell no one.” He clutched her hand.

“I swear it.” She returned the strength of his grip.

“I fear I may have done someone great harm.”

She settled herself on the bed beside him, drawing the drapes closed behind her. He felt the brush of her hair as she laid her head trustingly on his shoulder.

Curling an arm around her, he said, “The dream comes as I kneel by a stream or river. I know not which, but the current swirls speedily by me. My heart is full of grief and horror, and my hands are red with blood. I’m struggling to cleanse them, but they shake so, and the blood continues to flow from them.”

“Perchance you cut yourself. That was the source of the blood.”

“Nay, there is no pain. Not of the physical kind. But I know a soul-deep grief, made all the more poignant by a sense of guilt.”

He heard her pull in a breath. She mustn’t condemn him—he couldn’t bear that.

“What happens after that? In the dream, I mean.”

“Nothing.” Only a swirling blackness, nausea, and pain all over his body, as if he were being punished for his crime.

“You can never progress beyond that point?”

“Nay. Would that I could. But I always wake from the horror of it. One day, I fear I may groan so loud that I’ll give away my den in the holly grove.”

“You can’t go back there.” He felt the waft of her breath against his neck as she spoke. He would have to send her away soon—her closeness was far too tempting. But it was also the most welcome distraction from the grim experience of the dream.

“I must. In your world, I’m nobody. I have nothing.”

“And in the forest, you are lord of all you survey.”