Page 112 of By the Flames of Her Fury

She stepped into the hallway. “Goodnight, Swift.”

53

Vera

Familiar stone walls closed in on me. The cold emanating from all sides was paralyzing. I tried to summon my phoenix half, but the chains around my wrists made the pain too much to bear.

“Get me out of here!” I called. My voice echoed off the walls, vibrating through my skull as if someone had hit me. I thrashed against the chains until my eye caught on something small. The hole in the wall. I scrambled toward it, pressing my face to the stone and trying to find his familiar dual-toned gaze.

A different face appeared on the opposite side. Lips curved into a grin on pale cheeks, with a ribbon tied around his eyes. “Miss me, little bird?” Mortep lilted.

I vaulted away from the wall in disgust, and my back hit the opposite side. The walls were rapidly shrinking, closer and closer to crushing me with every breath, but the hole in the wall began to grow. It widened to reveal Mortep’s form, waiting for me with a grin and a fresh syringe.

But when I blinked, he morphed into one of the wrapped corpses from the demithes’ tomb. It staggered into my cell with elbows bent at a grotesque angle, its gaping mouth opened wide.

“No!” I shouted, struggling against my restraints. I pushed into the wall at my back, but it only moved closer to the corpse, shuffling me forward with a grating, scraping sound.

Suddenly, the chains at my wrists disintegrated to ash. I gasped, then quickly rushed forward, dodging the corpse’s outstretched arms. I was about to step through the human-sized hole in the wall when an arm appeared on the other side.

My eyes trailed up the familiar form. “Swift?”

He smirked, those green and gray eyes twinkling. “Need some help?”

I grasped his hand, and he pulled me forward. The cells fell away. We landed on a soft bed of grass, and I lifted my arm to shield myself from the blinding sunlight. Butterflies flitted by as a meadow of wildflowers danced at our feet. To the left, water rippled in a small pond. White water lilies bobbed along the surface, with bright marigolds swaying at the riverbank beside them.

I gazed in awe. “Where are we?”

“This is your dream, Songbird,” dream-Everett murmured, his thumb gently rubbing the back of my hand. “You tell me.”

I smiled. This wasn’t the first time he’d appeared in my dreams—not by a long shot—but they usually ended with us being hurt or separated. I had to admit, this was a nice change of pace.

I looked around, wondering why this would be the place I conjured. It didn’t look like anywhere I’d been—no river in Drakorum was this lush, and if it were the Triad Realm, sand would be getting between my toes already.

My eyes widened when I caught the water lilies and marigolds again. A memory from years ago came back to me, one I’d long since forgotten. “I’ve already told you about the beaches in Iluze, but there’s also this river near my house where Mother liked to pick water lilies and marigolds. Have you ever seen a river?”

“I think it’s the river by your house,” I said as realization struck me. “At least, what I imagined it looks like. You told me about it once—well, the real you,” I amended. “You never got to take me there.”

“Then come on,” he said, tugging me toward the pond. Blades of grass tickled my ankles as we walked. We sat on the edge of the water, and he plucked a water lily from a frond. His fingers grazed my temple when he placed it behind my ear. My shoulders relaxed as a grin tugged at my lips, and I leaned back on my elbows to bask in the false sunlight. If I tried hard enough, I could even feel its warmth soaking into my skin.

“Do you remember what else I told you?” Everett asked. “Do you remember all the things we said we’d do together?”

I tilted my head to gaze at him. My subconscious had summoned the most lifelike, vivid version of him I could’ve asked for. The sun haloed his face, and for the first time since he’d found me again, I let myself really look. At the scar slashing through his left eyebrow and down beneath his eye, the one he got fighting Scarven’s men last year. At his green eye, brighter now in the sunlight, with flecks of brown at the edges. At the dark scruff covering his jaw, rougher than it used to be, unable to fully hide the dimple on his chin.

But it was more than that. It was the tiny, ever-present line between his brow, a sign of his constant worrying. The way the corners of his mouth curved like he was holding back a smile meant only for me.

“Yes,” I said quietly. “I remember. You said you’d take me here in the spring so you could teach me how to fish and steer a boat.” Soft laughter escaped me. “Too late for that part, I guess. I’ve been on more ships now than I can count.”

He drank me in the way I had looked at him, as if memorizing every line, examining every inch. “This last year has changed you, hasn’t it?” he whispered.

I swallowed and dropped my head to the grass. “So this is that kind of dream.”

“What do you mean?”

“Where my subconscious tries to trick me into talking. To fix me.”

His brow scrunched. “What is there to fix?”

I waved my hand at my own head. “This tangled mess.”