Page 95 of Serpent and Shadow

The thought somehow filled me with dread.

My mind swam with vivid, back-to-back, exhausting dreams, so visceral and real-feeling, I couldn’t move for a few moments after I was awake. I stared up at the ripped canopy I still hadn’t repaired from my fall the day before.

As disturbing as aspects of those dreams were, some part of me didn’t want to leave them. I told myself I needed to understand what I was seeing, to determine what was real and what wasn’t, but even that wasn’t the truth.

The truth was a lot simpler.

I fought to hold onto him even as he slipped away. I struggled not to lose that feeling of his presence immersed in mine. I couldn’t hold onto him, though. I couldn’t. He left me with tangible reluctance, which somehow made it worse.

Just like in that alcove in his castle, I couldn’t make him stay with me.

I fought to hold onto every fragment I could, everything I’d seen, the things I overheard, his thoughts, his worries, the things grinding through the back of his mind, but the details wanted to fade with him. I remembered him talking to me. My inability to make sense of how the pieces fit together made me want to scream.

Every thread felt like a fragile, easily-broken connection to him. Yet the tapestry of those threads woven together felt like an instruction manual written in invisible ink.

Right before it ended, I’d felt his fingers around mine.

Had he dreamed me, too?

Why had it felt like he’d been awake for most of it?

At the end, I’d seen that black stone wall behind him again. He’d been back in the dungeon, the gold ring glowing around his neck, his eyes exhausted. The golden glow of his eyes and the tattoos on his chest lit the space enough that I could see him almost clearly, even if the lighting made him look like an Aether being more than a person.

His outline glowed, along with his chest.

I’d seen the new scar on his face. Blood trickled from his hairline, staining his blond hair. He’d been sweaty, like he’d been running, or fighting maybe. He’d looked tired, defeated, and strangely vulnerable as he looked at me.

I’m sorry, he’d said.

He said it a few more times, until I couldn’t stand it anymore and asked him to stop.

His lip had been cut. His jaw looked swollen. His shoulders and chest had been decorated with more bruises, cuts, and burns.

He’d definitely been in another fight.

No. Sirena had been sent down to play with him.

I shoved the thought away, feeling sick.

I tried to puzzle through the time sequence. His dreams hadn’t made it seem like anyone was angry with him, not in Dark Cathedral, at least. They’d seemed almost… impressed. So what the hell happened in the time since?

Whatever it was, it got him relegated to the dungeon again.

It got him punished.

His eyes had been glassy, but unlike during most of the night’s dreams, he hadn’t tried to force me away. Which told me he’d been a lot more exhausted than usual, or, even more likely, he’d been dead asleep.

He held my hand and talked to me.

He stared into my eyes and talked quietly long after he’d pleaded for me to forgive him. Through a lot of it, he spoke too low and deep and gravelly for me to make out individual words. Had he been delirious? During the dream, I had a sense some part of me understood him, like I knew what he was trying to say, and just listened.

It was maddening to wake up and have all of that be gone.

It made me want to scream, or cry.

Alaric shifted on the mattress, letting out a low snore, and the last of my dreams and Bones’s presence vanished for real. I could have hit Alaric for it, smacked his shoulder at least, but I knew how irrational my reaction was.

Alaric hadn’t done it. I simply hadn’t been able to hold on.