8 WITHIN DREAMS
Malekh’s solution had been to dose Remy with some foul-tasting tincture that threw him into so deep a slumber that no dreams could intervene. It left a faint aftertaste of something bitter and burnt in Remy’s mouth, not unlike when he’d overimbibed with cheap mead. He complained as frequently and as loudly as he could but took the damned medication in the end, because it was better than picking up that dream where he’d escaped it. He didn’t protest when Malekh took more blood from him, despite result after result coming up negative in his favor.
Xiaodan’s solution was to keep Remy busy during the day so he would have little time to dream at night. She was at home in the Fata Morgana just as much as she had been in Chànggē Shuĭ, and the people here treated her like their other leader, like she was already Malekh’s wife. Remy still took to training the children in the morning, but afternoons were spent visiting the mills and the foundries, watching men and women dance on grapes to produce the sweetest liquor or gathering a certain shellfish species native to the region to produce the beautiful purple dye for cloths that they sold at markets like the one in Libéliard, which explained Malekh’s familiarity with the place, Eugenie notwithstanding.
He spent most of his free hours trying to be useful, pumping water out of the natural wells from underground rivers and lakes beneath the castle, harvesting fruit from the vineyards and greenhouses, even learning to milk the cows. Sanlea delighted in having him in her kitchens. His own cooking was too simple and spartan, a drawback of the bachelor’s life he’d led in Elouve, but he did know his way around a knife.
Remy’s solution was to pretend nothing was wrong and get fucked instead.
Neither Xiaodan nor Malekh complained. They were methodical, practiced. They stripped him easily of his clothes, wasted little time in removing their own. A slight push sent Remy onto their bed, and he fell willingly. Their bedchambers had been the first place he’d learned to trust them fully with himself.
He felt their hands lift him up, felt the warmth of Malekh behind him even as Xiaodan settled herself over his body. He felt their mouths all over him, their touch welcoming and needed.
The more logical thing to do would’ve been to sit him down and talk about it. Reassure him, because that’s what Xiaodan would have done. Run other tests to prove that Remy didn’t have any goddamn mandurugo’s blood running through him no matter who his mother was, because that’s what Malekh would have done.
Instead, Malekh kissed his way down his neck, adding more love bites to the others he’d already left there, and then it was Xiaodan’s turn to mark Remy with new ones of her own. They knew how to work him. Remy still wondered what they saw in him, that they could be so kind.
They might still opt for the more reasonable routes tomorrow: Xiaodan earnestly trying to convince him things would be fine, Malekh hooking him up to Light-knows whatever contraptions within his laboratory to learn every secret his blood could divulge.
But for now, this was what he needed.
He wasn’t used to the cuddling, though.
He was accustomed to it with Xiaodan, who liked to worm her way through every available breathing space that lay between her and him, like he was her only source of warmth. He was not used to it with Malekh.
“What are you doing?” Remy asked when the mattress dipped until Malekh’s weight was settled comfortably against his body and Xiaodan’s. Malekh did sex, but he never did the bed.
Malekh grunted. It was his fiancée who responded. “It’s not like he wasn’t staying with you before we even knew about those dreams you were having.”
“He always flees in the morning like some blushing chambermaid, so I wouldn’t know.”
“How do you know how blushing chambermaids flee, Remy?” Xiaodan asked, curious.
Remy reddened. “I don’t! The last thing I needed was more gossip about m—”
“Would you like me to leave, Pendergast?” Malekh interrupted.
“Of course not—”
“Because I am more inclined to stay when it is silent.”
Remy glared and grumbled, but quieted. Xiaodan only grinned broadly, flinging her arms around them both and somehow managing it despite her slight form.
This is all I need, Remy told himself.
Malekh was still there the next morning. Xiaodan was asleep, her weight a comfort on his chest. Unexpectedly pleasant, Remy thought, and gazed at Malekh until the latter, eyes still closed, shoved a pillow into his face and told him to stop staring.
All of it helped, in a way. Malekh’s sleeping tincture probably was the most effective of the lot, though Remy wasn’t keen on telling the lord, lest he up the dosage.
He didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want to think about his mother, and why she’d been haunting his dreams. He dreaded going back to sleep, comforted only by the knowledge that he never went to bed alone. Staying busy helped stave off the brief periods of melancholy whenever Remy had enough time to himself to think.
Like when he was showing the youths the best way to position a bow in close quarters with an enemy and he’d thought of Giselle. Before he could shunt those thoughts away, he’d remembered how she’d always preferred him with a bow rather than with Breaker or a sword; he had a fine-fitting form whenever he drew the nock back, she’d said, that emphasized his biceps and the spread of his shoulders. She’d bought arrows for him, goose feather–tipped and expensive, and when he’d protested that hitting a target was not dependent on the decorativeness of the projectile but on the surety of the mark, she’d only laughed and said she liked spoiling him either way.
He’d told his charges to practice on their own for the next half hour with the bullseyes he’d set up along the courtyard, having had the foresight to close off the perimeter to discourage other residents from walking into any rogue arrows. Then he’d walked a short distance away to lean against a wall and gather himself.
He didn’t miss Giselle, and it was a cruel thing to say. He was sorry that she’d died and he would always blame himself for it, but he tried to find something in the years they’d been together that he wished to have back, only to find those memories wanting. There was nothing of her he could remember that wasn’t about his own guilt.
He thought about the Lady Daneira, about the people who’d hung from the gallows in the capital because they’d been accused of consorting with him, though he hadn’t even recognized any of them by face.
The pain in his chest was like a hammer striking bone. Remy clutched at it, waited with slow breaths until it went away.
It was easy to forget when he was away from Elouve. And just like in Chànggē Shuĭ, Remy felt the familiar tug here at the Third Court, the desire to stay.
It would be easier if they turned him.
They told Remy Xiaodan was at the spire again, so he took the winding stairs up. At the top he saw Xiaodan, silent with her hands clasped before her in the familiar gesture of one of her fighting forms.
She was beautiful to look at, always had been. And when she finally moved, going from one stance to the next with a fervency to her paces, Remy felt a familiar lump settling in his throat, remembering everything that had brought him here with her, everything that had happened to make them love each other.
She paused and brought her arms back to herself, curving them as if she was holding something invisible inches away from her, and closed her eyes. Many weeks ago, it would have brought out the blinding light she could harness, the one she’d always referred to as the sun. But the space between her hands remained empty. He waited for her as she stood there, unmoving, as long minutes ticked into a quarter of an hour. He could tell from the rigidity along her shoulders that she was straining, as if steeling herself for some powerful blow.
And then she relaxed, let out a soft noise that sounded like a sob.
Remy waited for her to acknowledge him. And when she did, her smile was bitter, brown eyes glassy with tears.
“I’m not going to stop trying,” she said.
“I know.”
“Speck said I needed to rest for another week before attempting this again.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t want you and Zidan worrying.”
“You know we’d worry more that you’re hiding this from us. And if Malekh hasn’t been actively trying to find you all this time, then he probably already knows where you are and what you’re doing.”
“How did you get so good at reading us?” Xiaodan hiccupped.
“How did you get so good at reading me?” Remy held his arms out, and Xiaodan flew to them. She didn’t cry again, but Remy held her all the same, waiting for her heartbeat to slow as much as it was capable of. She sniffed, looked past his shoulder. “I don’t know what else I should be doing,” she said. “It’s not like I can spend the whole day inside your laboratory unless I can annoy you while I’m there.”
Remy scowled, not bothering to turn around. “Can’t you ever announce yourself first?”
“I didn’t want to intrude until I had to,” Malekh said calmly.
“Speck and the others say to heal, but that’s what I’ve been doing for years. Decades.” Xiaodan dashed angrily at her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’ve been doing nothing but trying to heal, and it’s never going to end. Not as long as I’ve got Lilith’s heart.” She pressed her hands over her chest. “I want to do more than just wait to get better.”
They were handling it all wrong, Remy realized. The tinctures, the distractions, the sex.
“I need to talk to her,” he said.
Xiaodan paused. “Remy—”
“You know it’s what I should have done when we realized she’d found a way to infiltrate my dreams. She could have controlled me, used me to attack either one of you, but she didn’t. This feels different. Like that wasn’t her intention. Maybe there’s a way to get back your sunbringing abilities if this is hurting her as much as it’s hurting you. I can find out.”
“And what if she’s only biding her time, trying to lower your guard so she can compel you completely this time?” Malekh demanded.
Remy looked down at Xiaodan’s concerned face, at the strain in Malekh’s expression. He regretted having thought he was nothing more than a passing fancy to them, someone to forget with the passing of time.
“She’s my mother,” he said, which was not an answer and yet the only answer he could give.
MALEKH TOOK precautions, as Remy had expected him to. His methods left little to be desired, though.
“Is all this necessary?” he asked gingerly, tugging at the straps the doctors had attached to his body, slightly self-conscious at being half-naked in a room full of acquaintances.
“It is if we intend to learn when your dreaming cycle begins,” Tinsley told him cheerfully. “There’s nothing invasive about the procedure, if you’re worried.”
“Sounds pretty bloody intrusive if you all intend to eavesdrop on my sleep.”
“Oh, we won’t actually see what you’re dreaming about. We’ll only know when it starts through the increase in your heartbeats and subconscious eye movements.” He gestured at the odd machine the straps were connected to. “If the Night Empress does anything, we can easily bring you back awake.”
“Malekh doesn’t even fucking sleep.” Remy glared at the lord, who was making some last-minute tests on his contraption, loosening the wraps and tightening wires. “How would you know anything about dreams?”
“Sleep is a necessity for humans, but kindred are capable of it,” the man responded calmly. “Sleep is not quite what we experience; it is more a state of senseless inactivity. And since I lead a court of both humans and vampires, I thought it important to study the mortal waking and sleeping cycles to better understand and accommodate their well-being.”
“You’ve been sleeping beside Xiaodan and I the last several nights,” Remy said.
Malekh shot him a blank stare. “Was that not what you wanted? Or would you rather have me flee again like… a blushing chambermaid, was it?”
“Forget it,” Remy muttered; already a bright red, trying to ignore the curious looks from the doctors—and the particularly gleeful ones from both Xiaodan and Wits.
“Human sleep moves between two distinct states of passivity and activity,” the lord continued. “We’ve detected with some level of certainty when one slips into the other, and we’ll be monitoring for any unusual changes in your patterns. While these vary from person to person, there’s little time for us to gauge your habits, so we’ll be using the median we’ve learned from previous studies.”
“You’ve done this before?”
“Some humans here have been gracious enough to volunteer. But for the most part, our research was conducted mainly on felines.”
“Cats? You’ve been fucking testing this on ca—”
“They were not subjected to undue stress during the testing. The opposite, in fact, was our prerequisite for successful results. And if your current aggravation stems from the fact that we have used cats to improve the process—”
“You’re more nervous about this than I am,” Remy said with some surprise.
Malekh’s expression did not change. “The machine is perfectly safe, if that concerns you.”
Remy lay down and tried to find a much more comfortable position on the cot. “So I just fall asleep, and that’s it?”
“That’s it,” Speck confirmed.
“Bloody hard to do that when you’re all watching me.” He was going to get failing marks in dreaming of all things, something that was surely normal to fear and possible to achieve.
Malekh glanced at the other doctors. Speck was quick to take the hint. “We’ll come back when you’re asleep,” he said, giving them a merry wave as he began ushering the others out.
Xiaodan settled herself by the side of the cot, but Remy was having none of that. “If this blasted contraption isn’t going to do much, then it should be fine for her to lie down beside me, right?”
Xiaodan was already moving before Malekh could give his permission, plunking herself happily by his side. “Don’t worry,” she said, taking his hand. “I’ll be here the whole time.”
“As will I.” Malekh had positioned himself beside the machine, as close to them as he could manage. Remy just grinned at him.
“You think we three can fool around for a bit while we wait?” he asked, in a bid to ease the tension. “You two put me instantly to sleep that way.”
“Pendergast,” Malekh warned.
“Just a suggestion. Your fancy machine’s got a nice thrum to it. Might feel nice to have me or Xiaodan against—”
“I have a syringe full of a sleeping medication that can have you under in twenty seconds. Do not tempt me into using it.”
“Does that mean you’re at least considering it?”
“Pendergast.”
HE WAS standing inside Kinaiya Lodge, staring up at the portrait he had there of his mother. It didn’t matter that he’d already had the residence up for sale, his possessions stored with his solicitors’ firm for safekeeping. It didn’t matter that the lodge itself was still undergoing repairs, half-burnt from when an Elouvian mob had tried to destroy the place and drag him off to the gallows. Everything was exactly the same as when he’d lived in it, from the succulents on his shelves to the watercolors on his walls to the empty bottles of wine littering the common room from when he’d sunk into an alcohol-soaked depression, adrift and alone in his misery.
He realized that he was already dreaming when someone said behind him, very quietly, It should not have had to be this way.
She was so much like her portrait on the wall that it hurt Remy’s heart to see her. She looked almost human now, dressed in Elouvian clothes instead of the crimson robes he’d always seen her wear. Her bat wings were gone, tucked away somewhere and invisible from where he stood.
She, too, was looking up at her own picture, just as beautiful as she’d been painted, and whatever it was she saw in the face looking back at her, there was a faint quaver in her voice that took him by surprise.
“Why were you using my old nanny to talk to me?” Remy asked.
Was I? The Night Empress sounded surprisingly startled. I did not realize it. All I wanted was to watch you. She was kind. She was who I should have been to you.
She stepped beside him, her eyes never leaving the painting. This close, it came as a shock to Remy that she was shorter than he was by several inches. Out in the battlefield, inside Meridian Keep, she’d somehow seemed taller, larger than life. Her arms were bare, and he wondered about the absence of the First Court mark that should have been etched onto her skin.
Gone when I returned from death, the woman said, as if reading his mind. I’d allowed them to mark me. For protection, they said, when in reality it only made me a target. But perhaps I was not in a condition to give my consent, for they had already compelled me in some small way then.
“And afterward?” Remy asked.
Afterward, I learned of Aluria’s treachery. That they had not come as saviors, but with intentions to utterly annihilate Wikaan. That my own husband had known and said nothing to me. And my choice became clear.
Both fell silent for a while, Remy quietly reflecting on her words.
These plants need watering, the Night Empress said unexpectedly.
“I was away frequently,” Remy said. “Elke often let herself in to do so for me and feed the cats.”
Far less than either of you should. My Alurian ivy can live forever with the proper care. Between you and your friend, it will not last another ten years.
“That—that was your ivy?”
The plants at the manor were all under my care. Did you not take some saplings from there before you moved?
He could only nod, speechless. The Night Empress stood over the succulents, inspecting them carefully. She made no move to touch him, this time keeping her gaze carefully averted. Oddly, the rejection made him feel resentful.
“And now you can’t stand looking at me.”
Never! The word shot out of her like a cannon, as if that was all it took to bring her bottled emotions out into the open. Her hands unclenched, arms rising to the air in frustration. Remy had done that in the past, recognized her gestures as ones he’d done himself.
“My father—”
Do not speak of him. The words were cold and hard. But when the Night Empress finally turned to him, her eyes were lined and weary, as if even agelessness could not keep back the years that had passed between them. You are with them. The Summer Lord and the young heiress.
He heard the question she wanted to ask. “They seek an alliance with the humans. They have no desire to start another war when there can be peace. A war that you’ve been trying to hurry along.”
They seek an alliance with the humans, she echoed his words, her lips twitching as if she were smiling to herself. Even you speak like kindred now.
“Why are you here?” Remy burst out, tired of them dancing around each other. “Why won’t you leave us alone? You could end this. You could parlay with the Alurians—”
No. There was no forgiveness there, none of the curiosity that was there moments ago. They destroyed my home. They will pay.
“Well, now you’re destroying my home. Everything I love, everything I’ve known—you’ll take that all from me just as they’ve taken from you. It will never end, Mother. You compelled me, like the First Court once did you. You made me kill someone I cared about.”
I’m sorry. I didn’t know. For the first time, he saw doubt in her dark eyes. Her chin dropped. I don’t want to do this, she said. I don’t—
He heard the sharp crack her body made when it stiffened without warning, as if unseen hands had seized her. She cried out in alarm, and Remy grabbed her shoulders without thinking. He heard a murmur of voices blending into a harsher, guttural sound without words.
Even as he held her, he saw the wings rising from her back, and then another pair underneath the first, sleek and beautiful and horrifying. She looked up again, and her eyes were no longer the brown that had alerted him to her true identity, but a bright bloodred.
And then hate hit him like a thunderclap. It was her hatred pouring into him, her fury and pain directed at all the wretched mortals, those murdering, traitorous monsters. No, she would never forgive, not until she saw every one of them dead.
I will protect you, the Night Empress said, and her wings unfurled even farther.
And then Remy was awake again, Malekh’s hands around his shoulders, shaking him firmly. Xiaodan watched them, eyes wide.
“You started shaking uncontrollably,” the lord was saying. “I had to resort to a stimulant to bring you back.”
“No,” Remy gasped out. Remnants of the dream still clung to him, as did his mother’s hatred that felt like it could be his own. “She’ll protect me, but she’ll kill them all,” he whispered, and then burst into hysterical laughter.