Damp moss pressed into Claire’s cheek. She took stock of her injuries slowly, carefully moving each aching part and evaluating the pain before she pushed herself to her feet.
Claire’s head ached, and she raised a hand to gently run her fingers over the scar. Her fingertips were cold against her scalp, and she shivered. Her hair was growing out, a soft dusting of dark brown hair that felt like velvet.
The ravine stretched to her left and right, with a friendly little stream burbling at the bottom. Tall hills rose behind her and before her; worn rocks poked their heads through the thick layers of moss and fallen leaves in a few places.
Thirst made her mouth dry. The water looked clear and devoid of any obviously hostile inhabitants, but she still studied it carefully before reaching out to cup some water in her hand.
“Don’t!” the king barked from behind her. He snatched her wrist and jerked her roughly away from the water.
“I’m thirsty,” Claire snapped. “There’s nothing here! It’s fine.” She pulled away from him.
“Is there not?” The king gestured invitingly toward the water.
A ghostly stain spread through the water, apparently unaffected by the ripples and eddies. A face appeared and grinned at the king. “So possessive.”
“I should have known,” Claire muttered. “It probably bites, doesn’t it?”
“Most things do in these lands,” he said in a low voice. “Come away from the water.”
She stepped back carefully, noticing that he edged between her and the water even as she retreated. He can be chivalrous. The thought made her warm a little toward him.
Then he turned and strode away without looking at her, following the creek upstream. Claire followed, frowning at his back.
“There’s something on your shirt,” she said.
He stopped and glanced back at her. “Blood, I presume.”
She blinked. Yes, of course it was blood. It was rust-red. But for an instant, the smear had appeared blue, right at the edge of his worn collar, where it smeared into his white-blond hair.
What an odd trick of the light.
“It looked strange for a moment,” she muttered. “Actually, I should be asking if you’re all right.”
“Irrelevant.”
“Where are we going?” Her voice followed him as he turned to continue walking. “Because I’m going to need water eventually. Also I don’t see how asking if you’re all right is irrelevant.”
He didn’t answer immediately, though his steps slowed. “South.”
“Why south?” She caught up to him and glanced at his face. He stopped and put a hand to his head, his long, thin fingers covering his eyes. “Are you dizzy?”
“The loss is disorienting,” he murmured. He staggered, and she caught at his arm. He flinched away and then stumbled to his knees, pressing both hands against his temples.
Claire stretched her feet toward the fire. The room was cool, and the warmth was welcome.
The nightmare king appeared to be half-asleep in the opposite chair.
“Why am I here?” Claire asked. “When is this, anyway? Why would I be dreaming of something that hasn’t happened yet and won’t ever happen?”
The king made a series of intricate gestures with his left hand, leaving a trail of faintly glowing sparks in the air.
“You insist on speaking as if dreams are not real.” His voice was softly seductive, velvet promises and sunlit mornings.
“They’re not. They’re just… dreams.”
He glanced at her, his eyes sparkling with hidden mirth. “Just because in your experience dreams and what you call ‘the real world’ do not often interact does not mean that one is more real than the other. Nor does it mean they cannot interact. You know this.” His thin lips lifted in a faint smirk, as if her confusion were darkly amusing to him. “You dream of things that affected you in the other world, and sometimes what you dream affects how you think and act when you are not dreaming.”
She studied him, how the light glittered in his dandelion-fluff hair, how his long, pale fingers rested on his knees. His hands were not as relaxed as his posture would imply, nor as his voice seemed to convey.
“Yes, that’s true.” She watched his face. “But that’s because dreams are just thoughts. They only exist in my head. Just because they feel real doesn’t mean they are real.”
“You have no reliable basis for that opinion. You formed it based on your experience, which I suppose is logical enough.” A sardonic smile flickered around his lips. “But your experience does not include magic, and you interpret everything as if time were a line, with you moving steadily along it with no way to change position other than by waiting, no way to skip ahead or jump back, or even to truly see any point other than where you are.” He gestured gracefully. “This is so far from reality that we might compare it to someone who believes in a flat earth because it agrees with what they see… or at least, they think it does.”
Claire felt her heartbeat quicken in anger, and pushed the feeling down. This was a dream; besides, at least the nightmare king wasn’t threatening her.
“Do you enjoy making yourself feel superior?”
He raised his eyebrows at her. “Is that what you think I’m doing?” The smile on his lips flickered and faded. “Oh, you do.” The spark in his eyes flashed oddly, and he looked toward the fire. “Very well.” One narrow hand tightened on his knee, and then he murmured, “The best men die of a broken heart for the things they cannot tell.”
“Are you dying of a broken heart?” She couldn’t keep the skepticism out of her voice. “Forgive me if I don’t believe that.”
“I forgive you everything.” His words were nearly inaudible. “Not that you’ll believe that either.”
“What have I ever done to you?” She frowned, genuinely curious now. This version of him is delusional as well. Then guilt assailed her, and she muttered, “Other than burn the palm of your hand off, I mean.”
A soft chuckle startled her. She hadn’t imagined that he could laugh, much less that it would sound like music.
“I’d forgotten that,” he murmured. He seemed to be looking at the fire, but she caught a flash of blue as he glanced at her. “You were magnificent, you know. So brave and furious. You had no idea what you were doing.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
He gave a full-throated laugh that made the very air tremble with mirth. “Oh yes, you did.” His smile held no trace of bitterness, and he glanced at her as though they were sharing an especially funny joke. “Of all the pains I have suffered, that is the most trivial of unpleasant memories. I console myself with the memory of your eyes blazing in righteous anger, your lips raspberry red. I almost kissed you, you know.”
Claire stood abruptly, trembling with anger. “You are mocking me!” she cried. “You… you insufferable, arrogant, selfish, thoughtless, stupid man! I’m trying to figure out how to save your tail and you’re making fun of me.”
He drew back, his eyebrows drawing downward in an apparently genuine expression of confusion. “I have no tail.”
The heavy crystal manacles caught the light as if they were made of glass.
The king shuddered, his head in his hands. The thin black shirt stretched tight over his shoulders, and Claire sucked in a breath as she surveyed the damage. Perhaps it was not entirely due to magic that she had not been killed as the tower fell; the nightmare king appeared to have been battered by every stone. His blood looked nearly black where it had dried and crusted into the fabric of his shirt, but bright red showed through a tear near one shoulder where a wound she could not see had recently bled. She had the impression that he’d been beaten thoroughly even before the tower had fallen.
“Does your back hurt?” she asked. She didn’t expect much of an answer; mostly she hoped to keep him talking.
He pressed his hands to his temples. “Probably.”
“Did you shield me from the rocks?” Claire found her throat unexpectedly tight at the thought of it.
He made a strange, inarticulate noise that might have meant anything or nothing.
Claire stood helplessly for a moment. The manacles looked so very wrong against his thin wrists. They were beautiful, almost like the jade stone bracelets like she’d seen in a magazine, but thicker and heavier, with sharp edges apparently intended to cause pain.
“Do you know how to get those off?” she said.
He looked at her blankly. “Get what off?”
“The manacles.”
He looked down at his wrists and grimaced, as if pulling his thoughts together were particularly difficult. “It’s oighear. It’s…” he gestured gracefully. “It’s magical. It’s made of water, shaped by magic and locked into the shape as if crystalized like ice. But it is denser than water in any natural form, and much harder and stronger than diamond. Someone expended a great deal of magic to form these for me.” He frowned faintly, his expression distant.
Claire wondered whether he’d forgotten what he was talking about. “And…” she prompted.
He blinked. “It’s immensely useful for things such as blades. It holds an edge well. But one cannot make pieces with moving parts out of oighear, so it is rarely used for anything complex like a lock. Did you notice that even the chain was bronze? A chain is far too complicated to be made of oighear.” His voice trailed away, as if he were thinking of something else, or perhaps of nothing at all.
“So how do we get them off?” Claire asked.
His eyes flicked to her, and he looked confused for a moment. “Get what off?”
“The manacles!”
“I don’t have the key. I am captured.” His eyes were vacant, as if he stared through her to something else that took all his attention. “It’s… Symbolism is important in magic. The one with authority to release the manacles would simply pull them open. To one without authority, they might outlast the sun.” He shook his head as if to focus his thoughts, and then looked down at his wrists. “I expect my bones will have very pretty bracelets.”
Claire reached out a tentative hand to touch the manacle. It felt like glass, cool and smooth against the pads of her fingers. She gripped it with both hands and pulled, not able to discern where it was meant to divide into two pieces.
Nothing happened.
The king appeared gently bemused by her attempt, his strange eyes flicking over her face as she strained against the oighear.
His words were so quiet she wondered whether she imagined them. “Slow buds the pink dawn like a rose, from out night's gray and cloudy sheath; softly and still it grows and grows, petal by petal, leaf by leaf…”
“What was that?” she panted, glaring at the clear manacle. It was smeared with blood, his and hers together.
He ran his right thumb through the red on the left manacle, frowning at it. “You’re bleeding,” he murmured. His gaze snapped to her hands, and he caught both her hands in his, studying the slight cuts across her fingers from the sharp edge of the oighear. “I’m sorry.” His mouth twisted in grief, and he folded her hands carefully within his. He caught his breath in what sounded like a sob, and bowed his head.
“It’s all right.” Claire’s voice shook. How had he even seen her blood among his? The cuts stung, certainly, but they weren’t particularly deep. She wasn’t upset by them. Why was he? His grief, raw and mostly hidden, seemed to press upon her uncomfortably, like a weight she did not know how to bear.
She pulled away gently, and he opened his hands, letting her slip her fingers from his.
Some strange emotion seemed to slide through her veins at his touch, at the strength of his hands and the odd, warm light in his vacant eyes, as if seeing her made him almost remember who he was. She pushed the emotion down and focused on the manacles.
The king’s terrible strength had had no effect on the oighear when he tried to shatter the manacles earlier. She would probably have no success that way either.
“Maybe I can pry it open,” she muttered. She pulled the butter knife from its sheath and tried to wedge it between the top of the king’s wrist and the oighear.
When the metal touched his skin, he sucked in his breath and jerked away, his eyes wide and wild.
“I’m sorry!” Claire cried. “I didn’t know it would hurt.”
His gaze snapped toward her face. “Did you not?” His voice shook, raw and rough with pain. “Yourself the sun, and I the melting frost, Myself the flax and you the kindly fire.” He caught his breath and shuddered, his eyes closed tight in a rictus of pain or anger. “Bright star that you are, remember that not all of us are made of flame.”
His wrist had a black burn half-hidden by the oighear manacle; the skin looked charred. The size and shape matched the back of the blade of her knife.
“Why did it burn you?” she muttered. “It’s not iron.” But she remembered the kelpie and frowned. Stainless steel. I guess stainless steel has iron in it.
She looked back at the oighear and was surprised to see that the surface seemed roughened. The interior and top surface were slightly bubbled, like plastic that had gotten too hot.
Hm. She glanced at the king, who stared back at her blankly.
The butter knife appeared unaffected by touching the oighear. She frowned thoughtfully, and then pressed the flat of the blade to the top of the manacle, careful not to touch the king’s skin.
Nothing happened immediately, and she tilted her head, trying to decide if she smelled something unusual. She pressed the knife harder into the oighear, which seemed to soften for an instant, and then in the blink of an eye, it flashed into water and steam.
“Ha!” Claire crowed. She reached for the king’s other wrist. “Let me help you with that.”
The king held out his arm without a word, and she melted the oighear in a few seconds.
The water washed much of the old blood from his wrists, leaving the gashes open and oozing blood.
“That actually doesn’t look much better,” Claire said softly.
The king glanced at her. “It was a kind thing to do, especially since you believed it pointless.”
Irritation made her voice sharp. “You’re welcome, then.”
He tilted his head, his eyes narrowed as if he were trying, and failing, to solve a difficult puzzle. “You are angry. Why?”
“You just told me I wasted my time getting those things off you. A ‘thank you’ wouldn’t be out of line, you know.”
His pale eyebrows drew down in puzzlement. “I said it was a kind thing to do, and more important than you realized. Is more thanks necessary for something you did believing it only to be kind rather than of vital import, and more for your comfort than for mine?” He looked away, his lips twisting in an expression of dismay. “I am discourteous. My apologies. I have forgotten my manners as well as myself.” He pressed his face into his hands, unaware or uncaring that his fingers smeared blood and water over his face and into his hair. “Everything is unraveling and I cannot find the thread,” he breathed.
“What is unraveling?” Claire pushed her irritation aside. He’s insane. I shouldn’t expect his manners to be perfect.
“Me!” he snapped, though he didn’t look at her. “Me. I am hidden and the longer I am lost, the more tenuous the recollection becomes. Myth and mist and smoke and reflection and memory evaporating like dew under the sun. I thought I could hide myself long enough to make a difference, hold out long enough, hide myself inside myself and give myself away, and…” He rocked back and forth, his hands clenched against the sides of his head.
“It’s all right,” Claire said. “You’re going to be all right.” Stupid platitudes! But what else can I say?
He glanced up at her, eyes blank and startled. “Do you think so?” he asked. “How?”
A lump rose in her throat, and she licked her lips. “I don’t know.”
He smiled, a reckless, sharp-toothed smile that made her blood suddenly turn to fire within her. “I believe you,” he murmured. He raised one hand to brush the back of his fingers against her cheek, the touch light as a butterfly’s wings.
She wasn’t sure whether he meant that he believed her that he would be all right, or believed her that she didn’t know how. But his sudden smile had made the words irrelevant.
I don’t want to like you, you arrogant, impossible man. I don’t want to like you. Don’t you even dare make my heart race like that.