19

Red

red fell to her knees in the cage of thorns. Her hands tore at the dark vines until they bled, her breath loud and fast as she fought uselessly against the bars.

She knew the cage wasn’t real. But that didn’t ease the sting of the thorns slicing her palms or the ache of the cold seeping up from the silver mist at her feet. Fear clawed at her throat. Her own shadow felt like it was dragging her down, growing longer and darker until it was a chasm at her back.

Red knew what would happen if she fell into darkness here. She would belong to the Wraith forever. Or at least until he got bored and threw her aside, a puppet with her strings cut. Worse, Red knew with every fiber of her being that the Wraith would use her to hurt Shane. She’d felt the malice in him as those icy fingers crawled into her mind and she lost consciousness.

The last thing she remembered was squeezing Shane’s hand. Her head was throbbing as she pushed Shane back into the battle and slumped into the wall, watching that rust-red coat flare as Shane fought the way absolutely no one else fought. Even against the creatures of the Spindle Witch, she knew Shane was going to win. Shane always won.

The dark arms of unconsciousness were almost welcome, until she’d felt that prickle on the back of her neck, like something scratching its way in. Another mind overtaking hers. The dark magic she had feared for so long wrapped around her like an icy mist, the cold filling her lungs until she thought she’d drown in it.

Red had clung desperately to consciousness, but it was too late. The Wraith stretched under her skin, lifting Red’s hand and dragging it a little too hard through Cinzel’s fur, making the wolf whine. Everything she loved in the palm of his hand.

The next moment, she found herself in this prison of thorns. The brambles twisted around each other in snarled knots, gleaming like a tangle of golden thread. Red had no idea whether this prison was conjured from the Wraith’s mind or her own nightmares. There was a part of her that had never left the Forest of Thorns, after all.

Red screamed in frustration, smashing her hands against the bars. This wasn’t fair. Her connection to the Spindle Witch was finally broken. After everything she and Shane had been through, the Wraith didn’t get to twist her and make her a puppet for that dark magic again.

A long mournful howl sounded behind her. Red froze. Her hands clenched tight into her pooled skirt.

The moon was suddenly glinting through the jutting branches above her. Only it wasn’t the moon. It was a winking coin, spinning as though flipped high into the air. Red remembered it all too vividly—the silver coin shining between the Wraith’s fingers as he sneered at her in a stolen body, the night he told her the secret to taking over minds.

Everyone has a nightmare inside them, Red. At least one thing that chews them ragged in the hidden recesses of their mind. Let it consume them, and they’re yours forever. His eyes glowed as he looked her over, teeth bared. I wonder what yours would be.

The wolf called again, closer, and Red curled into herself. The Wraith had trapped her here, but the wolf was Red’s nightmare—Red’s heart, calling mournfully through the mist.

If she turned around, she knew what she would find. The white wolf, Shadow. The monster that led the pack in the Forest of Thorns.

Even as she thought it, Red felt hot breath on her neck. A low growl thrummed in her ear. She forced herself to focus on her bleeding palms, on the sting of the thorns. The Wraith could only control people who couldn’t assert their will. If Red could wake up, she could escape. But this was no ordinary dream. And the white wolf that stalked her was no ordinary wolf.

Regret. Remorse. Guilt. Loathing. All the things that chewed her ragged in the dark.

Red felt the prickle of teeth on the back of her neck as the wolf’s giant jaws creaked open. Hot saliva dripped onto her collarbone. Red hunched forward in terror and despair. When she turned around, when she saw the wolf, it would become real. And Shadow would drag her into the Wraith’s grasp forever.

White fur tickled the edge of her vision.

“Red!”

A flash of golden sand swirled around her, chasing away the mist and the cold and the jaws of the wolf. Red jerked her head up as Perrin appeared on the other side of the bars. His tan robe sparkled as if woven from shifting grains of sand. Perrin’s eyes were wide, but he shot her a reassuring smile as he yanked at the cage of thorns, struggling to wrench it apart. “Hold on,” he said, voice tight. “I’m going to get you out of there.”

Red struggled to her feet, watching in horror as Perrin cut his hands to ribbons on the thorns. The wolf at her back was gone, but she could still feel the mist roiling around her—the icy will of the Wraith trying to keep her here. She grabbed Perrin’s hands.

“It’s no use,” she told him.

“We haven’t even tried yet!” Perrin protested.

Red shook her head. “The Forest of Thorns is unbreakable here—because it’s from my mind.” That was how dream magic worked: the more you believed something, the truer it became. The Forest of Thorns in Red’s nightmares was absolute. And so was its hold over her. Even as she thought it, the vines slithered over her arms, the thorns bristling as they grew thicker and higher.

“You can’t give up,” Perrin said urgently. “You’ve got a dream Witch on your side, remember?”

He backed away from the cage, lifting his hands like he was cupping something between them. Sand, Red realized, watching the golden flecks pour from one palm to the other as he turned them over and over like an hourglass.

Perrin threw his hands toward her. Sand spilled out of his billowing sleeves, hissing like a great storm as it smashed against the thorns. The cage shivered, a few of the twisted branches crumbling to black dust. Red’s heart surged. But when the last golden grains blew away, the Forest of Thorns still stood around her—impenetrable, inescapable. Silvery mist curled around her leg like a shackle. Her body felt numb, the cold overtaking her inch by inch.

Red gasped. The Wraith’s mist was coming for Perrin, too, slithering around his feet.

“You have to go,” she begged. “He’s too strong here. You’ll be trapped.”

Perrin’s expression was grim. “Not without you,” he insisted, summoning more golden sand.

Before he could form the hourglass, dozens of silvery white hands shot out of the mist. They wrapped around Perrin’s arms, grasping his tan robe and wrenching his shoulders back. The sand poured through his fingers.

“Perrin!” Red screamed.

Perrin fought to break free. But the hands were too strong, yanking him down to his knees. He didn’t even have time to gasp before long silver fingers wrapped around his throat. The mist rushed in Red’s ears like the laughter of the Wraith.

Red couldn’t stand it. “Just leave me here and go!” she begged, her desperate eyes locked on Perrin’s. Shane might have cracked Red’s heart open, but Perrin was her very first friend, and she couldn’t stand to lose him, either. “Please—he’s going to consume you.”

Perrin’s eyes were wild as he fought the silvery hands trying to pull him under. Then he sucked in a deep breath and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he was smiling.

“It’s all right, Red.” His voice was soft and sure, as if he could no longer feel the mist hands crawling all over him. “I understand now. This is magic that can only bind you through fear. But fear is just one tiny part of the unconscious mind. Dream magic is supposed to be so much more than that. It’s supposed to be beautiful.”

His eyes sparkled as he said the last. Red watched in awe as Perrin surged to his feet, throwing his arms wide. The hands exploded away from him, just tendrils of mist evaporating into the air.

Perrin raised his hands again, his palms facing each other as he formed the hourglass. Something shimmered on his fingertips. But it wasn’t flecks of sand spinning between his hands this time—it was water. Blue droplets glittered around him like falling rain. Everywhere they splashed down, the darkness ran like watercolor, the shadows rippling away into a shining lake that stretched out from Perrin’s feet.

This time, when Perrin reached for Red, the cage of thorns collapsed around her, nothing but a cold, hard rain. For one moment, she was lost in the gale. She thought she heard the Wraith hissing in her ears, promising this wasn’t over, but she wasn’t sure whether he was talking to her or to Shane, somewhere outside the dream. Then Perrin’s fingers closed around hers, and he pulled her out, into the sun.

Perrin stood surrounded by water, his robe glimmering blue like the sky reflected all around them. He looked radiant.

“Perrin . . .” Red’s breath stuck in her throat. “What is this?”

“The true form of my dream magic, I think.” Perrin raised his hand, staring at the drops of water sparkling on his skin.

Water, not sand. Red swallowed. “So the Paper Witch was right about your power.”

Perrin laughed warmly. “He usually is. Though don’t tell him I said that.”

His head tipped, as though he were listening to something in the distance. His eyes grew wide, and he wrenched around, staring at something Red couldn’t hope to see.

The dream wavered around them. The water shivered under Red’s feet. Then she was plunging through the surface, the pressure closing around her like a vise. She wrenched up with a gasp, back in her own body again. Only the squeezing wasn’t gone, because it wasn’t part of a dream. It was Shane’s arms wrapped around her, holding Red fiercely.

Red blinked up through her disheveled curls. The three of them lay in a graceless heap at the foot of an apple tree, someone’s knee digging unpleasantly into her spine. She and Perrin must have squashed Shane as the dream magic pulled them under.

Shane’s worried face hovered over her. “Red? Perrin? Somebody say something so I know that slimy, silver-eyed bastard isn’t still holed up in there.”

She looked a little worse for wear, a smear of blood at the corner of her mouth. Red trembled. She’d done that—or rather, the Wraith had, in her body.

Red reached up to trace Shane’s bloody lip. “It’s me,” she promised. “I’m back.”

Shane’s eyebrows drew together. “Tell me something only Red would know.”

There were a hundred things on the tip of Red’s tongue—the secrets she’d shared with Shane alone, the promises Shane had made her even before Red deserved them. But she knew the perfect one. The moment at the card table on the border of Darfell, when she had breathed into Shane’s ear, You never let go of a lady once you have her.

Red flicked a wild strand of hair out of Shane’s face. “You’re terrible at poker because you always wear your heart on your sleeve,” she said fondly. “And you have a mean right hook.”

Shane huffed a laugh into her hair. “I disagree with the first one, but the right hook I’ll take.” Then Shane hauled her in, and Red found herself crushed against the girl’s shoulder. Shane’s grip was shaky, as if she’d been holding on until her muscles ached. But she smelled of apples and sunlight, and she was warm—so warm after the icy cage of thorns.

Whatever else the huntsman might have said was lost when Cinzel tackled them, trying to lick both their faces at once.

“Seriously, I thought you were a goner. And so did this mutt, obviously,” Shane muttered, pushing Cinzel’s slobbery head away from her.

Red pressed her cheek into his soft fur. “I would have been, if not for Perrin.”

She craned her head around to share a smile with Perrin. But he hadn’t moved, his body slumped against the trunk and his eyes shut tight.

Red’s stomach flipped. “Perrin? What is it?” She shook his shoulder, and Perrin sprang awake, gasping like a fish out of water.

“I had her for a second!”

“Had who?” Shane wanted to know.

“Fi!” he said, his voice hushed. “It was just for a moment, but . . . I saw her. In the dream. I think I can reach her again.”

“You’re serious,” Shane breathed.

A huge grin split Perrin’s face. “We might actually have a chance. We did it!”

His excitement was infectious. Red threw her arms around his neck in a grateful hug, while Cinzel crooned and circled them, his tail whapping Perrin’s face.

“No, you did it,” Red whispered. “And you saved me. Thanks, Perrin. Or should I say Dream Witch?”

Perrin laughed. “Hey, what are friends for?”