“It’s a pleasure to meet you.” The weirdness was intensifying. They both looked at each other for a long moment… then he saw the hint of a smile twitching at the corner of her lips. “What is it?”
“This is …” She shook her head, gesturing absent-mindedly with the hand that was still holding the knife. Wincing, she set the blade down safely on a small table, then turned back to him with that smile spreading across her full lips. “I mean, what do you say to someone you thought was a dream?”
“I’m facing the same predicament if that’s any consolation.” Conrad took a breath, tried to focus his racing thoughts. Get a grip, Prince Conrad. You’re supposed to be good under pressure. “Are you alright? That man didn’t hurt you, did he?”
“He didn’t get the chance,” she said with a quick shake of her head, her luminous eyes not leaving his face. “Thanks to you.”
He shrugged, feeling suddenly self-conscious. “I didn’t do much. You’d have seen him off without me. Though it might’ve done some damage,” he added, glancing around the little room that they were standing in. Definitely not enough space here for a dragon in all her winged glory… he was glad to have spared her the need to break her possessions. She looked at him curiously for a moment.
“How did you get here?” she asked, though he couldn’t shake the feeling she’d wanted to ask something else. “You weren’t in my bedroom the last time I checked.”
His eyes widened, a jolt of shock moving through him like lightning, and he hastened for the bedroom door, heart pounding. The portal… he’d just walked away from it without so much as a glance over his shoulder. He’d been so fixated on saving the woman from his dreams… Mira, he corrected himself, feeling an odd flush of pleasure as he thought of her name. He’d been so fixated on saving Mira that he’d completely forgotten about how he’d gotten here. Sure enough, there was absolutely no trace of the portal left in the room. Only the rumpled bed, the gathered darkness. There was no way back home.
He turned away from the bedroom door and moved back into the living room, suddenly feeling like he was overstepping a boundary. He’d spent countless dream hours in that room, of course, but somehow it felt different to be here for real. Mira was looking at him intently, her arms folded over her chest and that watchful, wary look in her golden eyes. He couldn’t help but smile a little as he looked at her, and he saw her lips twitch in response before she consciously smoothed her expression.
“My friends helped me through,” he said, gesturing towards the doorway. “But for the moment, I’m afraid it looks like I can’t go back.”
Mira studied him for a moment. “The last time we met,” she said softly. “You said that you sensed I was in danger. How?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Just an intuition I couldn’t seem to shake. And then, when I realized that there was a chance you weren’t a dream… well, that was all the more reason to come.” Her expression was uncertain, and he bit his lip, suddenly worried he was being too forward. “Forgive me if I’m speaking out of turn.”
“It’s—no,” she said, shaking her head. “No, this is—useful. This is good. We should share what we know, figure out what’s happening here. But I think we’re going to need tea,” she added. He followed her into the dark room adjacent to the living room, jumping in shock as she reached out to flick some kind of switch that lit the room immediately. “Sorry,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at him. He did his best not to crane his neck up at the glowing disk affixed to the ceiling. He was grateful Cato wasn’t here—the mage would be having a field day trying to figure out what kind of magic was illuminating the room.
But Conrad wasn’t interested in staring at the walls or the ceiling. He wasn’t even interested in the strange, shining devices that covered Mira’s countertops. He only had eyes for Mira… for the way her chestnut hair bounced around her face, just the way he remembered it from his dreams. The way the robe she had pulled around her shoulders disguised but didn’t quite hide the gorgeous curves of her body. The way her golden eyes seemed to flash and dance as she glanced over at him from where she was preparing the tea, a faint smile lingering on her lips.
For all intents and purposes, the two of them were strangers, Conrad reminded himself. He would remember that. He would be polite. But still… there was something about her that made him feel like he’d known her his entire life. And despite everything else that was going on, it was that feeling—that hope so acute and intense that he was almost frightened to face it—that was foremost in his mind.
He only hoped that Mira felt the same spark when those golden eyes met his.
Chapter 9 - Mira
Mira had cycled through about a dozen different phrases for ‘complete break with reality’ before she gave up on trying to diagnose herself. Whatever was going on here was strange enough without adding the unnecessary layer of relentless self-analysis. If she’d snapped like a twig, mentally speaking, then there wasn’t much she was going to be able to do about it, now was there? Might as well see this ridiculous situation through to its logical conclusion.
The man from her dreams was here, she kept telling herself. Sitting at her kitchen counter, politely sipping at his tea, and those stunning blue eyes of his were even more breathtaking in person. It was all she could do to hold his gaze for more than a few seconds, too frightened that her expression would give her away, somehow. But give away what? She’d given everything away in her dreams already… the blush that threatened to rise to her cheeks stopped her from entertaining those memories too much. Did he remember all of those dreams with the same intensity that she did? It was unimaginable. There were things she’d done with this blue-eyed stranger that she’d never in a million years evenconsidereddoing if she knew he was an actual person she was going to meet someday…
And here he was. Flesh and blood, sitting in her kitchen. She’d even summoned up the courage to let their fingers brush when she’d passed him his cup of tea, and the electricity that had shot through her at the warmth of his skin had confirmed it. A real, flesh-and-blood man. With a name and everything. Conrad. She liked it. There was something old-fashioned about it, something strong and upright that seemed to suit him.
“I did thank you for saving my life, right?” she said abruptly. “I have no idea what that guy would have done if you weren’t here.”
“I was happy to help.” Conrad’s voice had always sent shivers down her spine in her dreams, and it was even worse in person. She took a steadying sip of the herbal tea she’d made for them both, in the vain hope that it might calm her down a little. No luck thus far.
“It feels so strange to be speaking this language.” She bit her lip, fighting back the wild urge to laugh. “I thought… I mean, I thought I’d imagined it. A whole language. But it’s real.”
“And so are you,” Conrad said softly, those blue eyes lingering on her face again. That look in his eyes… she had to turn her gaze from it, it set too many butterflies battering their wings against the inside of her ribcage. “If I understand the situation correctly… you, too, have been dreaming of me for some time?”
She nodded. “Five or six years, I think.” His eyes widened slightly, and she tilted her head. “What?”
“It’s been less than that, for me. Perhaps two years.” A pause. “It’s possible that our years are different lengths.”
She looked at him for a long moment, trying to ignore the way that casual comment had made her whole brain seem to lurch. “Our years… what are you saying?”
“If my understanding of the situation is correct,” Conrad said carefully, “then… we are currently in a place called Earth.”
The English word sounded strange on his lips. Mira tried not to let the strangeness overwhelm her. “Currently,” she repeated. “You’re telling me that you’re from somewhere else.”
He nodded, and suddenly she felt the wild laughter bubbling to the surface. She pressed one hand to her mouth, trying to suppress it… a faint smile rose to Conrad’s lips, but it quickly faded as her laughter built in pitch and volume. Hysterical, that was the word, she thought faintly… and then, seamlessly, she felt the laughter change gears and realized that there were tears rolling down her cheeks.
This was embarrassing, she thought faintly as she heard the scrape of Conrad’s chair, felt him move over to put a comforting arm around her shoulder. Here she was, sobbing her heart out against the warm shoulder of a man who was either a complete stranger or one of her most intimate acquaintances, depending on where you stood on the reality of dreams… but she could no sooner have stopped herself from weeping than she could have turned back the tides, so despite her embarrassment, the tears kept flowing. There was a strange sense of catharsis in it, of relief from the days and weeks of tension and stress. The realization that she’d been right, that there was someone watching her house, that the worst imaginable scenario had come true… she couldn’t tell if it made her feel worse or better, but it was definitely a new feeling.