At least her phone had stopped going off. Maybe Eddie had finally taken her silence as a hint… or run out of numbers to contact her from. Still, she hated the feeling that he’d gotten under her skin. It wasn’t just him, of course. It was the last guy, too, the restraining order guy… and a handful of others who’d been threatening in their own way. And if she was really honest, a lot of it ran all the way back to her childhood, to the last night she’d seen her mother. But that wasn’t somewhere she wanted to go right now. Her next appointment with her therapist was in a couple of weeks, and while she knew she could always call to ask for it to be moved up, she was holding off for now. If she didn’t hear from Eddie again, maybe that would be enough to settle her down.
For now, though, a night on the couch with wine and her favorite takeaway worked wonders. She wasn’t even thinking about the van across the street when she turned in for the night, curling up contentedly in her enormous bed. It took up far more of the bedroom than was really necessary, and it was an absolute hassle to change the sheets by herself with her pint-sized frame, but Mira didn’t regret the purchase for a second. It was the delicious little luxuries in life that made it worth living, and she loved that her bed could comfortably sleep five of her.
Besides, maybe one day she’d share it with someone special. Then they’d both be grateful for the extra room, wouldn’t they?
That was the last thought she had before sleep claimed her, and maybe that was what brought him to her … her favorite recurring dream, her handsome blue-eyed suitor. He’d been visiting her for years now, on and off, and for the life of her she couldn’t figure out the pattern. But part of her liked that he was a surprise.
For as long as she could remember, Mira had been a lucid dreamer. Every time she dreamed, she was not only aware she was dreaming, but that she was also in complete control of what took place. For a while, she hadn’t realized that this was unusual, always mildly confused when people complained about stress dreams or their unpleasant nightmares… why didn’t they simply choose to dream about something else? Then she learned that the ability she’d taken for granted was something that not many other people ever experienced.
But this dream was an exception. The first time she’d dreamed of him, he’d surprised her… something she was so unused to that she’d actually woken up with a start. The second time, she controlled her reaction, and quickly learned that when it came to the mysterious blue-eyed man, her dreams behaved like everyone else’s. He was unpredictable and uncontrollable. And she wouldn’t change a thing about him even if she could. At first, they’d been very straightforward sex dreams that always left her blushing when she woke. But over time, they’d grown more and more complicated. And now… well, now it was a little embarrassing to even talk about. Her friends knew she had a recurring dream about a handsome, muscular man with sandy blond hair and piercing blue eyes, but they didn’t know how deep the dream had gotten.
They didn’t know that she’d learned a wholelanguagefor him.
After a few purely physical dreams, she’d started trying to talk to him. But he’d always responded with strange words she’d never heard before. Slowly, though, she began to recognize patterns, to pick up on meaning where there’d only been sounds before. Now, she was—for want of a better word—fluent. She’d tried Googling a few of the words she’d learned, making her best guess at spelling, in the hopes that she might have somehow subconsciously learned a real language… but there were few results. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, it was gibberish. Gibberish that Mira was fluent in.
Still, it meant she could talk to her dream suitor when he appeared… and she was thrilled when she saw him stepping out of the shadows of her living room, that handsome smile on his face. Mira quickly set the scene, decorating her table with candles and spreading a few rose petals across the floor, too… she could alter the environment around him in these dreams, just not the man himself. And why would she want to mess with perfection? There he stood, wearing a crisp white shirt that made her fingers itch to tear it from his shoulders. She was another woman altogether in her dreams. For someone who’d done little more than kissing a man in the real world, she got very adventurous indeed when she was asleep…
But tonight didn’t feel like one of the dreams where they simply tore each other’s clothes off. Instead, he pulled her into his arms for a long embrace. Mira barely cleared five feet, and even in heels she was best described as pint-sized—even the shortest guy she’d ever been on a date with looked tall standing next to her. But her dream guy didn’t need her to look tall. Somehow, though, the height difference was never awkward. She seemed to fit into his arms like she belonged there… and then she felt his hand slip into hers and the two of them were walking down her street, talking softly.
She never remembered much of what they talked about. Sometimes she told him about her day, sometimes he told her about his… a lot of the time, she just took him on tours of her favorite places around the city. Taking advantage of her lucid dreaming powers, she’d move them seamlessly from the beach to the hills, from her favorite restaurants to her aunt’s farm where she’d spent a lot of her teenage years. He was always interested, always attentive… and he often remembered details she’d mentioned in other dreams.
Of course he did, she always scolded herself. He was a figment of her imagination, wasn’t he? A dream, not a person. Still, she’d be lying if she said she didn’t have a real attachment to him. Imaginary or not, he made her feel the way she knew that her soulmate would make her feel, once she met him in real life. And as much as she’d always been too embarrassed to tell anyone about her dreams, she was fiercely grateful for them for reminding her not to settle for anything that didn’t feel this good.
They were walking down her street now, and her soft smile faded a little when she realized that she’d subconsciously replicated it the way she’d last seen it. It was late at night, with the shadowy figure of the van parked down the block. Now, it looked menacing—probably a reflection of the anxiety she’d been pinning on it since the disastrous date with Eddie. She’d told her dream suitor all about it as they’d walked, grateful for the protective way he’d squeezed her hand, for his firm reassurance that she deserved much better treatment. There was her little house, the lights glowing in the window. She was already looking forward to getting him into bed, to making the most of the time they had together, because all too soon, she knew, she’d wake up alone…
But now, to her surprise, she felt his steps slow. His blue eyes were fixed on the van, and there was a frown playing across his face, an expression she’d rarely seen him wear.
“What’s wrong?”
“Over there,” he said, nodding towards the van. “I don’t like that. Something about it… my instincts are telling me it’s bad news.”
“So are mine,” she agreed, sighing a little. Had her anxiety really infected her dream to this extent? Venting about the jerk who was bothering her was one thing, but when her handsome suitor started worrying about the van on her street under his own steam, that was when she knew she needed to dial it back. Maybe she should move up her therapist appointment in the morning. “It’s alright. It’s just a…” Odd, that he’d never taught her any of the words for vehicles in the strange language he spoke. She settled for the English word instead. “It’s just a van.”
“Van,” he repeated, frowning. “Something has been telling me you’re in danger. Not just tonight, but for some time.”
A chill ran down her spine… not a feeling she was used to having in dreams, and not one she liked much. “What do you mean, I’m in danger?”
“I don’t know.” His blue eyes were worried. “It’s a feeling I have. I can protect you, but only while I’m here, and—”
But his sentence was melting away, and Mira cursed in frustration as she felt his hand slip out of hers, too, replaced by the soft warmth of her blankets. His voice had faded out, too, replaced by the buzz of her alarm. There was sunlight creeping through her window, and she sighed heavily as she sat up in bed. She’d tried before to dive back into the dreams of her suitor… but she’d never been successful. Once she was awake, there was nothing for it but to wait until she was lucky enough to see him again.
She peered out the window, finding the place where the two of them had been standing in the dream, hand in hand. And sure enough, there was the van… and something about the sight of it sent another shiver of fear down her spine.
Chapter 4 - Conrad
Conrad didn’t feel at all rested when he got to the Archives the next day. Dreaming of the curly-haired woman usually put him in a good mood for days on end, but this time something was different. He’d woken up abruptly, his hand still reaching helplessly for hers, and the anxiety had stayed with him as he’d prepared himself for another day in the Archives. More arguments over filing systems, more endless, pointless notes… he could feel the stress ache in his neck intensifying. But it wasn’t just his frustration with Arric and Hartwell. Now, it was the strange feeling that the woman in his dreams was in danger.
It was an absurd thought, of course. She’d been created by his mind… if she was in danger, then it was fictional danger, too. But that logic didn’t seem to be doing much to get her off his mind. He barely made it through a few hours with Arric and Hartwell. Even the famously short-sighted scholars noticed his distraction. Maybe that was why they ended the conversation early, both of them agreeing to spend the rest of the day individually brainstorming a solution to the most recent problems raised. Conrad was grateful… but more than a little worried that his dreams were interfering with his ability to do his work.
He was staring into space on the Palace steps when Lana found him. He’d taken to eating his lunch out here, bringing whatever simple things he could scavenge from the kitchens to balance on his knees while he sat in the relatively fresh air. The Palace was at the very bottom of the cavern, with the distant disk of sky hundreds of feet above it. Still, there was a lot more room to think out here than in the cluttered, crowded Archives where he’d spent the majority of the last few months.
“You’ve been distracted lately.”
No preamble. He glanced sidelong at her, becoming aware that this was Lana his friend, not Queen Lana his monarch and ruler. To his Queen, he’d have offered an apology. To his friend… he just nodded, turning his gaze back towards the roof of the cavern, where the flutter of dragonwings occasionally blocked the disk of light.
“Is it the attack?”
“No,” he said, after only a moment’s pause.