“It’d be understandable if you were still shaken up. I’m still shaken up.”
He glanced at her, genuinely surprised by that casual revelation. Lana had seemed to take the entire attack in stride. “You are?”
“Of course I am. Are you joking? That woman was going to kill me. And she was going to do it wearing your face,” she added with a scowl. Conrad felt a shiver run down his back. One of the mages had gotten to him early, during the attack—a woman, Cato had explained later, with a gift for changing her shape. She’d disguised herself as Conrad, and only Acantha’s quick thinking had stopped her from taking the Queen hostage. “She got away, you know.”
Conrad looked over at her. Most of the mages had scattered after their leader had been killed, but it was his understanding that the shapeshifter had not been among them. “I thought…”
“I did too, but it seems Cato’s little magic trick didn’t differentiate between shifters and mages.” Lana shook her head. “The ones who fell were brought back, same as our own. Cato doubts we’ll ever see her again, though.”
“Not that we’d know if we did,” Conrad pointed out, winning a huff of weak laughter from the Queen. It was an unsettling thought, that the mage might still be out there somewhere… but at the same time, he was a little relieved. It had been a bloody and fierce battle, and he’d witnessed firsthand the casualties it had brought about, deaths that numbered in the dozens. That was, until Cato and Acantha had finally unlocked the power of the very artifact that had brought the mages to them in the first place—a gauntlet that in a burst of magic had not only healed every wound in the cavern but even restored the lives of those who had been lost. The only exception had been the tyrannous leader of the mages, whose body had been disposed of shortly after the battle had ended.
“I’m glad,” Lana said softly. “I’m glad she didn’t lose her life, even if she causes trouble for us later.” She tilted her head. “But if it’s not the battle bothering you, then what?”
Conrad hesitated for a long moment. As much as he liked and trusted Lana, he wasn’t exactly in the habit of sharing his private thoughts and feelings… especially when it came to matters of the heart. That had always been his role in the Palace staff, the stoic, dependable second-in-command.
But Lana had trusted him enough to be vulnerable with him. It was the least he could do to return the favor. And so he found himself telling her about the dreams he’d been having, about the curvy woman with the golden eyes who filled him with so much delight. He tried not to dwell too much on the rather pathetic emotional background to these dreams… his own loneliness, his regret that he’d never have a soulmate of his own, the wistful envy he felt towards every bonded pair he knew…
“What’s her name, this woman?” Lana asked, tilting her head curiously. He snorted.
“I don’t know. I never asked.”
“Well, does she know your name?”
“She knows everything I know, presumably, because she’s not real, Lana.” But the Queen only shrugged, and he narrowed his eyes. “She’s a dream. She’s a figment of my imagination.”
“That’s what I thought about the spooky old forest I used to dream about,” Lana pointed out with another shrug. “Then all of a sudden, here I was. I’m just saying, dreams are worth paying attention to. Especially if they’re bothering you this much,” she added, nudging him gently in the ribs with one elbow.
“It was only last night’s dream that was about danger.”
“Sure, but you’ve been preoccupied for months. Before the attack, even,” Lana pointed out. “Maybe this is why.”
“It seems like quite a stretch, Lana.”
“So does my arrival here,” she said impatiently. “Conrad—you know I’ve been working with Cato lately, right?”
He nodded, not quite understanding the connection. When she’d first arrived here, the Queen had discovered a miraculous ability to form a magical portal in the Fog that surrounded their home… a portal that had allowed her to save dozens of shifters who’d gone missing in the months leading up to her arrival. How she’d done it, however, remained a mystery even to Cato, who knew a great deal more about magic than any member of their community. So lately, the two of them had been meeting in the Fog to investigate the matter further. It didn’t sound like they’d been making much progress, but most things took time.
“I think you should tell Cato about these dreams, that’s all.”
Conrad wrinkled his nose. The mage was still on thin ice, as far as he was concerned. He’d brought a lot of chaos with him when he’d arrived a few months ago, and while he’d also brought a lot of good, Conrad was waiting to see whether one would balance out the other. It was hard to trust a man with such a gift for lying, even if he did seem to have turned over a new leaf since finding his soulmate in the taciturn Acantha. “Is that an order?”
Lana huffed laughter and elbowed him in the ribs again. “Does it have to be?” Her smile faded. “I don’t like seeing you like this, Conrad. You deserve more than just a lifetime of duty and diligence.”
“Fine,” he said finally. She always was a difficult woman to say no to, even when she wasn’t wearing her crown.
Cato came to find him that night after dinner. The mage’s wiry frame had filled out a little since he’d been living with them in the Palace—he looked healthier, safer, happier. Some of it was finally escaping the tyrannous influence of his old boss, of course, but Cato insisted that it was mostly due to his soulmate being in his life. With his characteristic impatience, the white-haired mage wasted no time in sitting down beside Conrad.
“So Lana tells me you’ve been having weird dreams.”
Fighting the urge to simply walk out of the room, Conrad tightened his jaw and schooled his expression. “Is that so?”
“Tell me everything,” Cato said at once. But before Conrad could let his temper get the better of him, they were joined by Lana, who shot Cato a reproachful look as she slid into a seat on the other side of the table.
“Sorry for the ambush, Conrad. Is this a good time to talk?”
“It’s alright,” Conrad said with as much dignity as he could muster. He’d known Cato long enough to know that delaying him from getting something he wanted was more trouble than it was worth. Besides, part of him was genuinely curious about what the mage might have to say about his dreams. The idea that they were anything more than idle fantasy hadn’t occurred to him until today, and the more he thought about it, the more he hoped it was true. “Go ahead. What do you want to know?”
“The woman,” Cato said hurriedly. “You said you don’t know her name, but—she’s always the same?”