CHAPTER 26
’m sitting in a chair with my eyes shut, holding my head in my hands, hoping to anchor it and keep it in place.I “Raphael, we have to go.” I hear Viviane’s voice through the cacophony. Her words intermingle with the voices in my mind.
Raphael sits next to me, stroking my back. “Just give Nia a moment.”
I listen to them talk from a distance, wondering who Nia is. It takes me a few deep breaths to remember. Ah! Nia might be me.
“What’s wrong with her?” Viviane snaps. “What has she done?”
“She’ll be fine,” says Raphael.
“Why don’t you tell me the fucking truth?” the woman says sharply.
“She’s overdosing on some kind of magic, isn’t she? I can feel it emanating from her. Except it isn’t Sentinel magic because there was no veil in there. So what, exactly, is happening?”
Raphael lets out a sigh. “Telepathy. She used it on too many people at once. But you cannot tell anyone she has diametric magic. We need her.” He sounds short, impatient. “They will kick out anyone with two powers. They’ll say she’s going to be another Mordred. She’s not trained in telepathy, so she didn’t know the dangers. We’ve been trying to suppress that magic, but I guess she thought it might be useful. Viviane, we need her.”
Freya swears. “How many minds did she read, three? Four? If it’s four, she might already be lost to us. She’s strong, but I don’t know if she can hold the thoughts of that many people at once.”
“I don’t know,” says Raphael. “It might be more than four.”
“I think it’s twelve,” I mumble. “Or thirteen. It’s hard to count because they keep jumbling together.”
Silence follows my words, and I wonder for a minute if they’re even here, or more voices in my mind.
I open my eyes to find Raphael, Viviane, and Freya all staring at me,
stunned.
“What?” I ask faintly.
“Please tell me you didn’t.” Raphael’s fingers flex on my back.
“Telepaths aren’t supposed to read more than one or two minds close together because they can lose themselves in the sea of consciousness.”
“The sea of consciousness,” I repeat, staring at a flagstone floor. It sounds nice. And appropriate. That’s what I have in my mind right now. A nauseating, churning sea.
“It can’t have been twelve,” Raphael says firmly.
For a moment, I almost believe him. “At least twelve,” I repeat.
“That’s impossible,” Freya blurts.
“There was Lumos, and Gaia, and Belrior.” I count them on my fingers.
“And Calixto, and Nia—”
“You’re Nia!” Viviane snarls.
“Oh, right. I’m Nia. Anyway, there were at least twelve. Thirteen including Nia, but I guess she doesn’t count? I mean me. Me doesn’t count. I doesn’t count.”
I frown. That doesn’t sound right, either, but the words are confusing. So many of them. Nia knows a lot of languages, but Calixto knows different languages, and so does Gaia, and the grammar and words keep getting
muddled in my mind.
“Gods,” Freya says.
“We need a different getaway plan,” Viviane says. “She won’t be able to control the veil like this.”
This room is all shadows and stone arches, like a crypt beneath a cathedral.
“Why?” I ask, trying to focus on the conversation. It keeps me grounded,
reminds me who I really am, Calixto.
No, hang on. Nia. I. Am. Nia.
“Because we need to go through the veil,” Viviane says. She sounds furious.
“Okay. We did that once, we can do it again,” I point out.
Raphael looks at me. “I agree.”
“Raphael.” Viviane’s voice is steely. “She can’t get us through. If what she says is true, she’s gone. It’s a marvel she can still talk, but we don’t know who she even is anymore. And there’s no way in hell she can focus enough to use her Sentinel powers.”
“Yes, I can.” I know it’s true. I feel both my powers pulsating inside me, awake.
“She can,” Raphael repeats after me. “She’ll get us through. There’s no other way, in any case. The royal prince has probably already found out that his map is gone. We have to get out of here tonight.”
“The map!” I suddenly recall. “We have the map?”
He flashes me a dazzling smile. “We have, thanks to you.”
“Okay. Good.”
Raphael slides his arm around my waist and helps me stand. I stare at the torchlight flickering on the walls. “Where are we?”
“In an empty room in the lower level of the Château des Rêves,” says Freya.
She’s a chambermaid. I narrow my eyes at her. No, she’s pretending to be a chambermaid. She’s a human agent! I should tell Talan at once, and then I’ll finally have his respect.
No, hang on. I’m Nia. I shut my eyes and take a deep breath, trying to pry apart the pieces of my mind that belong to me.
We step out to one of the hallways in the château. I’m completely disoriented, don’t even recall how we got here, but Raphael leads us confidently. He sets a brisk pace, fast enough to get out quickly, but slow enough to avoid making too much noise and draw unwanted attention from the servants down here.
We pass a small kitchen and a threadbare woven rug. The ceilings are lower than the ones upstairs. We walk past numerous rooms identical to the empty crypt we just left. A coat of arms hangs on one wall. I try to keep pace with them, but my head is still shrieking. I see the world through a haze, but Raphael’s arm around my waist steadies me.
Raphael stops short. “Hang on. We missed a turn.”
“Are you sure?” Viviane asks.
“Yeah. We need to go back.” He turns around. “Come on.”
I follow him, past the threadbare rug, the coat of arms, and twenty or more other rooms. So many rooms.
“What the hell?” Raphael mutters, looking around.
“I think we missed a turn again,” Viviane says.
“There were no turns, Viviane,” I say.
“What are you talking about?” she snaps. “There were a dozen turns.
Where’s Freya?”
My heart thuds. Freya is not with us anymore.
“Something’s wrong,” Raphael says.
“She probably went outside and didn’t notice that we weren’t with her,”
Viviane offers, but I can hear the uncertainty in her voice. “Come on, I’ll lead. Through there, see?”
She points at a fork in the corridor that we somehow missed before. Now Viviane takes the lead, marching confidently on. We walk past the coat of arms again.
“We were here just a second ago,” I say.
“No.” She shoots daggers at me. “And you’re the last person we should be listening to.”
“No, see?” I point at the coat of arms. “It’s the same antlers. And that same threadbare rug. We keep walking back and forth.”
Raphael’s fingers tighten on my waist. “We’re disoriented somehow.
Have we been drugged? All we need to do is get outside.”
“Well, we came from the left passage,” I say. “So we should probably take the right.”
I start walking, but everything seems to be moving slowly, much too slowly. I’m walking as fast as I can, but I can hardly budge. I look down and realize that my feet are stuck in the threadbare rug, and with each step, I’m getting pulled back. The rug has become a strange, muddy goo.
“I’m sinking in the rug!” I shout in alarm.
“Don’t shout,” Raphael says. “Hang on. Where’s Viviane?”
It’s just the two of us now, and I’m knee-deep in the rug and sinking faster.
“We must have been drugged.” Raphael’s grip around my waist is solid, but somehow, I’m sinking and he’s not.
“No.” My stomach swoops. “The Castle of Dreams has become the castle of nightmares. This is the Dream Stalker’s work.”
It’s obvious now. Prince Talan must have realized his map is missing, and now, he’s trapped us.
“No way,” Raphael says. “He doesn’t even know who we are.”
“He doesn’t need to.” I’ve visited a dozen minds, minds belonging to the prince’s confidants, enough to learn things about him. “He can sense people’s subconscious when they’re nearby. We’re trying to get out, and we’re scared of being caught. That makes us different from everyone else in this place.
He’s honed in on our minds and wrapped us up in this dream.”
Raphael’s grip tightens around my waist. “And he knows where we are?”
I shake my head. “I don’t think so. Not yet. But if we don’t get out, they’ll find us eventually.” I’m up to my thighs now in the liquidized rug.
“Raphael, I’m drowning in this.”
“It’s in our minds,” Raphael says slowly. “Nia, even dreams can be controlled if you know it’s a dream.”
“I can’t get out of this!” I panic as his grip on my waist slips, and I sink deeper.
Raphael shifts his hold on me, taking my arm in a vise-like grip. “Don’t move.” His muscles flex, and he slowly pulls me free. The viscous rug gives way with a disturbing sucking sound.
I tumble into Raphael and cling to his steely chest, breathing hard. “We have to get out of here. Now.”
“Hang on.” He shuts his eyes, and his black eyelashes cast shadows on his cheeks. “Concentrate. This is in our mind, right? So try to picture us finding the way out. Picture us finding Viviane and Freya on the way.”
I do as he says, closing my eyes. It’s hard to concentrate, but I do my best to imagine us reunited with Viviane and Freya, grabbing them by the hands
and fleeing the castle.
“Okay,” I whisper.
“Come on.”
He’s holding my hand as we walk, and there, at the far end of the hall, is the door that leads to the stairs and the sea. I can even see the glittering waves
through the window.
“It’s working,” I say softly.
Raphael nods.
We rush for the door and hear a shout for help. Turning, we see Viviane and Freya running toward us, a wall of flames roaring down the hall behind them. Smoke billows, stinging my lungs and eyes. A fit of coughing racks my body, and though I know it’s just a dream, I can’t make the flames go away.
The heat sears my skin. We’re going to burn.
Someone grabs me by the wrist, and I’m running, my eyes streaming
from the smoke. Is the door gone again? We’re trapped in a waking nightmare. Over my coughing, I hear Raphael shouting instructions to Viviane and Freya, telling them it’s not real, that they have to imagine us getting out.
We’re lost again. We can’t find the door. Soon, I fear, we’ll be back at the beginning, back to the threadbare rug and the coat of arms. The Dream Stalker is toying with us. We’re his puppets, and he is pulling the strings.
“No, not there,” Raphael says. “Over here!”
Gripping my wrist, he pulls me to a random kitchen door. He yanks it open— And salt air washes over me, and a spray of stars twinkles in the night sky. Stone stairs zigzag down to the sea. We’re free.
I inhale, the wind whipping at me. The night air is incredibly clear, and I can fill my lungs at last. Raphael has led us out of the nightmare.
“Come on, we don’t have much time,” he says.
We run down the stairwell, back to the dock where we left the boat.
When we reach it, I almost sob in relief. We made it. I can’t believe we got out. As I step into the boat, Viviane cuts the mooring rope with a knife. We push off into the sea, and oars plunge into the waves as Viviane and Raphael row.
The sea spray drenches me, and I hold on to the edges of the boat. Up ahead, the shimmering veil waits. Strangely, the misty magical barrier feels like safety.
“Nia, will you be able to get us through?” Raphael asks.
“Yes, just get us closer.”
“The current is a real bastard,” Viviane grunts as she pulls at her oar. “It’s hard to row in this thing.”
“Yeah.” Raphael grimaces as seawater dampens his shirt.
I listen to the oars striking the water, staring at the veil. It doesn’t seem to be getting closer.
I glance back. “We haven’t left the dock!”
“It’s the bloody current.” Raphael shouts over the waves.
“Aren’t we in a bay?” Freya is heaving for breath. “There shouldn’t be a current.”
I stare at the murky water. Even in the dark, I can see the water churning as they struggle with the oars. Storm clouds gather overhead, blocking out the moon and the stars. Shadows gather around us.
Now we’re actually moving. The powerful current pulls us along with it, but not toward the shore. We’re spinning in a circle.
“We’re trapped in a whirlpool,” Raphael says, alarmed.
Fear grips my heart as I cling to the boat. The whirlpool is enormous, a yawning void. The boat whirls faster and faster, around and around, as Viviane and Raphael try to row us out.
“No,” I whisper. “We’re not trapped in the whirlpool. We’re trapped in the waking nightmare. We never left the Château des Rêves.”
