Chapter 8: Nightmares and Fevered Dreams

The fever came in the evening.

It crawled climbing over me, crawling on up, slow-ticking like the tide crawled crawling on to take back the land.

I had first supposed it a warmth—something that would pass. But hours crawled and stretched until it was grown into something like an ache.

Then a fever took hold of me from head to foot.

I wrestled on the big bed, silk sheets clinging to my ankles like handcuffs. Perspiration fell on my forehead, following a path down to dampen the tiny nightie they'd made me wear.

I slept. By God, I did.

But no sooner had my eyelids just begun to close, dreaming began.

And they were anything but what dreams were meant to be.

—

The first vision awakened me from the brink of sleep.

I stood in a grand hall, walls of black stone that throbbed with life.

A blood-marble throne ahead of me.

A man seated upon it, surrounded by darkness.

I could not discern his face—only his eyes.

Eyes like Kael's.

Red. Aglow. Ageless.

"You can't hide," the man said, his lips never rising, speaking inside my mind and crawling along my spine. "You're bound. You're chosen."

I huddled back, ribcage booming. "No," I puffed. "I belong to no one."

Strident laughter shook down the corridor.

The blood remembers. Though you do not.

I attempted to run—but the black road beneath me cracked and a shrieking whirlpool spewed out shrieks, all distorted and unnatural, battering my head.

I rolled.

Spinning forever in nothing.

—

I was bolt upright with a scream, fists in a clenched fist on bedclothes. My heart was hammering in my chest like a bird in a gilded cage.

It took a minute to inform me I was still in my room.

Still in the palace.

Still his.

The fever had been bad. I could hardly breathe, and my skin was hot to the touch with fever. Even a change sent shudders of weakness over me.

I need to call somebody.

A maid will do. A guard.

But something kept my hand from going.

They wait on you not. They belong to him.

I clamped the backs of my hands over my eyes, pushing away visions.

But no sooner were they closed than another dream shot through me like a sword.

—

I was in a garden.

Or what had once been a garden.

The flowers shriveled and smoldered, the petals to cinders. The trees stretched towards the heavens like bony fingers, famished for a field of flame.

Standing in the middle of the garden there was a woman.

She had a cape of billowy red silk, and her hair fell down her back like a scarf of silver.

I recognized her.

Even though I had never once laid eyes on her during the whole of my life.

"Scarlett," she breathed, the air thick in desperation. "You inherit our legacy. Our curse."

I tried to speak, but any noise would not come out of my lips.

The confusion moved forward, and I could see the eyes—eyes that were a copy of mine.

"You must choose," she gasped. "Or be destroyed."

A cloud of mist emerged from the rotting wood and wrapped around her, dragging her to the ground.

She did not resist.

She simply stared at me, this pleading desperation, and spoke—

"Remember who you are."

And vanished.

—

I woke once more, choking on breath.

Blind eyes from tears, although I hadn't recalled crying.

I stumble out of bed, slapping my bare feet on the cold marble floor. Legs protest holding me as I lurch towards the mirror atop the dresser.

I hopped along the table and glared into the glass.

Thin face. Haunted, wide eyes. Hacked line of the puncture wounds at the base of my throat, rubies set into flesh.

Something else had arrived now.

Something below my eyes.

Wisdom.

A crack in the illusion.

I was not a pitiful human maidservant sold at the block.

There was something broken in me. Something old. Something deadly.

The fever broke at dawn.

I collapsed onto the bed, spent, my body shaking through the spasms of the dreams.

But I was not to be left alone with the world.

Something inside me deep, deep within was beginning to stir.

And it scared me more than Kael had scared me.

—

When I woke again, the sun was shining—though little of its light was able to filter through the heavy velvet curtains.

There was a food tray on the bedside table.

Someone had visited while I slept.

The discovery sent shivers.

I was never actually ever really alone here.

I pushed the tray from me, nausea in the belly, and sat on the bedside, trying to assemble pieces of my dream.

The throne room.

The garden.

The woman with eyes like mine.

The blood remembers.

But all for what?

I pushed the hand against the chest, solid thump-thump of heartbeat under it.

Still human.

Still me.

And yet.

Something within me had changed.

Last night, when Kael had bitten me, it had opened something. Opened a door I did not even realize I possessed.

And what was behind it?

Was not human.

There was a gentle knock on the door and I was startled.

I tied the small robe more tightly around my body.

"Enter," I croaked, sore throat.

A servant girl slipped in, head down very low.

"My lady," she said. "His Highness requests to speak with you in the Solar Room."

I swallowed.

Kael.

Of course.

He'd notice. He'd notice me.

I heaved myself up, all my muscles screaming, and jerked out a stiff nod.

"Tell him I'll go."

The maid bobbed wildly and darted off like a shot.

I lingered for what was an eternity, calling upon what was left in me.

What was bubbling within me?

I couldn't let them understand.

Not yet.

Because if Kael might get even a hint of how differently I was transforming.

If only he'd scent the power coursing through my veins—

I didn't know if he'd kill me.

Or drag me back to him.

And this time, I wasn't sure I'd survive.

To be continued….