Page 119 of Of Wind and Terror

The light dissipates gradually, and I find myself not looking at a pacon…but at a fae.

A naked, male fae.

A naked, male, familiar fae.

“Holy fuck,” I repeat, but this time for an entirely different reason.

Holy fuck.

46

DRAVEN

Before Sylvan locked me away and threw away the keys, I spent my nights walking through dreams.

It’s surprisingly easy. Almost all Night fae can partake in such an activity, though they usually have to be in the general proximity of their target before they can attempt it.

Not me, though. I’ve always been more powerful than the average Night fae—and not just because of my royal blood.

The first time I dreamwalked, it hurt. I was nothing but a vibrating, shaking mass of knife-edged particles. It felt as if my entire body was being turned inside out. Bile attempted to skitter up my esophagus, but sheer determination kept it at bay.

The dream world almost reminds me of a…tapestry. Intricate lines expand in every direction. Some of them are dark as pitch, while others burn a luminescent shade of white. All I need to do is pluck one, and I’ll be transported into the dream.

Or the nightmare.

I remember I was confused about what I was seeing. My father hadn’t told me the dreamworld looked like this. Everything was colored in shades of gray and black—the grass, the sky, and the rippling hills in the distance. There were no buildings that I could see, only intricate threads that overlapped.

The first one I plucked transported me into a forest. A male fae stood there, his mouth agape in horror, as a towering monster attempted to swallow him whole. His fear was almost palpable, contaminating the air and arrowing straight into my lungs. Just before the monster could eat the fae whole, I closed my eyes and willed the beast to disappear.

When I opened my eyelids, the monster was gone, and the sun poked through the pregnant storm clouds.

It was only then that I realized I could influence dreams as well as visit them.

From then on out, I spent every night traveling from dream to dream. Some of them were horrible nightmares that made my skin crawl—a female getting burned alive, a male watching his pregnant wife get murdered by monsters, a child screaming for help. Others were much happier—two fae falling in love, a male receiving inexplicable wealth from a distant relative, a female getting accepted into her top university.

There were a lot of sex dreams.

A lot.

At first, I stumbled out of the dream so quickly that my head spun. But then I realized…what the hell? I would often join in on those illicit activities.

Everything changed when I stumbled across her dreams.

Her thread glowed brighter than any of the others. So bright that I actually had to squint my eyes to keep from going blind. It illuminated my surroundings and provided color to the monochromatic world I grew accustomed to.

When I stepped into her dream, I knew immediately who she was to me.

My mate.

But the awe I should’ve felt dissipated when I realized she was in the midst of a nightmare.

Three guards were holding her down while another shoved down the waistband of his trousers. She wiggled and cried, but no matter how loudly she screamed, no one seemed to hear her.

It only took me a tick to take in the situation. And then a tick more to spring into action.

I took a deep, harrowing breath—willing air back into my frozen lungs—and imagined that we were in a peaceful field. Flowers dotted the landscape, and in the distance, hills rippled like a sea of gray. I closed my eyes and commanded color to fill this world. For the sky to turn a bright blue, for the grass to turn green, for the trees to turn brown. I’m not sure if it worked or not. The world looked the exact same to me—shades of gray, black, and white—but the female’s eyes widened in wonder.

I learned her name was Kassandra.

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