Page 46 of From the Myths of Kings

Rook flushed under her scrutiny. She’d heard all that? How humiliating.

“It’s fine,” Aurelia assured him, as though she could hear his internal dialogue. “I’m a soldier, remember? I have my fair share of nightmares. No need to be ashamed.”

She slipped out of her bedroll and knelt before the smoldering embers of the dying fire in the hearth. She added a few pieces of kindling and coaxed it back to life. Gradually, the flames rose and lit the small room with a soft, comforting glow.

Rook pressed closer to the fire, hungry for warmth. He couldn’t find the words to describe what that nightmare had been. It was his dream, yes, but it was also a memory from another life. Or maybe it was simply a figment of his own imagination, his knowledge of the Myths of Old threading a lifelike account in his mind. He was exhausted, after all. Perhaps he was simply going mad.

Cira, the daughter of the first Mer Queen of Revelore, had been as real in his mind as Aurelia was now, her green-tinged scales glimmering in the rising sun as smoke trailed over Auran-Helm. In the dream, Cira had claimed her mother Basilia was killed by sirens, mythical aquatic creatures said to have lived in harmony with Mer at the dawn of time. The betrayal Cira spoke of led history to remember the sirens as deceptive creatures even after their extinction. Recognition glimmered at the back of his mind. Where had he heard the term ‘sirens’ recently?

“Rook,” Aurelia interrupted. “Where did you go? Your eyes drifted off somewhere else.”

“I’m sorry. I must be more tired than I thought I was.” He should tell her about the strange dream. Her earlier words echoed through his mind: If you want us to trust you, you must learn to trust us. Opening himself up again after he’d been so vulnerable with Raven was a daunting prospect.

“There’s something you’re not telling me.” Aurelia’s perceptive eyes narrowed. “Remember how you promised not to keep secrets anymore?”

Rook tore his gaze from the fire and forced himself to meet her eyes. “I’ve been having dreams,” he finally confessed. “Most of them strange and nonsensical. Sometimes I dream of moments from my own life. Other times I glimpse memories from other people’s lives. And lately, I’ve dreamed of scenes taken straight out of the Myths of Old. They started happening after Hasana brought me back to life. I think it has something to do with the blade Selussa stabbed me with. Maybe she cursed me.” He braced himself, waiting for Aurelia to question his sanity just as Raven had.

“What kind of dream did you experience just now?” Aurelia leaned forward. The firelight danced on the sharp contours of her face. There was no judgment or pity on her face.

Rook was emboldened by her earnest concern. “I saw the final battle between the Four Kinsmen and the Titans. Well, the beginning of it anyway.”

Aurelia’s eyes widened. “Do you think it was real?”

“I’m not sure. It felt real. It was like I’d just been transported back through time myself. In some parts of the dream, it was as though I was looking through Cira’s eyes. In other parts, I was seeing her as an invisible onlooker outside of my body.”

“Cira? The Mer princess? Isn’t she the one who supposedly killed the Titan of the Sea?”

“Yes. She was holding the city while the Four Kinsmen searched for a way to defeat the Titans. I assume they were in the Northern Wastes, using the Forge to enchant the Relics while Cira protected their mortal lands. But there was something off about the whole thing, some secret I couldn’t uncover.”

Again, he thought of where he had heard the word ‘siren’ recently. There was something mysterious about their betrayal of the Four Kinsmen, malicious or otherwise. But he couldn’t place a finger on it.

“Did you see the Relics in your dream?”

“No, I woke up before I saw all the Relics together or learned how the Four Kinsmen bound the Titans’ souls in the Stone Circle. Aris, the warrior-king of Aurandel, held a longsword that appeared to be enchanted, but I didn’t see any of the Relics.”

“Perhaps these dreams can be of use to us. What if you’ll uncover some secret that will be critical to our mission?”

“But I can’t tell what is real and what isn’t,” Rook sighed. “Nothing from my dreams has come true and I have no way to validate the accuracy of them. I could just be going mad.” He paused, recalling the brutal memory of the night his parents died. “Wait. There was one dream I had recently. It was the night my parents were murdered by Terradrin revolutionaries. Everything in that dream truly happened to me. It was real.”

All at once, the realization of where he had heard ‘sirens’ snapped into place. He recalled how Saoirse’s mother, Eleyera, had whispered with his parents beyond the carriage door, snatches of her hushed voice carrying on the wind: “There is a secret. The sirens were?”

Rook pressed his mind for more details, coming up short. Was there any more to their conversation that lay locked away in the deep recesses of his mind? There seemed to be some hidden truth about the sirens and the war between the Titans, a secret Eleyera had uncovered eight years ago. He needed to learn more about the great betrayal that occurred, but all he had to reference were scraps of memories that may or may not be true.

“That’s good,” Aurelia was saying. “If the dream about your parents’ death was accurate, perhaps you’ve glimpsed real pieces of the past. Your dream of Cira must have truly happened.”

Rook’s mind was reeling. Just when he thought that they’d uncovered all there was to know about Revelore’s past, more elusive secrets emerged like a chain from the darkness, leading down into an unknown abyss. Would they ever unravel all the Myths of Old?

Despite the unease his nightmares inspired, Rook felt a measure of relief knowing someone else knew about them. He had to admit that it felt good not to bear the burden alone.

“Thank you for taking this so well,” he found himself saying. “I know it sounds mad.” After his own sister had accused him of being witless, he hadn’t expected the Mer captain to validate his nightmares.

“There are many things about you I don’t trust. I think you can be thick-headed, arrogant, and insufferable most of the time. But I don’t think you’re mad.”

“Thank you…I think?”

“Don’t get me wrong, I would’ve thought you were mad a few weeks ago,” she amended with a smirk. “But after everything I’ve seen, a few confusing dreams are relatively tame compared to ancient gods coming to life and zealots resurrecting a bloodthirsty witch from the Underworld. At this point, I’d believe anything. I mean, I’m currently hiding out in an abandoned merchant’s shop in an extinct city with the prince of Aurandel, on the way to some magical Forge that we don’t even know exists for certain. I would never have believed it before the Tournament, but here we are.”

“Fair enough.” Rook spread his palms before the fire, feeling warmth tingle in his fingertips.

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