Page 36 of Horn of Winter

“We’re not in peak period, so they should be all right.” She opened one of the bottles of Bordeaux and poured two glasses, sliding one across to me. “How did the commemoration go? Did you speak to him?”

“No.” I slung my purse onto the next stool and dug out the velvet box. “He did, however, arrange to have this left in my coat pocket.”

She sucked in a soft breath. “That looks expensive. Too big to be a ring of any kind, though.”

I half smiled. “I think we can both be certain that the one thing I will never be getting from Cynwrig is a ring.”

“He’s Myrkálfar,” she said. “They oft times do the very unexpected. Can I look?”

“Well, I didn’t bring it over here for you to simply stare at the box.”

She grinned and slid the box closer. After a few moments of simply admiring the box, she pressed the button and opened it. Her gaze widened in surprise, and she sucked in a breath. “Holy fuck, aBruadarbracelet.”

“Which answers my initial question—do you know what it is?” I said with a smile.

“I do, though I’ve never seen one. I’d actually thought them more myth than reality.”

I took a sip of the wine and raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

“Because they’re Myrkálfar specific and rarely seen. As far as I’m aware, you can’t even find one in a museum.”

I frowned, an odd mix of uncertainty, trepidation, and delight running through me. I mean, to be given something so rare had to mean he cared, if only a little, didn’t it? “What were they used for?”

“They’re dreaming bracelets.”

I nodded. “Cynwrig said as much in the note he left with it.”

Her gaze jumped to mine. “What else did the note say?”

“Basically, he asked me to wait out the mourning period before I made any decision in regard to Eljin, and said I should wear the bracelet if I wished a continuation of what we share in a non-physical manner. Which I take it means the bracelet allows some form of telepathic communication.”

A smile twitched her lips. “Telepathic, and a whole lot more, by all accounts.”

My eyebrows shot up again. “Meaning? I mean, seriously, stop with the riddles and just spit it out.”

She laughed and pointed to the bracelet. “The Myrkálfar have a second, less than polite term for this thing.”

I gave her an impatient look, and she laughed again.

“Okay, fine. It’s a fucking bracelet.”

“I know it’s a fucking bracelet—” I stopped, my eyes widening in realization. “Oh.”

“Yes, indeed,” she said, blue eyes shining with mirth. “It allows two people to actuallyfuckon the dreaming plane.”

Chapter

Six

“But... how?”

I certainly wasn’t averse to the thought—far from it, especially if it meant I kept getting a little Cynwrig action—but surely if something like that was possible, someone, somewhere, would have put it into wide production and made a mint off it. The market for such a thing would behuge.

As would be the abuses.

“I don’t know the physics behind it,” she said, “so I’ve only got rumor and speculation to run with. But apparently, the bracelets are created as a pair, via Myrkálfar magic and a dreaming specialist?—”

“Specialist as in an oneirologist?” A term I knew only because she’d briefly dated one once.

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