Page 202 of The Dark Mirror

He clenched his jaw. I schooled my expression, so he wouldn’t suspect the depth of the anger I was hiding. Every instinct told me to rip his throat out for what he had done, but I couldn’t reveal what I knew. Not without endangering Arcturus, alerting them to his escape.

What I could do – what I did – was pour all of that rage into the jump.

Our spirits clashed in the æther. I had never made direct impact with a spirit outside a dreamscape before, and the collision was seismic. It felt like I had hit a brick wall at breakneck speed. We shoved each other with all our might, then ricocheted into our own bodies.

Both of us had kept our balance. I fed the pain to my gift, my heart pounding at my breastbone.

Cade was as inexpressive as a Reph. Terebell charged towards Kornephoros, who swung a massive club against her sword. Errai and Pleione joined her, while Lucida fought her own cousin, Castor. Another five Sargas loyalists entered the fray, outnumbering the Ranthen.

The short distraction cost me. Cade beat me to the jump by a split second, driving his spirit against the barrier of my dreamscape. My eyes watered, and I clenched my teeth.

I had rested as much as I could in Orvieto. My barrier was keeping Cade out, but only just. My head throbbed from the blow. He swooped at me a third time, and I flew into the æther to meet him.

Once again, Cade deflected me before I could touch his dreamscape. When I returned to my body, my stomach pulled at the root, nauseating me. He took a few deep breaths.

On the other side of the arena, Terebell duelled Kornephoros. It shook me to see the size of him in comparison to her. Terebell was nearly as tall as Arcturus, but her cousin was a behemoth. Errai backed her up with spools. Kornephoros held them both off with ease.

His club was a thing of terrible beauty, made of opaline. Terebell parried with her sword. Neither of them were as fluid as Arcturus, but they fought with murderous precision, driven by an old grudge. Terebell was the rightful Warden of the Sheratan, acknowledged by the Ranthen. Kornephoros was fixated on her, his eyes burning a clean yellow.

Cade lashed out. I tasted iron, but took my turn. This time, I pushed close enough to make contact with the edge of his dreamscape, only for him to do the same to me, twice as hard.

My defences strained. We continued in this way, bouncing off each other with the force of two bullets, until I was clammy and heaving. Each time Cade landed a hit on me, my skull rang like a bell, blood leaked from my nose, and the æther shuddered around us.

Gomeisa Sargas never took his eyes off the fight. Even the other Rephs stopped to look.

If I kept this up, I was going to pass out. I had taken knocks to my dreamscape from many spirits over the years, but these attacks were strategic, as if Cade was feeling along my barrier for weak points.

‘I expected more staying power,’ he said. ‘WhatwasArcturus doing with you in Oxford?’

‘You’re good. I’ll give you that.’ I spat blood on the sand. ‘Who trained you?’

‘My family.’

Cade had most likely been taught from childhood, then. It didn’t surprise me. My attacks hadn’t even made him break a sweat, while I was starting to feel as if I had run a marathon.

‘I first walked in the æther when I was eleven,’ he said. ‘I’ve polished that skill for thirteen years.’ He found a vulnerability again, driving into it with so much force it almost brought me to my knees. ‘Even if a Reph taught you, you’re still a novice, Paige. Arcturus Mesarthim was no dreamwalker. I’m sure he tried his best, but he didn’t understand our power. The power to be anyone. The power to rip life away.’

I struck him again, and again, he repelled me. When I landed back in my body, I got straight up, my resolve stiffening.

Even if I had only been able to skim his dreamscape, it had boosted my confidence. His barrier was thin with exhaustion. No doubt it was hard to sleep, living in the belly of the beast. He might have trained for years longer than I had, but I had breached his dreamscape before. I knew that it was possible.

He still broke me first.

It was the vision that did it: Kornephoros and Castor, carving Arcturus with swords, over and over. This wasn’t an imagined scene; it could only be this vivid because Cade had actually witnessed it. I saw the light of ectoplasm in the room. I saw Michael being hit by a Reph.

Cade was inside me before I could stop him.

All dreamscapes had defences, but mine had only dealt with this level of danger once before. Cade sprinted through my windflowers and vaulted into my secret room, my fortress, flowers trampled in his wake. Every footfall left a bruise. Before I could move, he made it to my sunlit zone. It paralysed me just toseeanother person in my dreamscape.

He seized my spirit. For the first time in my life, another human was touching the essence of me, the vulnerable quick at the core of my being. That touch might as well have stripped me naked, peeling layers of skin with it.

‘Your dreamscape wasn’t like this before,’ he observed. ‘There were only red flowers.’

His grip tightened, and it wasn’t my body he was crushing. It was me.

‘I’m going to make you kill Jaxon Hall,’ he whispered, so close I would have felt his breath if this had been the outside world. Against my will, I trembled. ‘And then you’re going to kill Nick. And then you’ll know how it feels to be me.’

‘Over my bones,’ I forced out.

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