Page 77 of A Deception of Courts

Oh, how wrong I was.

The dream snatched me before my head even hit the pillow that still bore my bite mark on its skin. I expected welcoming darkness and empty thoughts, but as I disappeared from the world of reality, I was greeted by something far more sinister.

Dark, billowing hair whipped around a face of pale ivory skin. One side of the female’s head didn’t dance with her hair because it was shaved down to the scalp. This dream, although similar to before, felt noticeably different from the others. It was clearer – vivid and real.

I heard myself speak without knowing I’d even opened my lips. “Jesibel?”

CHAPTER 22

Jesibel stood before me among wisps of dark shadow. They coiled around her frame like vipers, striking at skin mottled with bruises. Her arms were wrapped around her waist, doing little to cover the torn and stained clothes that hung off her body in tatters. She just stood there, staring at me with wide eyes, torment etched into every line across her skeletal face.

”Jesi?” My voice filled the strange space, her shadows seeming to dance in tandem with the noise. I listened as her name echoed as though I’d shouted it into a barren cave.

The sound was strange and haunting, buttrulyreal.

She didn’t reply. I watched her mouth intently, ensuring I didn’t miss a single movement. Jesibel just stood and watched me.

Even in this dreamscape, I tried to convince myself that this was all the vision was. A nightmare dragged from the darkest corners of my subconscious. Jesibel couldn’t be real. This was just a haunting image of what I believed she’d look like in the clutches of Aldrick.

My arm itched as my eyes fell upon the torn skin on the soft part of her arm. Her wound was angry, violently spewing blood and other unknown yellowed liquids that screamed of infection. Her mark was in the same place Aldrick had drawn blood from me all those weeks ago. I reached a hand to grasp my forearm, only to find that there was nothing to touch. I looked down, and there was nothing but darkness. I was merely a part of it – a part ofhershadows.

“Listen to me carefully.”

My attention snapped upward, and Jesibel was inches from me. Even without a body, I could feel her presence. The rancid taste of copper invaded my mouth, forcing its way down my throat and choking me. I reached up to grasp my neck, but I had no hands, arms or body to command.

I belonged to Jesibel in this odd place – I was her toy to play with. Her dream to terrorise.

A patchwork of bruises covered her face, spreading like a necklace across her neck. Heavy, dark circles beneath her carved eyes accentuated her emaciated skull. She looked more like a mound of bones with damaged skin stretched over it.

Unlike the other times Jesibel had been in my dreams, this was different. She wasn’t listening and watching as she worked through my mind. Jesi was no longer just a bystander. She commanded the dream as if it wasn’t mine to begin with.

“I tried to save you,” I pleaded, forcing all my will into creating a voice in a place where I should not exist. “I came back, just as I promised.”

“Forgive me, Robin…”

Although she was speaking, her lips didn’t move. Her face was stoic. Almost… calm. Which was the opposite of how I felt. I drowned in her shadows. Jesibel’s eyes were endless and without focus. It seemed she glanced straight through me whilst also seeing me completely.

“I’m doing everything to save you. Please don’t haunt me. I promise I’m trying, Jesi. You are the reason behind all this, I have not given up yet.”

“I know.”

My blood thrummed, which was an odd sensation, considering I didn’t have a corporeal body here. Her response was not meant to taunt me. I expected my consciousness to craft Jesibel to hate me for failing her, for allowing Aldrick to reach her before I could. If only I’d brought the prison break forwards, perhaps I would’ve got to her first.

“Listen to me carefully, Robin. Now isn’t the time for wallowing in your self-pity.” Jesibel’s voice was stern and scolding, snapping me out of my stupor. Her shadows reached out for me, twisting among the mass of black that encased my body. “You can’t trust me. You can’t trust those around you. I need you to do everything in your power to–”

“I am!” I snapped, shadows recoiling from my fury. “I’m doing everything.”

“No. Forget me, Robin. Do not come looking.”

Jesi was fading. Her skin became translucent, flickering as though she was the sun obscured behind dark clouds. If I had hands, I would’ve reached out for her and kept her in place. But I was forced to watch as her form bled away from me. “Don’t trust them.” Her voice broke in my skull, like the crack of a whip. “Trust no one.”

Her warning was as clear as the sky during summer.

“Who?” I asked. “Who can’t I trust?”

Her mouth parted, the skin at the corner of her lips ripping like paper. Fear sliced through me as Jesibel’s entire body contorted in on itself. I wanted to move back, but I was powerless in this place. Jesibel didn’t make a sound, but the muscles in her neck bulged, and veins burst across her pale face. She was trying to speak, her lips moving in the same formation over and over. But the word she wished to say, the name that would answer my question, betrayed her.

“Jesibel, I cannot forget you. I will not,” I said, hoping those words were enough to calm her – or calm myself in whatever was this dreamscape punishment I’d clearly made.

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