Page 74 of Never the Roses

“It’s nice to know that someone cares,” she said. “And I will be careful.”

“Hopefully it won’t be long. You can make your presence known. His Majesty will stand down. Then you can come home to your peace and quiet.”

“Yes.” She started to say more, then stopped, feeling as if she might be somehow jinxing their prospects. “That would be good,” she finished, aware of how uncertain she sounded.

“Thank you for doing this.” He frowned, searching her face for what troubled her.

“I’m not doing it for you.” She managed a smile for him, though it felt sad on her face. “It’s the right thing to do. Goodbye, Em.”

“Farewell,” he corrected, stepping back and taking her hand to kiss it, “thief of my heart.”

As he’d asked, she stood on the cliff’s edge, watching him descend the winding steps to the pink-pebble beach, Adsila on her shoulder, and Moriah and Bunny on either side. Once he sailed into the fold of reality he used to travel, she stood there a moment longer, enjoying the sea breeze blowing her hair back from her face, the warmth of the sun, the sound of the sea, the afterglow of a truly miraculous night.

Perhaps it was the dregs of the nightmare he’d almost succumbed to, the leave-taking, or the ending of a glorious interval, but a dank feeling of depression settled over her, despite her valiant efforts to keep her thoughts elsewhere. She busied herself with cleaning the dishes and restoring the kitchen to order, then checked her garden a final time, particularly the Veredian roses. They’d begun to leaf out, looking less like sticks and more likeactual rosebushes, though still unbeautiful, and she fretted over how they’d do in her absence.

But there wasn’t anything she could do about that. Hopefully—that word again, that seemed to promise disaster rather than hope—she’d be gone only a few days, a week or two at most. She couldn’t use magic to see that the roses were watered, so she’d have to hope for rain. Oneira had never been much in the habit of hoping for things, so it sat ill with her.

Otherwise, she used magic to ensure the rest of the garden would flourish, and closed down the house to the extent she needed to. Bunny and Moriah would remain behind, so they would need to come and go as always. Adsila clung to her shoulder with the apparent intent of coming along to the citadel. Finally, she strengthened her wards, using the techniques that Stearanos had taught her. His system really was better. She’d have to tell him so, the next time she saw him.

If there was a next time.

She wished the feeling of foreboding would lift, but it never did.

At last, satisfied that she’d done all she could, with Adsila on her shoulder, Oneira stepped into the Dream, to return to the world of men and their wars.

36

“Have you heard the news?” General Khanpasha asked Stearanos quietly, laying a finger alongside his nose briefly before dropping it again. “Word is that the sorceress Oneira has returned to the citadel to aid the Queen of the Southern Lands in her time of need.”

Admiral Bartolomej, accompanying the general, gave Stearanos a long look. “I don’t know how you pulled it off, Your Eminence,” he said, also sotto voce, “but well done. Well done, indeed.”

They stood outside the council chamber, having been summoned by Crown Prince Mirza to attend an emergency meeting. It had been days since Stearanos left Oneira, and the image of her standing on the cliff above as he sailed away was still burned into his mind. He fancied he smelled her on his skin, recalled the ghost sensations of her touch, the sardonic lilt to her voice, the clear insight of her gray eyes.

A thousand times a day he thought of her, wondering what she was doing at that exact moment. Every night he willed himself to sleep with an eagerness bordering on desperation, hoping she’d visit his dreams. Every morning he awoke with vestiges of wild dreamscapes that Oneira strolled through, Adsila on her shoulder—and sometimes it seemed she paused in her journey to glance over at him—but nothing that seemed deliberate or real.

He abided by his promise not to attempt to open the Dream himself.

Now, at last, their gambit had delivered. So why did he feel so unnerved? General Khanpasha and Admiral Bartolomej both radiated relief, stopping short of vociferous congratulations only out of discretion. They both clearly believed that Stearanos had successfully stopped the war. So why couldn’t he believe it?

You just need to hear the words, he consoled himself.Then it will be real and you’ll know what you asked of her was worth it.

The council chamber doors flew wide, opened by the crown prince’s personal guard. His Highness waited at the head of the table, fingers steepled against it as he leaned toward them, the polished blackwood surface reflecting Mirza’s face, which already loomed large due to his pose. Stearanos misliked the manic gleam in the prince’s eyes and hoped that foreboding, too, was only a product of nerves.

“Be seated, gentlemen,” the crown prince declared in a tone of command. “Not you,” he said to the aides and lesser commanders who’d collected in the hall to file in behind the three of them. “You lot can wait. Close the doors.” The crown prince waited impatiently for the guards to shut the heavy double doors, then shot Stearanos an imperious look. “Ward for silence, Your Eminence.”

Suppressing his annoyance at the crown prince’s condescension, Stearanos did as he was told, nodding at Prince Mirza to continue.

“I have two pieces of news—one distressing, the other the best possible,” the prince informed them, attempting a serious expression, one disrupted by his sizzling excitement. He flexed on his steepled fingers, as if doing miniature push-ups on them. “The first is that the sorceress Oneira has returned to the citadel!”

General Khanpasha assumed an expression of sincere dismay. “This is distressing news, indeed, Your Highness. Clearly we will be unable to go forward with this conquest. A pity, as the strategy crafted by His Eminence is—”

“Is utterly brilliant, yes,” the crown prince crowed. “So brilliant that even with the infamous Oneira on their side, we cannot fail. This is the best possible piece of news, not the distressing one.”

“Your Highness?” General Khanpasha posed the title as a question, his gravelly voice faint with a dawning horror Stearanos shared.

Suddenly the pieces fell into place, his persistent, vague dread crystallized. They’d played this entirely wrong.

“Think of it!” the Crown Prince ordered, straightening and waving his hands in a wildly expansive gesture. “I will go down in history as the monarch to have defeated the Southern Lands, even with the mightiest of sorcerers in all the world on their side. You, Stearanos, will enjoy similar fame. Anything less than this would have been a pale victory, everyone knowing we only succeeded because your nemesis stepped aside. Now they will know our might and all will cringe before us. Gentlemen, this is a banner day for us.”

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