Page 25 of Never the Roses

Still, this wasn’t death magic. It was…

He shot upright, dropping the glass dish so that it shattered against the polished granite surface of the workbench, the quill bouncing away. None of that mattered now. He knew the identity of his thief. It wasn’t death magic to his life. It was dreaming to his waking.

The Dream.

His dreams, that fucking fanged bunny chewing up his books, so unnaturally vivid.Shehad put that in his dreams. And the powerful sleep enchantment he’d been unable to fend off, no matter what spells he used to ward it. He kicked himself for being a fool, for missing the many and obvious clues. Only one sorcerer could do what she had done, so easily and with such skill and insouciance, uncaring about the potential backlash of her actions. Only an oneiromancer could step inside his wards, as the Dream was everywhere and nowhere. And only one oneiromancer in existence possessed this kind of power.

Oneira. Fucking Sorceress Oneira.

Stunned, he found himself looking wildly about the library,as if the infamous sorceress might suddenly appear again. Like a child, he wished for daylight, for high noon, when the potency of the Dream faded with so few dreamers to feed it. No wonder she came at night, in the early morning hours, at the height of her abilities. He supposed he found that vaguely reassuring, that she dared his domain only when she felt strongest.

Don’t push me.

That had been no idle boast. Shecouldhave killed him while he slept, a dozen times over, and him helpless as an infant to defend himself. And why hadn’t she? They were enemies, held as threats one against the other for as long as he could remember. All this time he’d rested easy, thinking his much-vaunted wards had prevented just such an assassination. If she could have dispatched him so expediently all these years, why hadn’t she? There had to be a reason.

More pointedly, why had she come to his library now?

She’d retired, that’s what His Majesty had said. Walked away from it all and vanished. That, however, could be a subterfuge. It would be a brilliant strategy, he had to acknowledge. Create the fiction that his nemesis had stepped off the field of battle and make it appear that the Southern Lands had lost their most formidable defense, thus luring the king into the exact conquest he now contemplated. Stearanos sat in his chair by the window, propping his elbows on his knees and clutching his head in his hands, mind spinning with the implications. A trap. This could all be a massive trap.

If so, however, why would Oneira tip her hand in such an egregious manner? Viewed in this light, her actions in invading his library, engaging in this correspondence, looked utterly irresponsible. And Stearanos didn’t think the sorceress would be.

Ruthless, yes. Devastatingly powerful, able to twist minds back against themselves. One well-documented tale in her filedetailed how she’d put an entire city—albeit a small one—to sleep, allowing the invading army to sweep in and kill them all while they lay as defenseless as he had. Having experienced her enchantment himself, he didn’t doubt a word of it. Purportedly every person had died in those early morning hours, down to the newborn infants, a level of cruelty shocking even to him.

Difficult to reconcile that with the woman who’d left a well-worn children’s book as a trade. Or the woman who’d stolen a book on the cultivation of rare roses. Why would the fearsome and loathsome Oneira want Veredian roses?

Unless it was all a deeply crafty method for twisting up his mind. As he’d thought that first morning, she could be undermining the enemy before he arrived on her shores, making him doubt himself, demonstrating just how vulnerable he was to her least whim. She’d taken what she thought mattered to him. No doubt she’d discerned that he’d been reading that book on rose cultivation, perhaps read his desire for those rare and beautiful blossoms in his dreams, and focused in on that. She wanted him to see himself as a child compared to her, vulnerable, easily manipulated and murdered.

Perhaps she meant to scare him off before the conquest began. Perhaps they meant to invade his own lands. Still, why tip her hand? She could have sprung this trap without baiting him, so there must be a deeper agenda, something he hadn’t thought of yet.

Not yet, but he would. She might possess the power of dreams, but he knew strategy. He’d become His Majesty’s Eminence for his keen intellect and understanding of war, even as a young man, as much as for his sorcery. He could outwit the oneiromancer.

He knew her identity, his first and best advantage. She’d taken pains to hide that from him, except for that one, telling mistake. Oneira possessed a fiery temper and he’d tripped itwith his challenge, annoying her enough to respond hastily to his insult. But would she realize she’d made a mistake?

No, he thought not. She had underestimated him, thinking herself the superior magic-worker, waltzing into his home and taunting him with taking for herself what he dreamed of having, making it clear she thought of him as a child.You lack the power to stop me from taking whatever I wish.

She’d also made note of his research, probably laughing at the evidence that he was blithely walking into the trap they’d set.

How to proceed from here? His Majesty would be unlikely to listen. Or, if he did, Uhtric would be that much more determined to wage this war. It would infuriate him to discover that Queen Zarja of the Southern Lands and the sorceress Oneira might have played him. He’d want to show them he couldn’t be tricked or cowed. And Stearanos would end up facing Oneira in battle, which could not end well, for anyone.

Before he went to the king, Stearanos needed information. He had to know what Oneira was up to, if she’d truly retired or if this was all a game. He might not be able to travel via the Dream as she could, but he had his ways of finding people. He could locate Oneira and, though she’d likely have warded her home, he’d stake his reputation that he could outmatch any ward she’d created.

Enough of waiting for her to come to him. He was going to her.

16

Oneira tried to focus on reading the novel and couldn’t. It felt too much of Stearanos, his presence sifting from the open pages in a slow-moving mist until the sense of him filled the dome. She could only read the thing outside, lest her head fill withhiminstead of the story. Unfortunately, it was pouring rain. Too bad, because she very much liked the novel, a haunting retelling of a princess in hiding and her flying horse. Stearanos might be infuriatingly insulting—calling her a coward!—but he had excellent taste in books. No wonder his library held the reputation it did.

Tossing aside the book with a sigh, she stood, her three companions lifting their heads in harmonious inquiry. They’d all joined her in the dome, the spring storm off the ocean lashing against the crystal in impotent fury. Even Adsila didn’t want to fly, tucking her head under her wing and snoozing the afternoon away.

The storm made for quite a show, the rain pounding on the transparent surface of the dome, running in rivers over the curve and falling in a circular waterfall from there. Every once in a while the lowering clouds parted, revealing the rainswept, terribly green landscape and the roiling blue-black sea beyond.

Oneira fretted over her roses, the ghost of Stearanos and his inevitable disapproval hanging as heavy in the air as the dark-bellied clouds. Ridiculous that she should feel any sense of obligation to him. Whether she succeeded in making those roses live—encouraging them to thrive, that was—had nothing to dowith Stearanos and his interest in them. “Let him get his own roses,” she told the three animals, though they’d all gone back to napping and ignored her.

Moriah hadn’t spoken to her again, though Oneira had tried to coax her into it, oddly missing conversation all of a sudden. Bizarre that she’d gone for so long without uttering a word, even to herself, not having the slightest inclination to give voice to her thoughts, and now she craved speaking with another person.

She’d even considered going to visit the ancient gardener, just to satisfy that urge for company, but the gardener would ask after the roses and Oneira had little to report yet. In truth, the roses had begun to look a bit shocked and bedraggled. The book had predicted this, that initially the bushes would droop due to the trauma of transplantation, but Oneira still worried. She couldn’t face the gardener until she had good news. Besides which, she hadn’t been invited, and Oneira hesitated to trespass again.

Also, the person she really wanted to talk to was the one person she didn’t dare go near, ever again. At least she’d stuck to her resolve not to return to the library and its intriguing owner. It had helped to realize that what she’d thought was a playful, even flirtatious interchange, had been in deadly earnest for him. Not that she blamed him—sorcerers were a paranoid lot for good reason and Stearanos famed for his justifiable caution—but calling her out as a coward had been a bridge too far.

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