Page 33 of Never the Roses

Oneira waited for the next blow, senses resting lightly on the web of wards, magic coiled into a sliver of a portal to the Dream, ready to unleash defenders should her wards collapse. Which they would, that much was clear. This was no simple knocking at her wards as Tristan had on the road. Also, having her wards go off twice in two days was quite the coincidence, which she knew better than to believe.

If she had to reveal her true nature to Tristan, then there was no help for it. Better to possibly drive away a potential and very temporary lover than meekly allow herself to be destroyed. No, this testing of her wards had power behind it, the might of a sorcerer. The wards still resonated with the force of the strike, echoing like a bell rung and humming in the waiting silence. Despite that force, Oneira knew in her bones that the first hit had been only a test. Whatever or whoever it was had withdrawn just enough to muster sufficient power to drill through her wards or determine a weak spot, to maximize their chances of breaking through. She could reassure herself on that point: her wards were solid, cohesive, intertwined with dream magic to a smooth defense. There were no weak spots.

However, she was no wardmaker. As a sorceress who traveledvia the Dream, her best weapons and defenses lay in mutability. She could move in and out of the Dream, evading attack and attacking in return from a place that reached everywhere. Against a known enemy—usually one hunkered down in a fixed location—she was unstoppable.

But in this situation, she had become the sitting duck, not knowing from which direction the attack might come. She could flee into the Dream, but only as a last resort. Whoever had found her home would pursue, if not into the Dream, then to wherever she emerged. Her best chances lay in destroying them now, while she was at the pinnacle of her power, before they harried her into exhaustion, using fear and intimidation to put her off her game.

The animals held vigil with her, a mental clock silently ticking the seconds away. She held herself coiled like a venomous snake, relaxed and in position, poised to strike at—

There.She lunged at the tap on her wards, calling lightning from the Dream to fry it—only to stagger as five more points lit up, all around her perimeter, in sequence. Nothing could move that fast. She was being played, drawn into attacking at nothing, exposing her back. She’d been through this sort of duel before, but never with a sorcerer this proficient. They were everywhere and nowhere, stabbing at her wards with tiny needles of power, just enough to sting and draw her attention, so fleeting she couldn’t muster a counterattack before they were gone again.

Recognizing how quickly she could burn through her focus this way, not to mention drive herself into an unreasoning frenzy trying to swat every gnat in a stinging cloud, she forced herself to pull her attention back from the wards, as wrong as that felt.

That was what they wanted, so she wouldn’t give it to them. She coiled back again into resting position, widening the portal to the Dream, but holding back the nightmare denizens she’d summoned through force of will. She’d have one chanceif they managed to break through. No matter how powerful the sorcerer, they couldn’t physically be in more than one place at a time—unless they possessed abilities she’d never heard of, in which case she was already dead—and they’d have to come through her wards in person at a single location. There would be a brief moment of vulnerability when she would have the advantage, when they’d be momentarily low on power from punching through, orienting themselves to their changed physical location, when she would strike.

So, she watched, senses alert, and waited for her opportunity.

Her animals waited with her. Adsila half-mantled, ready to launch into the sky. Bunny’s nose high, sniffing the air. Moriah lithe and ready. Oneira hadn’t asked for them to come, but they had, and they stood by her side. She found herself moved by their unasked-for loyalty, might have grown a little misty over it, had the circumstances been less dire. For the moment, she locked her emotions down tight. There was no room for sentiment in a sorcerer’s duel.

Boom!

The attack came like an exploding star. Searing a hole in her wards, the sorcerer flared like the sun, hot, brilliantly powerful, so bright they burned her senses. Oneira held on, snapping her own attack into action, shooting a night terror at the intruder, who staggered…

But they instantly recovered and deflected it, dissolving the creature before it fully resolved into the waking world, as if they’d been prepared for it. The remainder of her wards collapsed against each other, like game tiles tipping one into the next, the weight of each increasing the pressure on the one following, until they allpoofedinto an invisible smoke of residual magic, the imagined scent acrid as her fear.

Curse it all. She’d lost that temporary advantage. Whoever thiswas would require everything she could muster to defeat them, and she wasn’t sure she had it in her. She’d also never engaged in a duel without knowing her opponent’s strengths and, most importantly, their weaknesses. Worst of all, they knew her, and had chosen the timing of their attack well, at midday for her location, when most dreamers had awakened, and before many had begun to truly dream on the other side of the world.

Bracing for the counterstrike that would surely come, she looked around at her animals, all gazing at her with full trust. “You should flee,” she told them. “Save yourselves.”

If animals could roll their eyes, they would have. Instead, Adsila dropped to her shoulder, steadying with light talons. Bunny came to stand at her side, Moriah languidly sprawling before her, like a threshold to be crossed. Dropping her hand to rest on Bunny’s shoulders, Oneira briefly wondered what had become of Tristan. Yes, the conflict had raged silently, beyond the ken of mundane senses, but some time had passed. Hadn’t it occurred to him to check on her?

Ah, well—perhaps it was for the best. If she should perish, the invading sorcerer was unlikely to harm a wandering poet and scholar, no more than she’d been inclined to. Most magic-workers didn’t like killing normal people, only each other.

She widened the portal she’d opened, summoning everything the thinning Dream could muster, braced for the killing strike that would surely come…

That didn’t come.

Instead, the invader seemed to be coming toward her. Not from the road that led to the world of men. She’d been too rattled previously, too focused on triangulating the location of the attack to pay attention to where in the physical world they’d entered her domain. They were coming from the steps to the sea.

The thought of some intruder’s feet violating her pink-pebblebeach, climbing the steps she’d painstakingly carved into the cliff—if not precisely with her own hands, then with magical precision—all of it stuck in her craw, sour and bitter. Briefly she considered bringing down her beautiful house, shattering the white walls, so they couldn’t have it. If not for Tristan innocently vulnerable within, she might have done it. But none of this was his fault. He was only here through unhappy accident, her charming and hapless poet.

The four of them faced the edge of the cliff, waiting for her enemy to come into view. Adsila chirped at the same moment the vague sense of familiarity focused into Oneira’s own recognition. In disbelief—though really, she should have guessed, should absolutely have known—she kicked herself internally as the tall form appeared, then stepped onto the terrace facing the sea. He had his long braids tied back, a grim smile on his stern lips, and fireballs spinning on his fists, clenched by his sides.

Stearanos Stormbreaker.

Of courseit was Stearanos, and she had only herself to blame for this. Through her recklessness and cavalier disregard for common sense—not to mention the healthy respect she should’ve had for his reputation—Oneira had tweaked the lion’s nose and brought him to her very doorstep.

“Dreamthief,” he greeted her, genially enough, though with iron in his voice. “I have no doubt you recognize me.”

“Stormbreaker,” she acknowledged in turn, unmoving. “To what do I owe this dubious honor?”

“Oh, I think you know,” he grated out, advancing on her step by step.

She refused to back down. He could kill her, and likely would, but she wouldn’t go down without a fight. She wouldn’t beg for her life or offer to become his slave-in-magic. Too many magic-workers went down that way, sacrificing pride in their ultimateterror, only to discover that a slow death became a torture that made them long for the quick one they’d avoided.

“Let’s not have any pretense between us. You’ve been a naughty thief, in more than just dreams, Sorceress Oneira,” Stearanos continued, thin mouth flattening further at her lack of response, his braids lifting in the wind of his billowing magic. “You have something ofmine. You are going to return what you’ve stolen from me and you’re going to pay the price for your insults and injuries.”

20

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