Page 40 of Never the Roses

“Not me specifically,” Oneira answered with a frown. “Or, if she did know my name, she didn’t speak it and she didn’t offerhers.” She slid him a wry look. “As seems to be traditional for this sort of thing in the old tales.”

He nodded knowingly, having encountered such oddities himself. For all that they spent so much of their lives being educated in the precisions of magic, how to refine their natural inclinations into skills to produce the most reliable results, so much of what they did, of what the magical world held, remained deep beneath the surface, emerging on occasion to remind them of their transience and ignorance. They were but human, in the end.

“She did know and correctly name Adsila,” Oneira added.

“Even more interesting.”

“But then, so did you.”

“I imagine you did also.”

“Yes, of course.”

They descended a steep winding section, suspending their conversation to go single file, that sense of companionship persisting. Perhaps it was only because he’d had so few conversations with his sorcerous colleagues. Or perhaps it was something more.

“I know you took Adsila with you into the Dream…” he said when he drew up beside her again, and rather before he knew what he was going to ask, trailing off as he realized exactly where his yearnings were pulling him. Uncertain territory.

“Yes,” Oneira answered, as if he’d finished the question, then slid him a canny look. “And no, I can’t take just anyone into the Dream, if that’s what you’re asking. Adsila is the only one who has accompanied me into that realm and it’s been entirely of her own initiative. I suspect she can do it because of her numinous nature. As an avatar of the goddess, Adsila isn’t bound to the rules of our reality.”

That made him somewhat uncomfortable to contemplate. Stearanos knew himself to be a man of their reality, not only bound tothose rules, but taking comfort in their solid reliability. Still, he chafed at the restriction of being unable to go where she’d gone.

“If I said I could take you into the Dream to meet the gardener, would you ask me to?” Oneira inquired, clearly following his thinking. Her silver eyes sparkled with knowing mischief.

“Would you say yes?” he countered, quite certain of her answer.

“It would be unwise of me,” she pointed out, obliquely referencing their implicit conflict. She would be vulnerable to him in the Dream, inside her magic, potentially revealing her secrets.

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

She shrugged. “It’s a moot point, regardless, as I can’t. I don’t think I could do it with a mundane human. I wouldn’t attempt it even with Moriah or Bunny. With another sorcerer, especially one of your power… Well, I think your magic would fight mine and I’d likely lose you in the Dream. I don’t think you’d care for that fate.”

He shuddered at the prospect of being lost in dreams for all eternity, no hope of waking, no rules to cling to. He’d go insane and become some sort of wandering nightmare to plague others with all that haunted him. Firmly turning his thoughts away from that bone-watering idea, he caught on to the significance of what Oneira had said. “That’s why you didn’t escape into the Dream when I broke your wards,” he proclaimed triumphantly. There were few things he loved better than solving a problem or answering a persistent question. “You couldn’t take Moriah and Bunny with you.”

“They can take care of themselves,” she said, gazing out at the sea and not even trying to pretend she wasn’t ducking the question. “They did long before they came to me.”

“Then you were protecting Tristan.” He sounded sour.

She snorted. “You wouldn’t have hurt him.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Stearanos muttered ungraciously. “The boy is a fool.”

“And thus not deserving of your attention, much less injury or death at your hands,” Oneira returned placidly, raising a brow at his surprise. “What—did you think I would argue? I don’t agree that Tristan is a fool. He’s quite intelligent, in a thoroughly bookish way. And he’s obviously not a boy, though I can see how he would seem that way to a man of your years and—”

“Myyears?” he interrupted. “You make me sound as much of a doddering ancient as your Veredian gardener.”

“She was hardly doddering. My point is that you are probably three times Tristan’s age.”

“As are you.”

“As am I.”

Her calm acknowledgment left him with nothing to push against. That was Oneira, he was fast learning. She was as insubstantial as a dream and as perversely persistent. You poked at her, tried to contain her, and she wafted away, then returned to haunt you, over and over again. “You were saying?” he finally asked in resignation.

“Oh, you’ll let me finish now?” she asked archly, though a smile curved her lips. “I harbor no illusions about who Tristan is and isn’t. But heispretty and Ihavebeen lonely, even before I retired and exiled myself. I’ve begun to realize that—why am I telling you this?”

“I asked,” he answered simply. “In a manner of speaking,” he added, realizing his motivations hadn’t been at all pure.

“My enemy,” she mused, “with whom I’ve spent a pleasant afternoon of intimate conversation.”

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