Page 67 of Never the Roses

“A truly wondrous ability.”

“I’m going to show you something not at all wondrous. Something nightmarish, in truth, from my own memories.”

He paused. “Will you come lie with me?”

“Why?”

Huffing a laugh, his voice came warm from the darkness. “Sometimes things are less terrible when shared.”

“Nothing will make this less terrible.” But she picked her way through the pillows toward his silhouette where he sat up, reaching for her, a deeper shadow within the swirling shadows, and allowed him to draw her against his side, taking shelter in his stalwart strength, even though it was pure illusion and nothing could shield her from the truth.

Not allowing herself to procrastinate any longer, Oneira called up her personal nightmare, allowing it to play out larger than life. The client coming to her from a distant land, offering a fortune to eradicate an enemy so thoroughly they could not return from it. How she’d agreed, seeing her way to freedom at last.

She’d gone to Govirinda, on leave from Queen Zarja and drunk with the prospect of the fortune she would earn. With visions inher mind of dumping a bag of coin at the queen’s feet, Oneira had unleashed a storm upon the island paradise, devastation straight from the Dream in all its apocalyptic phantasmagoria.

Never had she had carte blanche to do anything at all. Usually clients wanted to take possession of a place, not destroy it. Heady with the power of opening the Dream and funneling the darkest elements into the waking world, Oneira slipped the leash on her control.

Feeling ill, much as she longed to look away, Oneira made herself watch.You did this thing, she reminded herself remorselessly.You can at least bear witness.

Stearanos didn’t move, didn’t make a sound, as all around them the epic storm boiled. Centuries-old trees spun like twigs and drove through solid rock. The air blackened as the winds of fury tore up topsoil, barely obscuring the screaming shapes of people and animals alike. The sea hurled itself over the land, sweeping away what little remained until there was nothing left of the island but bare rock. Not even a scrap of a rosebush.

“The disaster that befell Govirinda,” Stearanos whispered in awe. “That wasn’t a cataclysmic typhoon or earthquake. That wasyou.”

“A one-person disaster,” she whispered, knowing she didn’t deserve to be held in the circle of his arm, and yet unable to refuse herself the simple human contact. On the sphere above, she played the afterimages of the barren landscape, over and over again. Making herself look at what she’d done. “So you see—I am not a redeemer, only a destroyer.”

“You can change that,” he told her, his arm drawing her closer against his side, still gazing up at the horribly sterile devastation she’d wreaked.

“You don’t understand,” she said, stirring restlessly, ready to move away, but he held her with gentle firmness. “I didn’t meanto unleash that extent. I opened the Dream and lost control of what it did. In the moment, I failed to… Stearanos, I’m a monster. I didn’t care who and what died, only that I got free. You know the story of the wolf that chews off its own paw to escape the hunter’s trap? Well I chewed up everything and everyone else, escaping intact.”

“Not entirely intact,” he whispered in the dark. “You shredded your heart in the process.”

Shredded your heart.That hit home hard enough to make her gasp at the sudden transformation of the chronic ache of despair into an acute pain.

“And now you work with your hands, growing things. The roses,” he realized, “they lived on that island.”

“Yes. I don’t know why the gardener trusted me with them.”

“Maybe she’s a sage, to know that’s what your heart needed to heal.”

“Though I don’t deserve to heal.”

“We all deserve to heal, to become better people, Oneira. The trick is doing it.”

She didn’t know. She couldn’t think about it. “Moriah gave me advice along those lines once, that even the sages do not know how the heart heals.”

“Moriah’s advice is a bit obscure.”

“I haven’t found hers terribly useful thus far.”

“When did she say it to you—was there context?”

Thinking back, she blushed to recall it, cringing at the vulnerability, though Stearanos already knew the worst of her. She laughed softly in her embarrassment. “After I manipulated your dreams, inserting the image of that bunny.”

“So, it was you who put that image in my dreams—the fanged rabbit chewing up a book.” He let out a sigh of disgust. “I knew it had to be you.”

“I thought you would figure it out immediately. It was so impulsive and foolish, revealing the nature of my magic to you. I didn’t understand what was wrong with me to take such an idiotic risk that would allow you to identify me. I still don’t.”

He turned onto his side, keeping his arm around her, adjusting her hair with his other hand, then smoothing it down the long line of her body, petting her. This sort of cuddling was totally new for her—and was something she couldn’t have imagined with Tristan. Certainly they wouldn’t have shared these difficult secrets. “Maybe,” Stearanos said quietly, “you took that risk because youwantedme to know you.”

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