Page 101 of Cursed Dreams
Thalia woke with a gasp, the taste of his name still on her tongue and her heart pounding like it had been flung into battle. The golden glow of the temple’s braziers flickered against the stone floor, casting long, shifting shadows, the heat curling around her didn’t come from the fire. It came from him. Before she could so much as gasp, Vaelith had her pinned against one of the cold stone columns, his hands locked around her arms, not rough, not cruel, but unmovable. His eyes blazed molten gold, his entire body taut with fury, breath hot against her face.
“What the fuck have you done?” he snarled, voice rough, low, and burning.
Her heart slammed against her ribs. “Vaelith, what? what’s happening?”
“I felt it,” he spat. “Your magic. It was, twisting, shifting into something it shouldn’t be. Something that doesn't belong to you.”
He let go of her like he couldn’t bear to touch her, pacing now, his shadows dragging behind him like smoke, like they were reluctant to part.
“You let him in,” he growled. “You keep letting him in. You think this is a game? You have no idea what you’re doing.”
She shoved away from the pillar, anger and panic clawing at her chest “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
His head snapped around. “You opened yourself to him. You bound yourself without even knowing it.”
Her blood went cold.
“You were in the dream again,” he said. “With him.”
She stilled, trying to understand what she was hearing “How do you know?”
Vaelith turned slowly, eyes burning as he stepped toward her again. “Because I felt it. The way your power bent around his. The way it cracked.”
She swallowed hard, chest heaving. “You were there?”
He didn’t answer immediately—just stared at her, a flicker of something dark and furious in his face.
Eventually, she forced her racing thoughts to settle enough to speak again. “You were there? How is that even possible?”
He was silent for a long moment. Too long.
“I know him,” he said. “I know exactly who he is.” he spat it like poison. "The prince.”
She staggered back a step, the words slamming into her.
“You know him,” she whispered. “You’ve known this whole time. Who he is and where he is ?” confusion and fury warred inside her at his revelation.
“I know what he is,” Vaelith said, jaw clenched. “And I know where he is.”
“You don’t want him to leave the dream realm, you want to leave him trapped there!” she accused, as she slowly tried to piece it all together.
Vaelith’s expression twisted, pain, fury, grief all dancing across his face.
“That’s not a dream realm,” he growled. “It’s not a peaceful glade or some lost, sacred place. It’s a prison. A locked, cursed edge of the world where monsters sleep behind walls of illusion and silver-tongued lies.”
“That’s not, he’s not—” .
“He is.” Vaelith’s voice was low and sharp, a blade sliding between her ribs. “And I won’t let him out. I swore to keep him there. I helped build the lock.”
His words made no sense, how could he have possibly ..
Thalia’s voice shook. “How could you, how is that even, Vaelith, when?”
“I was there,” he said flatly. “At the end of the war. I saw what he did.”
She was trembling now, the room spinning.
“I will not let Caelum walk this world again,” he said, a shadow twisting around his boots like a living thing. “Even if it means standing between you and him for the rest of my life.
