Page 192 of Skalterra By Nightmare
“Pieces.” His eyebrows knit.
“Like what?” I needed him to remember. I needed Liam.
“A steamcart.”
“We rode one recently.” I nodded. “What else?”
“A man. Some sort of leader, I think. Everyone respected him. Except me, for some reason.” He was talking about my father. These were all memories from his last few days as Liam, things that had happened after Gams had given him the chicken when we left Keel Watch.
“A good instinct, honestly. What else?”
“You.” He raised his glowing eyes from the chicken to my face. “And needing to protect you. It was my purpose, I think.”
How many times had I joked that he was only hanging out with me because Gams was forcing him? Liam had always denied it, but he wouldn’t have been aware of any secret directives Gams had built into his Nightmare.
My friendship with him hadn’t been real, but Liam hadn’t been real either.
“Why do I remember these things?” Ciarán asked. “And why do I miss it?”
“You were a Nightmare.”
“No, I wasn’t.” He shook his head.
“Your name was Liam.”
“I died.”
“Not an uncommon experience for a Nightmare.”
Ciarán stared at the chicken with his orange and black eyes. Liam had been blond, tanned, and perfect. Every difference between him and Ciarán highlighted everything Ciarán wanted to be.
“I knew the Saergrim in Keldori,” he murmured. “I remember seeing her.”
“My grandma.” I nodded.
“So that’s why I was never able to summon your Nightmare without you yielding,” Ciarán said. “I swore an oath to your family. I cannot control you without your permission.”
I remembered his arms around me as he stopped me from turning into a rotsbane. I remembered his arms around me in the hotel bed outside of Von Leer.
“You still haven’t told me where my grandmother is,” I said before I could let myself get confused over my feelings for Ciarán. Or Liam. I still wasn’t sure they were the same person. How could they be if Liam didn’t exist and Ciarán did? “And my friends too. Where are they?”
“The other Sovereigns are downstairs.”
I pushed my blankets off, and a new chill rolled over my body. I ignored it.
“My Lady—”
“No.” I pointed a stern finger at him, still trying to fight my way off the mattress. Everything was sore, and the tiniest movements threatened to lay me out with pain. “I told you, none of that.”
“You’re injured. You should stay in bed.”
“Then I demand you help meoutof bed.”
Ciarán sighed.
“In over four hundred years, no Grimguard has ever forsaken their duty.”
“So?”
