Page 55 of Nightmare's Dance

“Holy shit,” I breathed and glanced over at Geraint. He looked as shocked as I felt, and I reminded myself he hadn’t spent much, if any, time in Nightmare before coming into my life.

Robby shook his head. “Even your clouds are terrifying. Very nice,” he said dryly.

Nic ignored Robby.

Our mounts took up their lope again. Ghost gave no signs of tiring, despite his tongue lolling from his mouth and the way his sides heaved under my legs from his exertion. I unclenched my fingers on one hand and risked patting him on the shoulder. He flicked an ear in my direction, and I swear his mouth opened wider into a grin. Grateful he was happy to carry me, I took a breath and tried to get my racing heart under control.

Off to our left, the grasses bent and swayed.

Something flashed across our path. The wolves slowed to an easy trot.

“Hunt the hounds trailing us, instead,” Nic ordered, sounding amused instead of fearful.

The grasses rustled as whatever it was did as their prince commanded and raced away.

“Is anything here not terrifying?” I patted Ghost again.

“We are all terrifying,” Ghost growled. “We are Nightmare.”

“Right. Okay, that was a dumb question,” I muttered.

Robby laughed. “Spark, just wait until you see Dream. You’ll be wishing for a return to simple Nightmares. Dream is a twisted place.”

“You might be surprised at how quickly dreams transform into nightmares,” Nic added. “And not all nightmares are simple, just as not all dreams are twisted. It’s a complicated land. If you stayed, you’d never truly get used to it, but you’d grow to love it.”

Could I grow to love it here? I’d just been threatened by clouds with teeth, and creepy twins, and something hidden in the grass. What was next, scary corn fields? They’d left us alone when Nic had told them off, but still…

I pet Ghost again as the wolves went back to their ground-eating lope and quietly admitted I looked forward to meeting some of the other residents of Nightmare. I was also worried about Mary and the other mirror dwellers. Not to mention the dreambound women Baz had abducted. I wondered if there was something we could do for them.

And then there was Nic. The shadowy prince that was helping Geraint, even though he didn’t want to. He did that for me. He’d mentioned that he hadn’t been happy to find out our childhood game had real consequences, but the way he’d kissed me had me thinking he might have changed his mind.

I looked over at my knight. How were things going to change between us? Could we survive this challenge? Did he even want to be with me? Robby assured me that Geraint loved me, but that didn’t mean he wanted to share my bed anymore.

Ugh, this was such a freaking mess.

“Ghost, how far are we from the boundary lands?”

“Not far,” the wolf replied.

I tried to take in the surroundings instead of wallowing in my thoughts, though now that the clouds had left and nothing seemed to stalk us through the tall grasses, there wasn’t much to see.

After a time, the wolves slowed. The gradual transition from mostly gray scale, with splashes of color, to a more vibrant landscape, caught me off guard. I stared at vivid colors, marveling at them, before I realized that the scenery had changed. The color palate was still not quite what I was used to, as if someone had taken out all the subtle shades and simply left the primary colors—purple was one shade of purple, green had no variety, and red was starkly arterial red. Risking a glance up, I studied the sky. Robin’s egg blue stretched ahead of me, with a few white puffy clouds floating through the air.

“Shadow Prince, where do we go from here?” the wolf Nic rode asked. Her voice was higher, possibly a female.

“We seek The Lady in White,” Nic said.

The wolves grumbled and yipped amongst themselves before the lead wolf spoke again. “We do not know where she has hidden. We suggest you ask the succubi and incubi for a guide.”

Ghost shifted under me. “I sense a nothingness storm,” he growled. “We must shelter.”

“A what?”

Ghost didn’t answer my question. Instead, he bolted after the lead wolf. This run felt almost frantic, especially compared to the easy lope before. Even the edge the wolves had displayed after meeting those creepy twins was nothing compared to how they ran now. The trees rustled as wind gusted around us. Birds or some other bird-like creatures burst into the sky and flapped away with raucous cries.

The lead wolf yipped.

“Ember, create a den, or a cave system, or something for us to hide in,” Nic called urgently.

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