Page 11 of House of Gilded Nightmares

“Me,” he says, “and others at the Court of Nightmares.”

A pulse of frustration shivers across my skin. “Do I have to drag every question out of you? Who exactly at your court has been looking for me this whole time? And why?”

He’s silent for a moment, and his jaw rolls. “Our king,” he finally says.

I open my mouth to remind him of the second part of my question, but he raises a gloved hand to silence me.

“No more questions,” he growls. “We’re almost out of the woods.”

He wraps his fingers around my bicep to encourage me to walk faster, and his mouth is set in such a grim line that I don’t dare challenge him. He’s nothing like he’d been in my dreams all these years. In my dreams, he’d seemed…well, he didn’t say anything, but at least he wasn’t constantly glowering. Here, awake and in the flesh, he acts as if abducting me is a huge inconvenience to him.

“You know, I didn’t ask to be brought here,” I snap, forgetting I’d decided a moment before not to trifle with him.

His scowl deepens even more. “Would you rather have stayed in the Amethyst Palace as consort to your priest?”

“What do you even know about my life?” My words come out like the lash of a whip. I have no idea how he knows this, but I don’t like it. And I don’t like the judgement in his tone.

“Plenty.”

I hook my gaze onto his. “How is it possible that you’re even here? I didn’t think you were real.”

He snorts as if I’ve said the most ridiculous thing in the world. “Not real?”

“I’ve dreamed of you all these years. I thought you were just a figment of my imagination.”

As the words come out, I instantly feel foolish. The warrior grins.

I glare over at him. “Why were you in my dreams? You have nothing better to do than spy on me every night?”

The warrior’s eyes rake over me as we walk. “No. Watching over you is my duty.”

I shake my head back and forth. “I don’t understand…”

He lets out a deep sigh. “I am your sworn blood guardian. It is my duty to protect you, in dreams or waking.”

I fall silent as this new information swims in my head. None of this makes any sense. I’m traversing a world of nightmares that somehow overlaps my own, where supposedly I was born, accompanied by a man I thought was only a dream.

If I was really born here, who kidnapped me as a baby, and why?

I’d thought my situation was bad before. Chosen, joined to the High Priest for the rest of my days. But this? I’m in some unknown realm, with no real idea why I’m here. This blood guardian is being incredibly short on details. I can’t decide if this is worse than the fate that awaits me back in Eldare. Neither is good. What I do know, however, is that I’m not going to stick around and find out.

Abruptly, the mist weaving through the forest clears as we step out of the trees into an open space of rolling fields. While fog still snakes across the earth, the view ahead is clear to the horizon. It’s the first time since arriving here I’ve been able to see more than a dozen paces ahead. The gently rolling grasslands stretch for miles, descending to a vast river in the distance. Beyond, mountains cut up into the sky, dark and foreboding. They dwarf the mountains near the Amethyst Palace, rising so high it seems they’ll pierce the heavens. I catch the far-off sparkle of lights among them which must be a city nestled within the peaks.

“Keep moving,” my guardian says, and only then do I realize I’ve stopped again. “We must make the river by nightfall.”

“Why?”

He doesn’t answer at first, taking my arm once again and guiding me down the hill. Then, after several paces, “Those that hunt us cannot cross the river. There is a magical boundary that traps them here.”

“And your Court of Nightmares, it lies on the other side of the river?”

“Our court,” he says, his voice a rumble. “It lies beyond the river and the mountains.”

“We’re to travel across those mountains?” I point, my mouth gaping open. “How long is that going to take?”

“Two weeks, give or take.”

“Why, in the name of the goddess, did you bring me into your realm so far from our destination?”

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