Page 113 of In the Shadow of a Dream

“Exactly. I’m the god of night and darkness. I’m impervious to all kinds of things.”

Luc shook his head and gave his brother’s shoulder some good-natured slaps. “Okay god of imperviousness. Let’s go.” Though afraid of what he might find, he walked across the meadow to the cottage.

Lachlan was the first one through. “Tarley!” he called, then stopped short.

Following him in, Luc called on his light. Though he’d never been in the cottage before, he knew it was small from Brinna’s descriptions. He was unprepared for how small. A single room that housed a tiny kitchen, a dining table, and a fireplace, with a hall near the kitchen that led to a door and a set of stairs, but this was it. A cabinet used for refrigeration and a potbelly stove for an oven. No wonder she’d been in awe of the bathroom.

The dining table was set with dishes strewn across its surface, the plates with food and crumbs scattered with broken bits of glass.

“I thought your tent was a dump,” Nix said from the doorway. “Who lives here?”

“There,” Lachlan said, ignoring Nix and hurrying deeper into the room.

Luc watched Lachlan kneel next to a lumped blanket in the middle of the floor in front of the cold hearth. Lachlan looked up. “It’s Scarlett and Tomas.” He reached out and touched them. “They have pulses, but they’re freezing.”

“There’s a sleeping man back here,” Nix said from a doorway.

“Mattias,” Lachlan said.

Luc started for the stairs, remembering Brinna telling him she shared a room with her sisters. “This way.” The narrow stairs were barely wide enough to accommodate him. When he reached the entrance at the top, he ducked under the roughhewn frame, his footsteps echoing against the wooden floor.

And there was Brinna, curled up with her sister Auri in one bed, as if they’d grabbed hold of each other in sleep, Tarley in the other. There was barely a walkway between the two beds, each pressed up against the opposite wall. They’d been covered—Scarlett had tried to make them comfortable, it seemed—but the room was frigid.

At the footsteps behind him, Luc glanced over his shoulder to watch Nix and Lachlan enter, hoping for a sign that Nix might remember. His brother looked around, his eyes dropping to the bed where Auri was with Brinna. His mouth opened and closed, color blooming in his cheeks as the fade receded, but then his gaze slid away.

“Well isn’t this… cozy,” he said.

Luc sighed.

Lachlan pushed past them to Tarley’s side and dropped to his knees. He gathered her into his arms, pulling her from the bed into his lap.

“Tarley,” he whispered. “My beautiful Tarley.” He smoothed her hair, her face, and then leaned forward and pressed his mouth to her cheeks, her forehead, her eyelids, her mouth. “Come back to me,” he whispered.

She made a noise, her eyelids fluttering open, her body starting before she realized who held her. “Lachlan,” she gasped, flinging her arms around his neck.

“I’m here,” he whispered.

She burst into tears.

Luc turned to Brinna, suddenly afraid this might not work. He loved her, which he knew to be the absolute truth, but he didn’t know if she felt the same. They’d forged a relationship in the shadow of a dream.

There was a possibility that his kiss might not work, and if it didn’t, he wasn’t sure what to do. But he wasn’t there to not try. He had every intention of imbuing that kiss with everything on his heart, so he pulled Brinna into his arms, and sat at the end of the bed, cradling her.

“Brinna,” he whispered. “Mi alora. I love you. Come be in the true world with me.” Then he leaned down and pressed his lips to hers. A real kiss in the waking world that felt as true as it had in the dream, and all Luc could do was believe that it—that he—would be enough.

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“Mi alora, I love you,” someone said in the distance, the sound pushing through the gray around her. “Come be in the true world with me,” the wonderful voice coaxed.

She was certain she knew that voice, felt it reverberate in the deepest parts of her, bringing her pleasure and joy. She grabbed hold of the feeling, grabbed hold of the words.

“I don’t deserve you,” the voice whispered, “but I will work to earn your love, Brinna.”

The deep gray of sleep drained away, and Brinna came rushing back to herself, gasping as if surfacing from deep water. When her eyes fluttered open, the first thing she saw was Lucian’s handsome face.

“Am I dreaming?” she asked, grabbing hold of him, anchoring herself.

He shook his head and gave her a short smile. “I’m here. In the cottage.”

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