Page 73 of In the Shadow of a Dream

The creature advanced, its horrible form drawing to close to Brinna for comfort. She shrank back. Its giant claws tapping against the rocky ground.

“That magic lingering in your blood,” it rasped. “Sweet, tasty magic I will drain from your body.”

“And what is this magic?” Auri yelled, somehow now wielding a sword.

“Godblood.” The monster sniffed. “And something else. A taint of... darkness.”

Auri straightened and tilted her head. “Nixus?”

The monster scoffed. “No. Something borrowed. Taken.” The creature advanced another step. “But you are alone, sweet godling. I will suck the marrow of your godlight and use it to break free.”

“Run, Auri!” Brinna screamed.

But her sister couldn’t hear her.

Instead, a bright light flashed, the creature screamed, and Brinna squeezed her eyes shut.

When she opened them again, Auri, wilted and withered, collapsed onto a sandy shore like the one Lucian had once shown her behind an Elsewhere Door.

“Auri!”

Brinna ran forward and dropped next to Auri’s unmoving form. Her sister looked like a plant whose roots had failed, her skin pale.

“Nixus?” Auri whispered. “Are you here?” She rolled to her back and looked up at the sky, seeming not to care the waves lapped at her legs partially submerged. Or she was too weak to do anything about it; her pallor was awful, so pale. Her hands stretched out to her sides, her body covered in a shroud of dark gossamer and water.

“Auri?” Brinna asked. “I’m here. What can I do?”

But Auri didn’t answer.

And in that moment, Brinna felt her absolute powerlessness. She’d spent her life being there for her family, helping them, comforting them, listening to them. And now, when it mattered, she was… nothing. Tears stung her eyes.

“I’m glad you brought me here. It will be easier this way. To fade,” Auri said.

The fading. Lucian had spoken of it. Brinna’s heart took a tumble, tripping against her chest as it tried to find purchase inside her chest.

“It’s one of my favorite memories, Nix, realizing that I loved you.” Auri brought her hands together at her heart, one of her hands circling her wrist where her red ribbon would have been. “I think this is where I lost it,” she whispered and smiled at whatever she was seeing.

Brinna gasped, pulling herself back into the cottage and reaching for her own red ribbon. Still there. Auri’s was gone. Tarley’s was gone. Jessamine’s was there—different than her own. Hers oldest sister’s was woven with multiple threads, though she wasn’t sure why.

Brinna turned and looked at Auri.

Just as in her dream, she was deathly pale, her brow pinched as if she was in pain.

“I’m going to help,” Brinna told Auri, but she didn’t know how.

She stood and raced through the cottage—the only one able to do it—to her mother, and blinked her way into Scarlett’s dreamscape, screaming, “Mother! End this! Please. Something is wrong with Auri.”

But Scarlett was bent over in her version of the garden, tending dead plants. She didn’t hear Brinna, didn’t flinch, just plucked dead leaves again and again.

Brinna removed herself and tried her father’s dreamscape. “Father?” she asked.

She stood inside the cottage, but it was empty, the front door flung wide open. She left and walked outside, where everything was gigantic once more. Blades of grass were huge trees; gravel was a canyon.

“Father?” she cried, afraid to walk further for fear of getting lost, but then remembered she could leave the dream. So she stepped into the dense forest to find Tomas and wandered until she knew it was hopeless.

She closed her eyes. “Father, I need you.” When she reopened them, Tomas stood in front of her, looking up at the sky.

“I’m small,” he said, fretting. “So small. Always small. I will not find my way. Scarlett? Where are my children?”

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