Radiant Shadows

Chapter 18

Rae didn’t truly sleep, but she could reach a meditative silence that felt very energizing. She felt as if she floated in a gray nothingness where the world couldn’t reach her.

“You!”

Rae focused her attention on the cave, pulling herself back to the state in which she typically existed, staring at the rock walls she had called “home” these past years. In the shadowed alcove, the queen of Faerie stood waiting. Her left hand held a broken mirror. All around her feet shards of reflective glass were scattered like the bones of the dead on an abandoned battlefield.

“None of these work as the one you made did.” Sorcha dropped the mirror to the floor, where the glass pieces joined the others already there. “You were in my mind.”

How did she find me?

Rae winced. She feigned comfort as if she merely rested on an oblong rock on the floor of the cave. It was an illusion, but it was the sort that made her feel anchored in the waking world. She looked directly at Sorcha and said, “I was.”

“I didn’t give you leave to live in Faerie. You never came to ask my permission,” Sorcha said. The words lilted at the end, a question that wasn’t meant to be. Her eyes were unfocused, her gaze not centered on Rae but on something beyond. She wasn’t as lovely here as she was in the dream world. Here, her imperiousness was off-putting; her rigidity was disconcerting. The flamelike vitality of her dream-self had been muted, like Rae was seeing her through a thick glass.

Rae would feel sympathy, but Sorcha was the queen Rae had feared, the faery who kept Devlin bound to a path that didn’t suit him. At her word, Devlin could die; Rae could die. That reality nullified any sympathy Rae would otherwise feel.

She stood and walked deeper into the shadows, putting more distance between them, standing as if she were leaning against the cave wall. Distance wouldn’t keep her safe, but it made her feel less unsettled by the High Queen’s presence.

“Can I ask permission now?”

Sorcha paused. “I’m not sure. I don’t know that I like your willingness to walk in my dreams…in anyone’s dreams. It’s indecorous.”

Rae kept silent. Once, in her mortal life, being accused of indecorous behavior was a severe charge. Rae’s long-ago instincts made her want to apologize for being inappropriate, but she hadn’t done anything untoward: she’d tried to help ease the pain of a grieving faery. The apology she owed was to Devlin, for exposing herself. So Rae stayed silent, hands folded demurely, gaze lowered. The semblance of propriety seemed a fitting response.

“Yet, I’m not sure how to kill you. The lack of a body to bleed complicates the matter.” Sorcha was as callous as Devlin appeared to most faeries, as unyielding as logic should be. It was chilling.

“I see.” Rae nodded. “Have you tried wishing me dead?”

“No.”

“May I ask—”

“No.” Sorcha was suddenly seated on a silver throne that sat atop a dais. Neither had been there a heartbeat ago. The queen had willed a chair into being, and a floor, and marble pillars, and—

We aren’t in the cave. Rae shivered. Obviously, Sorcha could relocate Rae. Or did she move the world around us?

“Fortunately for you, I have decided that I have use of you.” Sorcha raised a hand in a beckoning motion. Two mortals came forward. They were both veiled. Diaphanous gray gauze hung over their faces and draped their shoulders. Shifts of a similar cloth covered their bodies. Their arms and feet were bare.

Rae wondered if she’d met them when she’d walked in dreams or worn Devlin’s body, but she couldn’t tell from the slight glimpse of bare arm or foot. She stayed silent before the High Queen.

“Sleep,” Sorcha told the mortals. “Here.”

The floor was undoubtedly beautiful; mosaic tiles created elaborate art that they trod on as if it were merely a base surface. It was not soft or inviting, however.

The mortals lowered themselves to the ground obediently. They crossed their bare ankles and folded their hands over their stomachs, looking like cloaked corpses at a wake. Still silent, they were stretched prone at their queen’s feet. What they weren’t doing, however, was sleeping.

Rae debated commenting. If she spoke, there was a chance Sorcha would be further displeased. If they slept, Rae suspected she’d be given direction to invade their dreams for some reason Sorcha had devised but not yet shared.

“Tell me what they dream,” Sorcha demanded.

“They aren’t asleep.”

“Of course they are. I told them to sleep. They’ll sleep.” Sorcha’s dispassionate gaze invited no disagreement, but the High Queen was wrong.

“I can’t go into their dreams if they aren’t dreaming,” Rae lied. She could give them daydreams. It took far more concentration, but if they were creative—which most mortals in Faerie were—she could even entice them to sleep. She hadn’t had much experience with that because Devlin kept her so carefully hidden, but there were a few tricks Rae had practiced covertly when mortals or faeries were within reach.

“Make them dream.” Sorcha smoothed down her skirts as she sat on her uncomfortable throne. Her attention to the fall of her attire was more concentrated than her attention to the mortals at her feet.

“They’re awake.” Rae wasn’t sure how much disappointment the High Queen would forgive. She wished that she’d told Devlin good-bye.

“Sleep,” Sorcha repeated to the mortals, but they did not. The High Queen could change everything around them, but even she could not control the biological responses of sentient beings.

“Perhaps if you gave them pillows and something softer than the floor,” Rae suggested.

Before the words were fully said, the room shifted. The mortals were now reclining on beds that were several feet thick, more pillow than mattress; thorny frames twisted up around the pillow-mattresses. From the thorns, Spanish moss hung down like curtains.

The mortals had not moved. The world around them had shifted, yet they remained in the same deathlike positions they’d assumed. Sorcha, for her part, had no reaction to any of it. This was the High Court that Devlin had sheltered Rae from; this was the High Queen in all of her disdainful glory.

Rae, however, was not of the High Court. She was in Faerie by accident, and at first she was only with Devlin out of happenstance. Over time, that had changed: Devlin mattered.

And would be quite welcome right now.

The queen of Faerie lifted her gaze and stared at Rae. “Tell me what they dream. Now.”

On the bed, the mortals breathed slowly and evenly. They fell into sleep, and Rae followed the first one into her dreaming world.

The mortal was a worker of fabrics. In her dream, she was in a great open warehouse. It was piled high with bolts of fabric, swaths of fur, and vats of odd items. Uncut stones and sinuous metals were piled at the ready.

The mortal sat at a table that spanned the length of the room. On it, sketches were illuminated by backlighting, so that the parchment they were drawn upon seemed to glow. Some of the illustrations were already pinned to model forms. Others were cut from the fabrics, but not pinned or stitched together.

The dream wasn’t particularly interesting to Rae. It was simply an artist wishing for more tools with which to create new art. Such dreams were not the most tedious ones in Faerie, but they weren’t particularly fun to tweak either. Mortals were resistant to dream alteration. Artists were worse still. They’d been brought to Faerie for their creativity, and that creativity was their essence.

Rae pulled herself from the artist’s dream.

“Wake.” Sorcha nudged the mortal and then motioned to Rae. “Well?”

“She dreams of her art. Fabrics, a warehouse, some odd accoutrements for the attires she sketches in her dream,” Rae said.

The mortal nodded, and Sorcha smiled.

But Rae felt dirty. It wasn’t that the content was scandalous. It was the sense that she was violating a trust by reporting to Sorcha. She’d never relayed dreams to anyone.

“The other.” The High Queen gestured to the still- sleeping mortal. “What does she dream?”

Rae hesitated, and something in her posture must have revealed that resistance.

Sorcha was beside her, close enough that Rae was tempted to try wearing her body as she’d worn Devlin’s so often. It was a last resort though, a measure to take when she had no other options. It wasn’t a secret she would reveal yet.

“What is your name?” the High Queen asked.

“Rae.”

“I rule Faerie, Rae,” Sorcha breathed, her words so soft that they weren’t even a true whisper. “All here bend to my will. Air, form, everything. You will obey me, or I will not allow you to continue to exist within Faerie.”

Rae stayed silent.

“What does she dream?” Sorcha repeated.

And Rae slipped into the mortal’s mind, hoping that the girl wasn’t harboring secrets the queen would want to know. Inside the dream, the mortal was waiting expectantly. She sat upright in what looked to be the exact room they’d left.

“Return,” a disembodied voice said. In the waking world, Sorcha was speaking to the dreamer.

“What?” Rae asked the girl.

“The queen is summoning you. Remove yourself from my dream.” The mortal was motionless, but then she glanced left and right as if someone else could come into her dream. With a look of alarm in her eyes, the mortal added, “Hurry now. She is not to be ignored of late. The Queen of Reason has become something other than rational.”

Rae nodded and stepped back into the room where Sorcha was. “You summoned me?”

The High Queen’s entire posture shifted. Her arrogance faded under unmistakable excitement. Her silvered eyes glimmered as if full moons hid there. She smiled at Rae, not affectionately, but with pleasure.

And Rae had rarely felt as frightened as she did in that instant.

“It works.” Sorcha looked at the mortals and said, “Make ready.”

The two girls sat up. One came to take the High Queen’s outer garment. The other arranged the pillows on an ornate bed that was suddenly there in front of them. The frame was cut of stone, and on it thick quilts were piled in lieu of a mattress.

Sorcha leaned close to Rae and whispered, “I will see my son. You will make it so.”

Rae couldn’t move for fear.

“You will depart from my dream once I can see him.” Sorcha ascended the half-dozen stone stairs to the bed. After she reclined on it, clear glass walls raised up on either side of her. “Only Devlin or Seth will have the ability to wake me. Tell him—when he returns—that I am safe in my bed.”

Both mortals curtsied. Neither spoke.

“You will do as ordered, and each day, you, Rae, will visit me to tell me what my ears and eyes”—she looked at the two mortals—“report.”

“Your Highness—”

“My Queen,” Sorcha corrected. “I am the queen of all in Faerie. Do you wish to live in Faerie?”

“I do.”

Sorcha raised one delicate eyebrow.

Rae curtsied. “I do, my queen, but what if there is danger? Shouldn’t we be able to awaken you?”

“No.” The High Queen closed her eyes, and the glass expanded over her, encasing her. “I have spoken. You will obey.”