Chapter 66 The Dream Realm

Chapter 66 The Dream Realm
Thessaly went to bed exhausted.

The day had been brutal. Preparations for Malachi's attack, meetings with Davorin's war council, watching soldiers drill in the courtyard while knowing her brother was leading the army coming to kill them all. By the time she collapsed into bed, she was too tired to even undress properly.

Sleep came fast.

One second she was staring at the ceiling, the next she was standing.

Not in her room. Somewhere else entirely.

Thessaly looked down at herself. Still wearing the same clothes, but they felt different. Lighter. Like they weren't quite solid anymore.

The space around her defied description. Not a room. Not outside. Something in between. Mist swirled at her feet, but when she looked up, the sky was full of stars. Except the stars were wrong. Too close. Moving in patterns that made her eyes hurt.

She took a step forward. The ground felt soft, like walking on clouds, but also firm enough to support her weight. Physics didn't work right here. Distance seemed negotiable.

"Where am I?" Her voice echoed strangely, like the words were traveling through water.

No one answered. But Thessaly could feel something. A pulse. Like a heartbeat, but not hers. It came from everywhere and nowhere, steady and rhythmic.

She turned in a slow circle, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. The mist parted in places, revealing glimpses of other spaces. A forest. A throne room. A burning building. Each image flickered and shifted, unstable.

And threads.

Thessaly blinked, wondering if her eyes were playing tricks. But no. There were threads everywhere. Thin lines of light connecting everything, stretching from the images to each other, to her, to places she couldn't see.

One thread pulsed near her hand. Gold and silver twisted together, almost close enough to touch.

She shouldn't touch it. Every instinct screamed that reaching for unknown magical objects in strange places was a terrible idea. But the thread called to her. Hummed with something familiar that she couldn't quite name.

Thessaly reached out.

Her fingers brushed the thread, and the world exploded.

She was falling. Or flying. Or both. The mist and stars blurred into streaks of color, and then she was somewhere else entirely.

A bedroom. Small. Cramped. A child huddled in the corner, maybe eight years old, tears streaming down his face. In the doorway stood a man, face twisted with rage, belt in hand.

Not her memory. Thessaly knew that immediately. She'd never been in this room, never seen this child.

But she felt everything.

The terror. The helplessness. The way the child's heart raced, knowing what was coming and unable to stop it. The shame of knowing he'd done something wrong but not understanding what. The desperate wish to disappear, to be anywhere else, to wake up and find it was all a dream.

The man stepped forward, and Thessaly wanted to scream. Wanted to stop him. But she couldn't move. Couldn't speak. She was just watching. Experiencing. Drowning in someone else's nightmare.

The belt came down.

Pain lanced through her back even though it wasn't her body. She felt the child's scream in her own throat, tasted salt from tears that weren't hers.

This wasn't real. It couldn't be real.

But it felt real. Every second of it.

The scene repeated. The man in the doorway. The child crying. The belt. Again and again, like a loop that wouldn't break.

Thessaly tried to pull away. Tried to remember how she'd gotten here, how to get out. But the nightmare had hooks in her, dragging her deeper.

She was the child now. Could feel the cold floor under her knees, smell the sharp scent of alcohol on the man's breath. The pain was hers. The fear was hers. She'd lived here forever and would never escape.

No.

The thought came from somewhere deep. This wasn't her nightmare. She was just visiting. There had to be a way out.

Thessaly focused on her own heartbeat. Not the pulse of the dream realm, but her actual heart. Her real body somewhere else, sleeping in a bed in the Shadow King's palace.

The nightmare fought her. Tried to convince her she'd always been this child, that the palace was the dream and this was reality. The pain got worse, sharper, demanding her attention.

Thessaly pushed harder. Clawed at the edges of the nightmare, looking for a seam. A crack. Anything.

There.

A thread. Thinner than the one she'd touched before, almost invisible. But it led away. Back to herself.

She grabbed it.

The nightmare screamed. That was the only word for the sound that tore through the space. Not from the man or the child, but from the nightmare itself, angry at losing its grip.

Thessaly didn't let go. She pulled herself along the thread, hand over hand, fighting against the current trying to drag her back. The child's face blurred. The room dissolved into mist.

For a second, she was back in the in-between place. Stars overhead. Threads everywhere. The pulse beating steady.

Then she was falling for real, dropping through layers of consciousness like plunging through ice.

Thessaly hit her body hard enough to knock the air from her lungs.

She jerked upright in bed, screaming.

The sound tore from her throat raw and animal. Her back burned where the belt had struck even though there were no marks. Tears streaked her face. Her whole body shook so hard the bed rattled.

Not real. It wasn't real. She was in her room. In the palace. Safe.

But it had felt real. Every second of it.

Thessaly pressed her palms against her eyes, trying to block out the image of the child's face. The terror in those eyes. The helplessness.

Whose nightmare was that? Whose memory?

The bond flared with Davorin's alarm. She felt him jolt awake in his own chambers, felt his panic spike as he registered her fear.

A moment later, he was there. Must have run. He burst through the door without knocking, shadows already gathering around him like he expected a fight.

"What happened?" His eyes scanned the room, looking for threats. "Are you hurt?"

Thessaly opened her mouth to say she was fine. That it was just a bad dream. But the lie wouldn't come.

"I don't know." Her voice shook. "I was sleeping. And then I was somewhere else. Somewhere made of mist and stars. There were threads everywhere. I touched one and it pulled me into someone's nightmare. A child. A man with a belt. It felt real. It felt like I was actually there."

Davorin went very still. "Describe it again. The place with the mist and threads."

"I don't know how to describe it. The sky was full of stars but they were too close. The ground wasn't solid. Distance didn't work right. And I could feel this pulse. Like a heartbeat that wasn't mine." She looked up at him. "What was that place?"

His expression had gone carefully blank. The look he wore when something was very wrong but he didn't want her to panic.

"Davorin. What was it?"

"I'm not sure." But the bond said he was lying. "We should get Ondine. She'll know better than I do."

"Know what?"

"How to help." He moved to the door. "Stay here. I'll bring her."

"I'm not a child who needs protecting from information."

"I know." He stopped, hand on the doorframe. "But I'd rather have Ondine explain this. She has more experience with rare magic than I do."

Rare magic. The words settled in Thessaly's stomach like stones.

"This isn't normal," she said. It wasn't a question.

"No. It's not normal." Davorin's jaw was tight. "But we'll figure it out. Just stay here until I get back."

He left before she could argue.

Thessaly sat in the darkness, hugging her knees to her chest. Her back still ached with phantom pain. She could still feel the child's terror like it was her own.

What had she touched? What kind of thread pulled you into someone else's nightmare?

And why did some part of her, buried deep and quiet, feel like she'd finally found something that had been missing her whole life?

The pulse she'd felt in that strange place. It was still there. Faint now, like hearing music through thick walls. But present.

Calling to her.

Thessaly pressed her hand over her heart, trying to block out the sensation. But it didn't work. The pulse kept beating, steady and patient.

Waiting for her to come back.

And the terrifying part was how much she wanted to.