Chapter 18 Nightmare
I was back in the Abyssal Hall.
The water was cold, colder than it had ever been in life. I floated in the center of the throne room, my tail shimmering with that iridescent sapphire hue that marked me as royalty. But the room was wrong.
The columns of living coral weren't purple and vibrant. They were white. Bone white.
I looked closer. They weren't coral at all. They were ribs. Giant, curved ribs of leviathans fused together to hold up the ceiling. And the floor wasn't sand. It was a carpet of crushed teeth.
"Father?" I called out. My voice didn't sound like a song. It sounded like a shovel digging into grave dirt.
King Thalor sat on his throne. But he wasn't the imposing, stern king I remembered. He was slumped over. His skin was grey, flaking off in the current like ash.
He lifted his head. His eyes were gone. In their place were two hollow pits of black sludge.
"Look what you did," he gargled. Black oil spilled from his mouth with every word, clouding the water around him.
"I didn't mean to," I pleaded, trying to swim toward him. But my tail was heavy. I looked down. It wasn't a tail anymore. It was made of stone. Petrified. "I tried to save us."
"You are the rot," he hissed. He pointed a finger at me, a finger that was stripped of flesh, just white bone. "You opened your mouth, and the ocean died."
The water around me began to thicken. It turned into that same black sludge, warm and viscous. It filled my nose, my ears. It tasted of decay. Of the garden I had seen today.
"Sing, daughter," my father commanded, his jaw unhinging, falling open to reveal a throat full of darkness. "Sing the song of extinction."
"No!" I screamed, thrashing against the sludge.
"Sing!" the court shouted. I looked around. The nobles, the guards, the fish—they were all skeletons. They were all dead, and they were all laughing.
"NO!"
I opened my mouth to scream, to push the horror away.
And the power surged.
It wasn't a choice. It was a reflex. A violent, panicked ejection of magic that had nowhere else to go.
The sound tore through the dream, shattering the water, shattering the dark.
I woke up.
But the scream didn't stop. It was tearing out of my human throat, raw and piercing.
The sound of an explosion cut off my scream.
I sat up, gasping, my chest heaving so hard it hurt. Cold air blasted into the room. Not the filtered, recycled cool of the ventilation, but raw, biting wind.
I blinked, my eyes adjusting to the dim light.
The window. The massive, reinforced glass pane that overlooked the city was gone.
Shards of glass littered the stone floor, glinting like diamonds in the smoggy twilight. The heavy velvet curtains whipped violently in the wind, snapping like flags.
The smell of sulfur and smoke rushed in, choking me.
"I... I did it again," I whispered, my hands trembling as I clutched the sheets. "I broke it."
The lock on the door slammed back.
The door flew open so hard it hit the stone wall with a crack that rivaled the window.
Klaus was there.
He looked wild. He wasn't wearing his coat. He was in his shirt and trousers, a dagger in his hand. His chest was heaving, his eyes wide and scanning the room for a threat.
He saw the shattered window. He saw the glass on the floor. He saw the curtains flailing.
Then he saw me.
I was huddled in the center of the bed, shaking violently, tears streaming down my face.
He sheathed the dagger instantly. He crossed the room in two strides, ignoring the glass crunching under his boots.
"Nerissa!"
He reached the bed.
I didn't think. I didn't remember that he was the Vampire Lord or the General or the man who built the bone garden.
I just knew he was solid. I knew he was real. And I was terrified that if I didn't hold onto something, I would dissolve into that black sludge from my dream.
I threw myself at him.
I scrambled across the mattress and slammed into his chest, wrapping my arms around his neck. I buried my face in the crook of his shoulder, sobbing.
"Make it stop," I choked out, clinging to him with a desperation that was painful. "Please, make it stop. The bones... the white trees..."
Klaus froze.
His body went rigid against mine. His arms hovered in the air, unsure. He wasn't used to this. He was used to me fighting him, hating him, or tolerating him. He wasn't used to me needing him.
"It was a dream," he said. His voice was stiff, awkward. "Nerissa, let go. You are safe."
"I'm not safe!" I cried into his shirt. "I'm the rot! My father said I'm the rot!"
I felt a tremor go through him. Not fear. Something else.
Slowly, carefully, his arms lowered.
One arm wrapped around my waist. The other hand came up to the back of my head, his large hand cupping my skull, his fingers tangling in my hair.
He pulled me tighter.
The stiffness left him. He exhaled, a long, shaky breath, and leaned his cheek against the top of my head.
"You are not rot," he murmured, his voice rumbling in his chest, vibrating against my ribs. "You are a storm. There is a difference."
"I broke the window," I wept. "I'm dangerous. I'm going to kill you. The Anchor..."
"The window can be replaced," Klaus said firmly. "And I am harder to break than glass."
He shifted his weight, sitting on the edge of the bed and pulling me into his lap. It was an intimate position, one that should have felt scandalous, but right now, it just felt like a lifeline.
He rocked me. Just slightly. A barely perceptible motion.
"Breathe," he commanded gently. "Match my breathing."
I tried. I listened to the sound of air moving in his lungs. It was slow. deliberate. I forced my jagged, panicked gasps to slow down.
I smelled him. The ozone. The rain. The faint scent of the old paper from his books. It grounded me. It pulled me out of the Abyssal Hall and back into the tower.
"He didn't have eyes," I whispered, my voice trembling. "My father. He was just... oil."
"Dreams are liars," Klaus said. His hand stroked my hair, a rhythmic, soothing motion. Down to my neck, back up to my crown. "They take your fears and dress them up as prophecies. But they aren't real."
"The garden was real," I said.
Klaus went still for a second. His hand paused in my hair.
"Yes," he admitted. "The garden is real. But you are not in the garden. You are here. In the tower."
"With the monster," I murmured.
"With the keeper," he corrected softly.
A gust of wind blew through the shattered window, carrying a cloud of smog into the room. It was freezing.
I shivered violently in my thin silk nightgown.
Klaus swore softly. "You're freezing."
He didn't let go of me. Instead, he gathered the duvet from the bed and wrapped it around both of us, creating a cocoon. He pulled the edges tight, sealing out the draft.
"Better?" he asked.
"A little."
I didn't want to move. I felt safe here, pressed against his hardness, wrapped in his warmth. I realized suddenly that this was the first time I had touched him without him initiating it.
I pulled back slightly, just enough to look at his face.
He was looking down at me. The sapphire light in his eyes was soft, dim. He looked tired, yes, but he also looked... fierce. Protective.
"I hurt your ears," I realized, touching his chest. "I screamed. The Anchor..."
He reached up and wiped a tear from my cheek with his thumb. His leather glove was gone; his skin was bare. It was cool, smooth as marble.
"You have to stop screaming, Nerissa," he said, not unkindly. "We are running out of glaziers in the city. People will start to talk."
I let out a weak, wet laugh. "I'll try."
"Do better than try."
He looked over my shoulder at the gaping hole in the wall.
"We can't stay in this room tonight," he said. "The smog is toxic. If you breathe it for too long, your lungs will blister."
"Where do we go?" I asked. "The other rooms are locked."
"My quarters," Klaus said.
My eyes widened. "Your... room?"
"It is adjacent to this one," he explained, standing up and lifting me with him. I kept the duvet wrapped around me, clinging to his neck like a child. "It has a connecting door behind the tapestry. I usually keep it sealed."
He carried me across the room, glass crunching under his boots. He walked to the wall covered by a heavy tapestry depicting a hunt. He kicked the fabric aside, revealing a heavy iron door.
He shifted me to one arm, pulled a key from his pocket, and unlocked it.
He carried me inside.
His room was... stark.
There was no luxury here. No velvet, no silk. The walls were bare stone. The floor was unpolished wood. In the center of the room was a simple military cot, perfectly made. A desk piled high with maps and reports. A single chair.
It looked like a monk’s cell. Or a soldier’s barracks.
"This is where you live?" I whispered.
"This is where I exist," Klaus corrected.
He walked to the cot and set me down. The mattress was hard, thin.
"Stay here," he said. "I need to seal the door to the tower so the smog doesn't get in here."
He went back to the iron door and cranked a heavy wheel, sealing it shut with a hiss of air pressure.
He turned back to me.
I was sitting on his cot, wrapped in my duvet, looking around the spartan room. It was so clean. So empty. It made my heart ache for him. He lived like he didn't believe he deserved comfort.
"Where will you sleep?" I asked.
"I don't," he reminded me.
He walked to the desk and sat in the wooden chair. He picked up a report, but he didn't look at it. He looked at me.
"Are you still afraid?" he asked.
"Yes," I admitted. "I'm afraid to close my eyes."
"Then don't," Klaus said. "Watch me. I'm very boring. I’ve been told I put people to sleep just by existing."
I managed a small smile. "Who told you that?"
"Vespera. Usually when I start talking about supply logistics."
He leaned back in the chair, his eyes fixed on my face.
"I'm right here, Nerissa," he said quietly. "No skeletons. No oil. No taxidermists."
I lay down on his hard, narrow bed. It smelled overwhelmingly of him. It was the most comforting smell in the world.
"Klaus?"
"Yes?"
"Thank you."
He didn't answer. He just nodded once, his expression solemn.
I watched him. I watched the steady rise and fall of his chest. I watched the way the light from the single oil lamp caught the sharp angle of his jaw.
I had clung to him. I had sought him out in my terror.