Chapter 32 Dreams of the bond
Dreams of the Bond
Ryder slept in a quiet chamber far from the throne room; far from the bloodstains still marking the palace halls, but rest did not come easily to him. His body was healed from battle with Elder Veyra but his mind was broken and patched together with gaps he could not explain. The healers said the injury had taken away memories, not reason and perhaps what was lost would come back in pieces or not at all. Ryder accepted their words without argument but something inside him refused to settle.
That night, the dreams began.
He stood in a forest washed in silver light, the moon was hanging low and bright above the trees. The air was the smell of earth and rain, sharp, clean and though he did not know how he had arrived there, the place was familiar. He took one step forward then another, and another, pulled by a feeling in his chest that made no sense to him, and yet was urgent.
Someone was crying.
The sound was soft, and desperate cutting through the stillness like a wound. Ryder followed it, breaking through branches and roots until he broke into a clearing. She was standing there with her back to him, dark hair falling down her spine, her shoulders tense, as if she were holding herself together by force alone.
"Wait," he said.
His voice sounded strangely and as she turned back around, his breath caught.
He did not know her name. He was certain of that. And yet his chest tightened the instant their eyes met, honey brown and wide, full of fear and full of hope all at once.
She said "You found me," as if relieved.
"I don't know you," Ryder replied, puzzled by the feeling of aching spreading through him.
She gave a sad smile and moved closer. "You do. You just don't remember."
Before he could respond the world changed. The forest melted up into fire and smoke, screams in the air. Ryder saw her one more time, reaching for him through iron bars, with blood on her hands and terror written across her face.
"Ryder," she called.
He woke with a sharp gasp sitting upright in bed with his heart racing. Sweat plastered against his skin, his fingers clawed at the sheets in his effort to control his breathing. The room was dark, silent, but the sound of her voice was not fading away.
Ryder laid a hand to his chest, bewildered and disturbed. He did not know why the sound of his own name uttered in her voice was the sound of a blade twisting inside him. He did not know why the sight of her pain was personal.
He did not sleep again for the rest of that night.
The dreams came back the next evening.
This time, Ryder was in a room with candle light, warm/soft stone walls. She sat opposite him across a table with her chin resting on her palm and she watched him with that look that made his throat close.
"You are staring," she said amused.
"I'm trying to understand you why you feel like home," he answered though he did not know why he said it.
She laughed and reached over the table to take his hand. The instant her fingers were on his skin, he felt a rush of heat, sharp and overwhelming. Images flashed through his mind, too fast to comprehend. A kiss under moonlight. The sound of her laughter against his neck. Her tears soaking his shirt.
Ryder jerked his hand back with a sharp breath.
"What's going on with me," he asked.
Her expression softened. "The bond doesn't forget," she said quietly. "Even when you do."
The room fell apart like glass and Ryder awoke again, his body taut, his jaw clenched as though he had been holding back a scream.
In the subsequent days the dreams became stronger.
Sometimes he saw her running through a burning village, calling out his name as shadows closed in all around her. Other times she stood before a council of wolves, her spine straight, her voice not shaken as she told them things that made men turn away in shame. Each dream left him shaken, his emotions raw and unguarded in ways that he did not understand.
He began to wake with tears on his face, his chest heavy with grief for which there was no clear source.
The healers saw that he was restless. Tomas took note of the way Ryder flinched at the mention of Redcreek - though he said he didn't know why. Elric saw the way Ryder's hand tightened around his sword whenever someone said something about Olivia Brown, even though Ryder swore that the name meant nothing to him.
But the bond did not have feelings for his denial.
One night, the dream did not disappear when he woke up.
Ryder was in the familiar silver forest again, but the air was different this time, heavier. She was standing before him, nearer than ever, her face pale, her eyes bright with unshed tears.
"You're sneaking away from me," she said.
"I don't know how to come back," Ryder replied with a voice breaking.
She reached out for his face; her touch warm and real. "Then follow the pain. It will lead you to the truth."
The forest faded away and Ryder awoke with an outcry, and his hands in empty space. His heart thumped against his ribs as if it were trying to escape and for the first time since his injury something inside him shifted.
He did not remember her.
But he knew with a certainty that frightened him that she was real.
Ryder got out of his bed and walked out to the window, gazing out upon the moonlit palace grounds. His reflection stared back at him and it was familiar and foreign all at once.
"Who are you" he asked the night, his voice low.
The bond responded not in words, but in yearning, in pining, in dreams that would not let him go.
And deep inside of him, under the damage and denial, love began to stir.