I nod sharply and think only of the dream. I feel a shudder slip down my spine and suddenly I’m diving back into it as if I never left it. I can feel Serus’s presence beside me. I inhale sharply as the landscape of the wastelands disappears and I’m surrounded by the shadows of the ether. My heart beats loudly and I have to tell myself this isn’t real anymore; it’s just a memory.
“Verity?” Thal’s voice comes to me as if I’m underwater.
“Silence,” Serus hisses. “Leave her be.”
“Damned cat,” Thal mutters under his breath.
I follow my dream like I’m in the theatre back home. My eyes track over my surroundings and I see the strange shapes in the darkness that frightened me so much last night. There’s a sound on the air I didn’t notice last night, a groaning, like a ship strained by strong waves. I creep forward, towards the shapes moving in obscurity.
One of the Shades leaps at me, its mouth stretched into a wide grin. I shrink back in my mind but Serus’s presence urges me forward. The Shades prowl around me, their faces devoid of any detail except for bulging eyes and too-wide mouths. I feel Serus at the rim of my consciousness, I can feel his curiosity.
“I see,” he murmurs.
“What?” I ask, trapped in my nightmare.
“They aren’t pulling you in,” he says. The nightmare disappears like a cloud of smoke blown away in a breeze. I blink in the light as the wastelands come back into view. Thal is looking at me with concern, but it’s Serus my eyes are on. He hunches, ears pushed back. “You’re Dreamwalking.”
“Dreamwalking?” I shake my head with confusion. “What is that?”
“You’re travelling to the ether in your dreams, physically.” His eyes glimmer.
I purse my lips. "Physically? I'm still in bed."
“It’s difficult to explain,” he sighs. “Physical in the sense that you can be physically hurt by what occurs while you Dreamwalk.”
“But last night you said I wasn’t a seer, I can’t be going by myself,” I said, desperate for Serus to be wrong.
“I misunderstood. You aren’t a seer, these aren’t visions. You see the present, you experience it while you Dreamwalk. That’s different than a seer.” Serus glances towards Cleo. “There are few who possess the skill to Dreamwalk. Perhaps your father or mother had the talent.”
I ignore his remark about my parents. I can’t even consider the possibilities of it. “How do I stop doing it?” I ask.
“The same thing we would have done before. We need to train your mind to rest, to not Dreamwalk willfully. You control the power, don’t let it control you,” Serus explains. “We’ll start with simple meditation techniques.”
For the next several hours, Serus teaches me the ins and outs of meditation, of breath-pulling, and creating walls in my mind. By the time he calls it a day, I’m exhausted and there’s a sharp throbbing in the back of my skull that threatens to topple me from my horse. I sag forward, leaning over the horse’s neck and resting my head on its sweaty hide.
“That’s enough for the day, we’ll practice more before you sleep,” Serus says, sighing as if he’s worn out as well.
I open one eye to look at him. “Why me?”
He looks at me thoughtfully with his cat eyes, as if he knows that my question refers to more than just simple Dreamwalking. “Fate, perhaps,” he purrs.
“You believe in fate?” I smile wearily.
Serus snorts. “Believe? I’ve met her.”
I start, blinking in surprise. “Her?”
“Surely you didn’t think it was some coincidence of the universe?” if Serus had brows to cock, he would have done it now. “Fate is a woman.”
I mull over this and then burst into laughter. “I have so much more to learn about this world.”
“And thousands of years to do it,” he says blandly.
“That’s right,” I murmur. My eyes drift towards Altair and his straight back. I stare at his ears, the pointed tips poking out from his black hair. My fingers drift to my own human ears.
Serus follows my gaze and then the movements of my hands. “You have time to understand it all, even if you don’t look like one of them.”
My breath hitches in my throat. “Once that might have made me happy. But how much time does he have?” My voice drops to a whisper.
Serus’s amber eyes are piercing. “Not long. I can smell the curse on him stronger than last night.”
“I sense it too,” I murmur.
“Your Bloodbane and Fae senses manifesting,” Serus explains.
The fact of it doesn’t scare me as it might have once done. I feel it deep in my bones that this is who I am now. My only regret is that Altair can’t be a part of my life anymore – my long life. The curse will take him soon enough, but before that, it will be Erzur who keeps him from me. I look down at my blood red cloak, covered in sand and grime. My eyes drift to Cleo’s matching cloak and I feel a surge of a strange emotion. It feels like sorrow but at the time my heart is swollen with something like pride.
“Can Bloodbane magic save him?” I ask, thinking of Cleo’s agreement to help me save Altair.
“Perhaps,” Serus says, coiling into a ball to sleep or the rest of the day. “I will think on it.”
I leave him to his sleep then to mull over his eons of knowledge. I don’t fully understand what Serus is, but I know he isn’t a mere familiar. His affinity for memories and the mind tells me he’s much stronger than I’ll ever be. I’m grateful he’s on my side and not against me.
The wind rises and carries Sadal’s whispered voice to me. “Dark, dark, dark,” he mutters. “Don’t want to, don’t want to, don’t want to.”
I glance over my shoulder. In his saddle, Sadal wobbles crazily, his eyes wide and filled with fear. My eyes rove over the landscape, looking for the source of his fear.
