Osmos, Aengus, and Gerald took four jars each and hid them in three different locations around the palace. I retreated into the queen’s bedroom, which now glowed with the light of the moon. The gold wall moldings glinted silver, and the thick, white curtains around the four-poster bed beckoned at me to approach.
Destry rose from a side chair and dipped into a curtsey. “His Majesty hasn’t stirred.”
“Thank you.” I reached behind my back and undid the fastenings of my sword belt and set it on a side-table within easy reach of the bed.
Destry helped me out of the leather bodice and skirt, and handed me a long nightgown made of the finest spider silk. Afterward, Rosalind and Destry retired into a bedroom that led off from mine.
I parted the bed’s heavy curtains to find Drayce lying in the middle of the bed. He hadn’t moved from where we had left him earlier in the day and would have looked dead if it wasn’t for the wisps of warm air escaping his nostrils.
With the seeing-glass in one hand, I lowered myself onto the mattress next to him, positioned my head on his shoulder, and stared into its reflection. This time, the eyes that stared back at me held a silver malevolence, set within a face as black as midnight.
I flinched and set the glass aside on the vast mattress. So far, I’d learned that someone called Fear Dorcha, who was also an ally of Queen Melusina, had wanted me cursed to sleep. I could only guess that the former queen needed me immobile while she took over my body in her weakened state.
Nessa the cook also told me that only his mate could break Drayce’s curse, and she had given me a glass that had allowed me to reach who I thought was Drayce. But who did those silver eyes belong to, and how did I know the mirror wasn’t a means to be captured by Fear Dorcha?
A long breath heaved from my lungs. I couldn’t afford to become ensnared when Drayce was cursed to sleep and the only person able to wake him was me. I covered us both in a blanket, placed a hand on his chest, and drifted to sleep.
Soft kisses on my eyelids pulled me out of my slumber, and I stared into Drayce’s smiling, green eyes. Moonlight streamed in through curtains of silvery lichen that twisted and turned in the balmy breeze. I drew back and pushed myself up to find us lying within the bed of moss.
“This is a dream,” I said to Drayce.
He slid his warm hand down my bare arm. “Come back to me, Neara.”
I slid away and paused at the far end of the mattress. “Who are you?”
Drayce stared at me as though I had spoken in the language of the ancient druids. He was naked, his smooth skin gleaming in the light of the moon, and the muscles of his strong body rippled as he edged toward me.
I launched myself off the bed, slid through the curtains of lichen that caressed my bare skin, and wrapped my arms around my body. At my back was the open window. I turned to look at our surroundings, but we were too far up for me to recognize the land below.
We could have been in another part of the palace, somewhere else within the realm, or in the Otherworld. The only thing that made sense was the half-moon.
The trees that made up the four posters of the bed appeared larger. I didn’t remember their canopy stretching over the ceiling the last time I visited this room or the carpet of moss under my feet. Something about this room was intensifying, becoming more like a forest. Perhaps the oak sprite had experienced something similar. I made a note to ask her if I ever got out of this dream.
“What’s the matter?” Drayce didn’t rise from where he lay.
“How did I get here?”
He glanced from left to right. “This is our room. Neara, come back.”
I clenched my teeth. Was this even Drayce? Why did he only care about keeping me in this bed?
“Why don’t you come here?” I asked.
Drayce, if that was really him, furrowed his brow. “I don’t understand.”
“You can’t leave the bed, can you?”
His frown deepened. “Why would I need to?”
My Drayce was never so evasive. I shook my head. Of course he was. My Drayce had worked behind the scenes with Father to train me into taking the throne of the Queen of the Faeries. Through a series of adventures where I thought I was fighting to save Father, I thought I had been betrayed by the man I loved, but he had maneuvered me into coming into my power and breaking his curse.
I still trusted the Drayce who Osmos had laid on the queen’s bed, the Drayce who wouldn’t awaken. But the Drayce staring at me with imploring eyes and wanted me to return to this accursed bed of moss? I wasn’t quite so sure about him.
My gaze wandered over his broad shoulders, where dense, green clumps of vegetation crept over his skin, threatening to take over his body as they had earlier. What if the moss was affecting his mind and rooting him to this bed?
I took a step toward him. “Turn around, and I’ll join you.”
His face broke out into a heartbreakingly warm smile of dazzling teeth, and with the kind of happiness only shared with those a person trusted. I swallowed back a lump in my throat. What I was about to do might hurt, but it might bring him back to me.
I parted the curtains, knelt onto the mattress, and swept my palms over the carpet of lush, green moss that covered Drayce’s back. It yielded under my touch the way a cat’s fur did
