Caitlin Kittredge - The Nightmare Garden

“I don’t know where here is,” I said. The great gear behind the figure began to turn, and as it did the tentacles retreated, the black figures floating in the skies shrinking away. In my ears, and through the dome, a thousand screams echoed.

You shouldn’t be here , the figure told me. This isn’t your dream. This isn’t a dream at all .

Then, as if I’d fallen from a great height, I snapped awake.

My head was throbbing, and it was dark in the room when I opened my eyes. For a moment I didn’t know where I was, and then it all came back to me. I slumped against the pillow. My clothes, none too clean to start, were soaked with sweat. That had been a bad one. Usually my encroaching madness didn’t talk back to me in my dreams.

I fumbled around until I found the aether lamp above the bed and turned the valve, the blue glow filling the tiny room. I took the uniform the Erlkin had left for me and stripped out of my filthy skirt and sweater, all the way down to nothing. I took my underthings into the water closet and ran hot water into the basin, washing them and leaving them on the towel bar to dry. While they dripped I stepped into the copper stall and let the trickle from the pipe above wash the grime off my skin.

The Erlkin didn’t skimp on amenities for their guests, and I wrapped a fluffy Turkish towel around myself and a smaller one around my damp hair in an effort to keep it from blowing up like a thundercloud.

I looked out the porthole again, but there was nothing now except night, a row of running lights on the hull streaming away from me like fireflies in the blackness.

When the hatch rattled again, I shrieked and spun, pulling the towel up to my chin. “Who’s there!” I demanded, casting around for something to throw or prod the intruder with.

“Whoa, princess,” Dean said, ducking through the hatch and shutting it. “Shhh. Nobody knows I’m here.”

“Dean,” I breathed in relief. Dean took in the scene, and me. Wrapped in a towel.

“Oh,” he said. “Sorry about that.”

“Do you knock?” I demanded, tightening my grip on the towel.

A slow smile grew on Dean’s face. “Don’t make a habit of it.” He cleared his throat, making a visible effort to keep his eyes fastened on my face. “This isn’t exactly going to convince me to start, you know.”

“You’re terrible,” I said, trying to collect the clothes the Erlkin had left for me and slide into the water closet, while at the same time hiding the warmth his stare brought to my cheeks.

Dean smiled wider. “Isn’t that why you like me so much?”

“Right now I’m not sure I like you at all,” I teased, shutting the door but for a crack, so Dean and I could still talk.

“You sure riled my mother,” he said, his shadow falling across the opening. I unfolded the clothes—brown pants with a wealth of pockets and a plain white high-collared shirt and dust-colored uniform jacket. They were patched and smelled of a cedar chest, but they fit when I slipped them on, and they were clean. By my standards lately, bliss.

“I don’t think she liked me very much,” I said, opening the door again. “Or at all.” I met his eyes. “Did you say something to her about Conrad and me? Is she going to let us go? I’m not angry, if you did. I understand she’s your mother, but I need to know.” Needed to know that Dean was as loyal as I’d always thought, and that he wasn’t the reason I was locked up in Windhaven with Shard looking for an excuse to jettison me out a hatch.

Dean was a good liar. He had eyes the color of silvery thunderheads, changeable and unpredictable and impossible to truly fathom. But he’d never lied to me. Not when it mattered.

“Course I didn’t, princess,” he said easily. “My mother is just sneaky that way—I could never put anything past her either. She’s also calculating, and she’s not dumb. She’ll realize you’re not a Fae spy and your brother isn’t a criminal. She’s our best tracker and the captain of Windhaven—she answers to the Wytch King only. She and a few other generals are just under him in terms of who bosses around the rest of the Erlkin. Everything will be all right once she gets her nose back into joint.”

He couldn’t even look at me when he said it. Well, I supposed there was a first time for everything—first kiss, first touch against bare skin, first lie. At least I could hope the part about him not ratting us out was true. I thought it probably was—Dean hadn’t seemed overly fond of his mother when we’d talked about her, and I certainly didn’t tell my mother everything. Or anything, because it didn’t matter to Nerissa in her madness anyway.

When I didn’t reply at once, Dean put his index finger under my chin and raised my face to his. “Hey. You believe me, don’t you, princess?”

“Sure,” I lied right back, amazed at how easily it came to my tongue. “It’ll all get straightened out, I guess.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” Dean said with a forced joviality that wasn’t like him. Dean didn’t smile when there was no reason to smile, and he didn’t lie to me—except now. Before I could decide whether to confront him or hold off until I’d discovered a sure way out of this flying iron hellhole, Dean drew me into his arms and pressed his lips to mine. “It’ll be okay, Aoife,” he murmured against my mouth. “I promise, all right? No matter what happens, I’ve got you.”

I kissed him back, because even when I was frustrated and wary, Dean had an effect on me I couldn’t fully explain. He made me light-headed and dizzy, wanting nothing but to taste him and keep tasting him until I’d had my fill. He made me need him, with his taste and his scent and his beautiful eyes, and I realized I had to just not think about what had happened for a few minutes and be with him.

Outside in the corridor, footsteps and voices stopped us from doing more than lying back on the narrow bunk. “I’m going to bug out. I really don’t want to play the scene with my mother if she catches me in here.” He looked for a moment as if he’d kiss me again, but then he rolled off the bed and stood, the usual edgy tension stringing back into his body. “I’ll see you later, Aoife.”

“Dean,” I said, as he put his hand on the hatch. “Tell me the truth. What’s going to happen to Conrad and me?”

Dean raised his shoulders, and I could tell that he was done stretching the truth. “It’s not good, Aoife. The Fae and the Fae-blooded don’t have any friends here.” His eyes darkened. “But I won’t let them hurt you. I’ll take Windhaven to the ground first.”

“I hope it won’t come to that,” I said as he spun the hatch open. We both jumped when we were confronted with Skip’s ever-sneering face.

“Well, look at you, Nails,” he said. “Still sniffing around the henhouse, are ya, even though the bird’s been naughty?”

“Go jump off a high spire,” Dean snapped. “I can talk to Aoife any time I want.”

I blushed, sure Skip could tell exactly what had been happening before Dean opened the door. His smirk didn’t argue with my assumption.

“You sure can,” he said, “but you’ll be doing it during an audience with the king.” Skip reached past Dean and grabbed me. I yanked against him reflexively and I fought the urge to punch him.

Skip overpowered me easily, giving a laugh when Dean snarled at him. “Come on, princess ,” he said in a pitch-perfect mockery of Dean’s voice. “The Wytch King wants to speak with you.”

He dragged me off by the arm before either Dean or I could object, and all I could see when I looked back were Dean’s worried eyes, cloudy and uneasy as wind-driven storm clouds.