But I was just a human now. I was tired. I had limitations.
With nothing else to do, I closed my eyes. The light was so harsh that it filled my skull with red. I cracked one eye open and cast an irritated glance toward each wall, hoping to spot a light switch. There were none, of course. I covered my face and swallowed a sigh. Despite the chill that clung to the air and the sweat cooling on my skin, I didn’t let myself shiver, either—I knew there was probably a camera on me. I wouldn’t give Belanor the satisfaction of seeing my discomfort.
After the torture and the drugs, I thought I’d fall asleep instantly. But it felt like I’d been in a car accident, my veins vibrating. I tried all of my old tricks, including the ones from childhood. Counting sheep, meditation, telling myself a dull story. The lights didn’t turn off, but the floor was soft and one of my methods started working. I felt my thoughts slip into the spaces between stars, where the dreamscape used to be waiting.
Then ear-splitting music exploded into the silence.
I leaped up, shrieking, and clapped my hands over my ears. It took a few seconds to separate the sounds and discern that I was listening to heavy metal rock. Sleep deprivation, I thought as I cringed, retreating against the wall again. That was Belanor’s new plan. Was he hoping to provoke the Nightmare to come out and protect me? Save me?
I needed to fall asleep. It was the only way to beat him in this particular battle. He probably wouldn’t come here until I was a Nightmare or dead. There was a third option he was too arrogant to consider—that I wouldn’t succumb to fear or exhaustion. That a human could survive against him.
I gritted my teeth and resettled on the floor, in the same position I’d been in before. Once again, I tried to drift into unconsciousness, this time with blinding lights and deafening music bouncing off every padded surface. The exercising had been a mistake, I admitted silently, because I still hadn’t warmed up after the sweat dried. Allowing myself a moment of weakness, I wrapped my arms around my shoulders in a hollow imitation of an embrace.
Once upon a time, there was a sad girl, I thought with eyes squeezed shut. She slept in a room with other children, but she always felt alone. She remembered her life before the crowded house. A time when she was loved, and didn’t need to hide who she was. Years of magic and laughter. Now she felt like she would never laugh again. All of that changed, however, when she met the boy in her dreams.
I told myself only the good parts, and even if I didn’t manage to fall asleep, I did find a place of peace. A place that felt like the dreamscape I missed so much. Swaying grass. Wisps of clouds. A breeze that smelled like wildflowers. A tall figure off in the distance.
It felt like days later when the door opened.
I shot upright again, rigid with dread. I was right, I thought dimly—the door did slide upward within the wall. I steeled myself to see Belanor enter the blinding space. Instead of Laurie’s evil twin, a Guardian came in with a plastic tray. I didn’t recognize him. He was short for a faerie, but no less muscled and smooth-skinned. His dark hair was shoulder-length and tucked behind his ears. The music didn’t pause or lower as the Guardian bent and put the food on the floor. His armor clanked with every movement, barely audible over the sound of the electric guitars.
Even after he’d left and the door was closed again, I didn’t eat. Starvation would be better than falling down that black hole again. I turned my body away and curled up again. More time passed, and the same Guardian eventually returned, another tray in hand. He set it down and picked up the one I’d ignored. He left a second time.
There wasn’t a third. After that, the food stopped coming. The tray stayed right where it was, getting cold and taunting me. Hunger gnawed at my stomach. I started allowing myself glances toward the tray. It looked like hot soup and freshly-made bread, if the steam coming off it was any indication. There was nothing to distract from it—not even the music could occupy my thoughts, because there were no lyrics. Only screams.
Screams, I thought again. The word triggered something inside me. Screams were my lullaby, my language, my addiction. Belanor thought the music would be my downfall; I’d make it my salvation.
I didn’t have magic anymore, but there was magic in a change of perspective. I listened to the noise coming out of the hidden speakers and pretended it was one of the monsters I’d fed upon. I remembered that rush of power and euphoria. At long last, I felt myself drift into something resembling sleep. But it was light, part of me still faintly aware of the white room just beyond my eyelids.
Which was how I noticed when the music came to an abrupt stop.
I reluctantly cracked my eyes open, slow to return to full consciousness. I was tempted to ask Belanor to kill me just so I could get more sleep.
I was still debating when a voice drifted into the silence.
I twitched like a startled animal. I knew it had to be Belanor, this time, since the Guardian hadn’t spoken a word during his brief visits. I found the strength to fully sit up, because I wouldn’t face Belanor lying down.
“Back to donate some more hair?” I rasped, lifting my gaze. By sheer force of will, I mustered a taunting smile.
That smile froze on my face when I saw who stood in the doorway.
Jassin stared back at me.
For once, I didn’t question whether this was reality or a dream. All that mattered was getting away.
Adrenaline surged, carrying strength and speed with it. My weakened body jolted into movement, sliding along the wall. I left a trail of sweat in my wake—it soaked right through the scrubs they’d put on me. Only one thought pounded at my mind like a blacksmith at the forge.
I can’t let him touch me.
Those hands were covered in my brother’s blood, his pain, his desperate love. If those hands touched me, I knew I’d spew vomit everywhere.
But there was nowhere to run. Jassin was blocking the door.
Freezing like a trapped rabbit, I watched him cross the room with wide-eyed, mute terror. He was wearing different clothes than the ones he’d died in. These were more modern, which was an odd choice for the neurons in my brain to make, considering I’d never seen Jassin in jeans before.
“You’re dead,” I whispered, tensing. Readying to lash out at him the moment he came within reach. “This isn’t real.”
The faerie didn’t respond. His silence seemed like the evidence I was desperately searching for—a confirmation this was nothing more than one of Belanor’s games—because the monster I’d known wouldn’t have missed an opportunity to gloat or say something cutting. Pain and fear were like aphrodisiacs to him.
Jassin drew closer, and with every step, his face changed. The shifts were subtle, at first. So subtle I didn’t notice what was happening until he loomed over me and I realized the shape of his face was different. The slant to his eyebrows became gentler, the hair a shade paler. Another second, another blink, and suddenly he was vastly shorter, too. Maybe the shortest faerie I’d ever seen. The bones of his wrists looked fragile and his gray eyes were wary and watchful, like a rabbit’s.
Not Jassin, I thought numbly, as if my emotions had shut down like an overheated computer. This was a faerie I’d never met before. But the realization didn’t stop the tremors that had started to wrack my body like small earthquakes.