In Dreaming Bound Read online

  Shironne raised her eyes. Mikael didn’t look like she’d expected. Of course, the pre-dawn light was deceptive, but she hadn’t pictured him looking this way.

  He didn’t look Family. He didn’t look Anvarrid either, but a combination of both. He had a square jaw and high cheekbones. His skin seemed fair, and even in the dim moonlight she could see freckles across his nose and cheekbones.

  His eyes though, those she recalled, the only thing she could remember about him from before she went blind. She couldn’t make out the color, but they would be a brilliant blue. His brows and lashes were dark, startling with such pale skin. A shock of lighter hair fell across his forehead, striking against the thick sweep of his brows.

  He didn’t wear his hair in sentry braids. She’d always known he didn’t, but somehow in her mind she’d persistently pictured him so.

  His eyes seemed to search her face. “What have they done to you?”

  “I can see,” she whispered, a tremor in her voice. “I don’t want this. I want everything the way it was before.”

  His fingers touched her cheek, no more than warm skin on hers. “The drugs wore off before,” he said. “But . . .”

  Boots crunching on gravel warned her that someone else approached. Mikael half-turned, keeping his grip on her arms. A tall man strode toward them from the roadside, moonlight shining on his pale hair. Alarm raced through Shironne, her eyes telling her she didn’t know this man, and she took a step back.

  “It’s only Cerradine,” Mikael reassured her.

  She blinked at the approaching figure, trying to reconcile this tall, lean man with the colonel she knew. He came close enough that she got a clear look at him, but the sight seemed wrong, so she squeezed her eyes shut.

  “Don’t tell him,” she begged.

  Mikael stiffened when he heard her request.

  The colonel apparently hadn’t heard her. “The driver found a spot off the road and wants to rest the horses, which means we’re stuck here for a time. Are you all right, Shironne?”

  His voice sounded familiar, but without the usual tang of honesty by which she identified him. She didn’t know what to say. She felt her lips trembling, like a helpless little girl’s.

  “The motion made her ill, sir,” Mikael answered in her stead. “I think we should wait here until it passes, or she’ll be sick the whole way back.”

  Shironne heard the colonel come closer. “You’re going to be fine, dear. Your mother has agreed to have you placed in the Family. No one will be able to get at you in the Fortress.”

  They’d discussed this, more than once, in the past month, trying to decide what was best, but once the immediate concern about her father’s cronies had passed, so had the urgency. After all, it was only a few months before she would be considered an adult by Family standards, so it had seemed silly to place her among their children for such a short span. The house on Antrija Street had seemed safe enough with Colonel Cerradine’s people there.

  Until it hadn’t.

  “Thank you, sir. I knew you would come after me.” She felt Mikael’s arm stiffen at her words and wondered if she’d offended him. I hate that I can’t tell. She reached a hand in the direction of the colonel’s voice, and the colonel clasped it briefly, the contact merely warm and human, telling her nothing of his emotions.

  “Is my mother well?” Shironne asked.

  “I left her at the palace with Dahar. Your sisters as well. Deborah’s taking care of them.”

  Relief warmed her. She trusted Deborah. “Thank you, sir. I worried.”

  Cerradine released her hand. “Why don’t you come sit in the carriage? It’s warmer there.”

  “If you don’t mind sir, the cool air makes me feel better. Perhaps I could just sit here.”

  “I’ll stay with her, sir,” Mikael offered.

  “I’ll be waiting then. Mikael, keep an eye out.” For a second, neither of them spoke, and Shironne wondered what passed silently between the two men. She heard Cerradine’s boots crunching on the road’s gravel, carrying him away.

  “Did he see?” she asked, looking up into Mikael’s face again.

  “He could tell something was wrong.”

  Was the expression on his face concern? Frustrated, Shironne turned away, the swirl of her vision as she moved not as stomach-turning this time. Cedars jutted up in the meadow, odd conical decorations scattered among shorn hay.

  “Why didn’t you want him to know?”

  Shironne thought the tone of Mikael’s voice meant curiosity, or perhaps worry. Now she couldn’t tell. She turned back to him, swallowed by his warm coat. “He would want to . . . fix me. If he knew, he would want to fix me so I’m normal. I don’t want to go through that again.”

  Mikael knew about the many doctors her father had made her visit, trying to revive her sight. It had been torture. Yet whatever drug her captors forced on her had achieved that goal unintentionally—a cruel irony after all she’d been through.

  His lips pressed together, and she watched his jaw clench. “About once every four hours,” he said, “I could sense you again. I think they dosed you just before we arrived, so in an hour or so, the effects of the drugs should start fading. It’s temporary.”

  “Are you sure?” she whispered.

  He put his hands on her shoulders. “I’m certain. It’s only a matter of time.”

  “I don’t think I can live like this, Mikael.” She lifted one of her shaking hands to his and his coat slipped from her shoulders before she could catch it, falling to the ground.

  Releasing her, he bent and picked it up. “Here, put this on or you’ll freeze.” He helped her pull the coat on over the thin gown, letting her slide her arms in the sleeves this time. “You’ll have to tolerate the gown until we get you back to the Fortress.”

  “I can deal with it,” she said softly. “It’s this numbness that bothers me most. At this point I would be pleased to sense anything that’s been spilled on this gown, which really doesn’t bear thinking on, does it?”

  Mikael laughed, revealing even teeth. She watched him, fascinated, wishing desperately she could see him in daylight.

  “I’ve missed talking to you these last few weeks.” He stroked his fingers across her cheek, his face going suddenly grave. “In the Family, you’re considered a child until the beginning of the year, you know.”

  Until the spring equinox. “That’s months away, Mikael.”

  “Children are restricted in what they can do and with whom they associate.”

  She knew the rules of the Family. “You mean I won’t be allowed to see you.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  Even without reading him, she understood him quite clearly. He was twenty-three, an adult. As such, he wouldn’t be permitted near her save in the most limited situations. In that way the Family tried to protect their sensitive children from manipulation and coercion. It was a rule, and she’d never done well with rules. She already hated this.

  “It’s the safest place for you, Shironne,” he continued.

  She stared down at her unfamiliar hands, wondering how she could possibly fit in among the Family children. Something moved in the edge of her vision, startling her. Instinctively, she reached up to swat it away, realizing only then she’d seen her hair fall forward. She grabbed a hank of it to shove it back and froze when she discovered only a few inches of it. She’d been so dizzy before that she’d not discerned that a large part of her light-headedness was actually that.

  “They cut my hair,” she whispered, tugging on the too-short lock in an attempt to determine the length left.

  “About to your shoulders,” Mikael said. “It’s pretty that way. It reminds me of when I first met you.”

  She’d been eleven then—a little girl with her hair down—and she didn’t want Mikael to see her as a little girl. Sighing, she let the hank of hair loose with a quick prayer to the true god that it would grow back quickly.

  “Is the colonel blond?” she asked th
en. “I thought he was Larossan.”

  Mikael laughed again. “Half Larossan. The colonel’s hair is almost completely white. Probably looks blond in this light.”

  Which explained why her youngest sister always claimed the colonel looked old. Her mother had never remarked on it, not once. “I wish I could have seen him better.”

  Mikael pointed past her, and she turned. She took a step away from him, staring in the direction of a range of hills obscuring the sun from view. The flush of heat that had overtaken her with the nausea had begun to fade, and now a chill crept through her. “Do you think I’ll last long enough to see the sunrise?” she asked softly.

  “Let’s wait and see.”

  “Aren’t you cold?”

  “A little bit. Don’t worry. We can sit down over there and wait.” He led her to a boulder that squatted like a sentinel off the side of the road and lifted her to sit atop its dusty surface. He climbed up to sit next to her. “Will you tell me what you remember of what happened?”

  “I don’t want to think about it.” Still faintly dizzy, she rested her head on her knees, tears threatening to ruin what composure she still had. Beyond the brief interludes of lucidity in the traveling coach, she recalled only the fear, and hands holding her, and screaming.

  “I felt it in the night, you know,” he said into her silence. “Your panic woke me, only I couldn’t figure out what it was at first. I should have known.”

  “Only a sensitive when you’re asleep.” She kept her eyes fixed in the direction where the sun should rise. He usually dreamed other people’s death, a bizarre connection that drove him to find their murderers. She had seen into one of those dreams, shared the agony of watching an innocent man—a friend to both of them—die. It was the worst thing imaginable to be so helpless. She could help Mikael, help him find justice for those deaths . . . but not drugged like this.

  “Actually, my sensitivity had been coming back,” he admitted, “as if I’d just forgotten how to do it. It’s difficult learning to deal with it again.”

  His sensitivity had disappeared with his first death-dream, he’d once told her. Shironne wondered if that had felt as lonely as this did. She leaned back, resting her elbows on the boulder. “My eyes hurt.”

  “How long since you last used them?” Mikael turned toward her, some color showing on his pale face now that the sunrise approached. “Tell me what you remember.”

  Ready now, she closed her eyes and began to talk, recalling each sensation as she’d been pulled from her bed by unknown hands. She spoke of her panic as she realized they’d intended to drug her, hands forcing her mouth open and making her drink, and the dark intervening hours until she’d woken in the carriage in his arms.

  Mikael said nothing, simply a warm, living presence at her side.

  She felt it then, his worry burning a faint border into the edges of her awareness. The drugs had begun to fade and she could sense him.

  She let out a sob from sheer relief.

  My sight will fail, too. The sunrise fell short of spectacular, but she watched it anyway, the clouds turning red, and then fading to pink and yellow. “Will you promise me something?”

  “Of course,” he said without pause.

  “Promise you won’t try to find out what they gave me,” she said.

  He didn’t answer her aloud. He wanted never to put her through this particular torture again, his determination ringing through her mind. He laid an arm about her shoulders. When she turned her face into his chest, he put both arms around her, holding her while she cried. “Can you see anything?”

  She gasped and pulled out of his arms. She’d lost precious time watching the stupid sun rise, which the sun did every day whether she watched it or not. She turned and laid her hands on each side of his face.

  In the new sunlight, his eyes were as beautiful as she remembered, the brilliant blue of cornflowers with flecks of green, all shadowed by his thick dark lashes. He had his father’s eyes; he’d been told so a thousand times by his mother. Mikael’s memory became hers, racing through the light contact of her hands on his skin. His thoughts tumbled into her consciousness, familiar and warm.

  The gown girdled her body with a feeling of harsh bleach and starch. His coat touched her in places that the gown didn’t; wool and his perspiration, and city dirt near the hem where her bare feet rested. She shivered.

  Ignore all that. Enough time for taking stock later.

  She ran a finger across his left eyebrow. “You don’t look like I thought you did, but you do have the most beautiful eyes. They’re just how I remember.”

  She had seen his face once, when she was eleven. She’d fallen over the railing at the fair, onto the melee field, and landed atop one of the fighters. He’d had to cover her with his own body to protect her from the other fighters, and he somehow ended up with a broken nose. Between his helmet and the blood, she had really only seen those blue eyes.

  Mikael flushed, caught off guard by her intent stare. Color touched his cheekbones and spread to the tips of his ears, which embarrassed him even more—one of the things he didn’t like about himself, like his hair turning brown and the fact that everyone was taller than him. He wasn’t exactly handsome, Shironne decided. A small spot marked his upper lip, and she touched a finger to it, curious.

  “It’s a birthmark,” he told her with chagrin. He smiled, and flushed again, taking her hand in his and pulling it away. I shouldn’t touch her, he thought to himself, loud enough for her diminished senses to catch anyway. He held to her hand.

  Her sight failed—not a slow transition, but a sudden fall into darkness as if someone had thrown a blanket over her. She felt no fear in the darkness. It seemed so much more normal to be in the dark again, but the memory of his face would stay with her forever.

  Mikael knew when it happened.

  Her sense of him thundered around her now, drowning her with chaotic emotion and impressions, shared through the slight contact of her hand. He drew her back into his arms and held her while she cried.

  After a time, Shironne drew back, pulling away for his sake, not hers. She drew her feet up so they rested on his familiar coat and not the bare stone.

  “No one hurt me, Mikael. Not really.” She could sense bruises starting on her wrists and ankles, on her arms, but they wouldn’t show yet. She felt his relief at her assurances.

  “I’m glad.” His thoughts tumbled into her mind through the contact of his hand holding hers.

  She didn’t pretend to misunderstand his unspoken worry. Rape was likely all too common in places like that. “I know.”

  He wanted her to have the chance to make decisions for herself, even if he believed that chance already fled. He wanted her to have time to make friends and learn the Family and understand how they lived. He wanted her to have the opportunity to see if there was someone else better for her.

  Idiot, she thought.

  She’d been giving this a lot of thought for the past month, this tie that bound her to him. She knew better than to assume this tie meant they would marry. He hardly knew her, and by his people’s standards, she was too young to marry anyway. But how uncomfortable would it be should he marry someone else? She would know everything Mikael did and felt, and she didn’t know how she could live with that.

  Besides, she liked him, very much. She had from the moment she’d met him, as comfortable with him as if they’d been friends for years. And that was far more than most Larossan girls knew of men before they married one.

  As soon as they reached the palace, they would be separated.

  She rubbed fingers across her cheeks to wipe away her tears. It felt if she were being sent away, not being brought to the very Fortress where Mikael lived. If she was placed in the Family, she would rarely see him, and even when she did, they wouldn’t be allowed to speak. The Family had strong beliefs when it came to how children and adults should interact, and it wouldn’t matter whether she agreed with those beliefs. If she lived among them, she
would have to accept their rules. “It’s just a long time, is all. I’ll miss you.”

  Mikael stroked a finger across her cheek and, thinking himself unwise, leaned down and kissed her.

  Just once, to remember, he told himself, the thought whispering into her mind. His lips were soft on hers, and gentle, warm with concern and something that felt like adoration.

  Because he had already made up his mind on the question of marriage, too. She knew that with a surety much like her knowledge that the sun would rise tomorrow morning and forever.

  “Damn,” she said softly when he drew away. “Now it seems even longer.”

  “Don’t curse,” he said. He slid off the boulder and pulled her down into his arms. She draped one arm around his shoulders and used the other to grasp the side of his neck. “Eli will train that out of you eventually, I expect.”

  “Eli?” She thought she’d met the supercilious young man the month before. From Mikael’s thoughts on Eli, she was certain it was the same one.

  “Your yeargroup leader,” Mikael said aloud. “He runs the sixteens with a grip of iron.” He lifted her in his arms, carrying her to keep her sensitive feet off the ground. Mikael shifted her in his arms, coming to a stop. “She’s feeling better, sir.”

  Shironne felt the colonel’s relief coupled with his annoyance.

  “Good then,” the colonel’s voice said, its familiar undertones restored. “We’ll get the team harnessed up.”

  She heard the colonel move away, and Mikael stood patiently, his mind questioning faintly how long he would have to hold her. Drowsiness began to drag at her, the effects of the long ordeal sapping her strength. Feeling safe now, she slid into a real sleep.

  Chapter 7

  * * *

  MIKAEL WOKE TO the sound of someone knocking at his door and was surprised to realize he’d slept the remainder of the afternoon away and through the night. Enough light peeped through his quarters’ heavy draperies to tell him the sun was already up. He threw back his covers and flinched when the chilly air hit his bare chest. He got up anyway, went to his door, wrapping his arms about himself to ward off the cold, and peered out at his visitor.