shoulder and give him a shake.
He does not wake. He slaps my hand away, then trembles. Shouting words I can’t understand. He’s crying out for help. Hector’s olive skin flushes red as he struggles to breathe. I try to shake him again, but his hand clamps around my wrist. I gasp as he throws me to the side. I land on my shoulder, and Hector lies on his back.
I’m overpowered by the guilt of watching him suffer, knowing firsthand just how painful nightmares can be. Now I wonder if this might be the reason he was demoted to a palace guard, if he is the same General Hector.
Two things occur to me. I need this man’s memories of Castian. But the last time I stole a memory from a nightmare, I got Dez killed. Jacinta was fine because as horribly as Castian treated her, it wasn’t a nightmare for her, though perhaps her infatuation with the prince would increase. I tell myself that Hector is only a palace guard. That I can help him while getting the information I need. That feels wrong even thinking it, but I can’t afford to let this opportunity slip by me.
My hand trembles as I place my fingers on his temple, heart racing because when I touch him, I see Dez. I push my love’s face aside and dive rapidly into the guard’s mind.
Hector calls her the melancholy queen, Queen Penelope, though he’d truly like to call her the beautiful queen with her hair of gold and sea-bright eyes. It was his first time in the palace, in the great capital city, Andalucía. How a farm boy was recruited into the queen’s guard is beyond him. The king and his new justice have made great efforts to help the people of Puerto Leones better their stations in life, and for that he is grateful. The wages will help his parents in Citadela Salinas, where work is nowhere to be found. He is going to be the very best, maybe one day rise to the top of the queen’s ranks.
She has the most beautiful voice. Sweet as the ebb and flow of a calm ocean, soft and pleasant. Her words stick in his head, even when she is not around. Golden star, golden star, take the love within my heart.
When she sings to her boys he thinks that is what it feels like to be loved. The melancholy queen doesn’t go anywhere without her boys, though the older prince is usually impatient, slapping at the world like a wild thing and shouting at the top of his lungs. But when she sings, he quiets down. He listens. He sleeps.
Even princes listen to the song of their mothers.
A comforting memory at the forefront of a mind often obscures the one causing the nightmares. Curious that he still thinks of the dead queen after all these years. I move my fingers along his sweating skin and brace for the sting of more memories.
A bloody battle. Men and women in the king’s army raze a village to the ground. Villagers run from their burning homes and into the forests. Whisper rebels fight back. Faces he doesn’t recognize. Sharp pain and then black. Screaming, thrashing, agonizing pain in a tent. A wound, bloody and bandaged where his hand used to be.
Hector hisses, reliving the fresh pain. He thrashes so much it is difficult to hold on, but the images flood like rising water in a sealed room. I must regain control, or I will take too many memories. And he will become a Hollow.
The melancholy queen has been dead a year, and the boy’s rage grows greater still. His body is different, even for a young man his age. All he does is eat and endure the grueling trials every king’s man and guard must pass, like he is carving himself until he is stone, unbreakable. But the boy’s heart is impatient. Hector admires the precision of his swordplay. Out of every boy pulled from farms and mills and wharves, he’d be the one to watch even if he wasn’t the crowned prince.
Hector shouts an order. “Line up! Find your sparring mate and don’t show quarter. Don’t worry about bruises, fledglings. No one’s kissing your ugly mugs as it is.”
It elicits bitter grumbles from the recruits. Too young. Every season the justice sends them younger to fight and die.
Hector was like these kids. He watches them spar with each other in sets of two. His small batch of King