belonged.
Soran opened his eyes.
It was dark in the chamber, shrouded in Noxaur’s Night. But he remembered where Helenia had once kept her candles. Feeling his way along the furniture, he found the drawer, withdrew a candle and a box of matches, and struck a light. Holding it high, he searched the room for any sign of the Nightmare intruding upon reality. But all was as it should be. The bed was perhaps a little mussed, and there might be a few new gouges in the walls and floor. No vines. No roses.
Soran found a candleholder and set the candle in place. Then, drawing the Rose Book from his robes, he opened to the place where he’d left off the binding spell. There was no time to waste. The Noswraith would soon recover and start looking for another opening. He had to finish the binding now.
The thorns and roses vanished before Nelle reached the kitchen.
She breathed a sigh of relief and allowed her pace to slow somewhat. Soran must have somehow stopped the Thorn Maiden, must have bound her back again. Otherwise, surely those horrifying vines would already have caught her and resumed tearing her apart.
She trembled and staggered, blood flowing down her arms and legs and chest. Which was strange. Why should she bleed if she was, in fact, disembodied? Hadn’t she experienced a dream something like this before? But it had gone very differently. Her first night at Roseward, she’d floated through these very halls in a shapeless, bodiless state, and though the Thorn Maiden tried to catch her many times, she had been uncatchable.
Why was it different this time? It was as though the dream had seeped into reality, making even her dream-self more solid than it ought to have been.
Nelle shook her head fiercely. None of that mattered. She wasn’t truly bleeding. And she wouldn’t accept it.
She closed her eyes, bowed her head, and concentrated with everything she had—concentrated on forcing the hundreds and hundreds of cuts lacing her body to disappear, for the blood to dry and flake away to nothing. At first, her spirit-self resisted. Then, like a cramped muscle suddenly relaxing, it gave up. The pain eased and finally ended entirely.
Nelle opened her eyes, looked down at her body, and saw everything as it should be—her lacerated limbs whole, her shredded gown mended. Even the gold necklace was hidden back under her bodice where it ought to be.
She breathed out a sigh and continued along the dark passages of Dornrise. She still needed to find her physical body and somehow wake it up. Then she needed to find . . . to find . . .
“Sam!” she gasped and pressed a hand to her jolting heart. Where was Sam? If that hadn’t been him in the bedchamber, when had he gone, and when had the Thorn Maiden taken his place? Was that him she’d found sleeping under the table in the kitchens? Or had he somehow vanished when the light first went out?
Was he already dead?
Clutching her skirts, she ran as hard as she could, almost losing physical shape in her haste. She darted down the passage into the narrow stair leading to the kitchens, then burst into that cavernous space.
A mounded shape lay on the floor near the middle of the room between two long tables. Was that her body?
Nelle hurried to kneel beside the shadowy thing. She could hardly see it—no wonder she’d missed it earlier when she stepped into the Nightmare. If Soran hadn’t told her that her body was down here, she wouldn’t believe it even now. But it must be herself. Unless . . . unless it was Sam?
She reached to take hold of what seemed to be a shoulder. Her hands went through it like it was nothing. Strange that she’d been able to hold onto Soran for those few moments. The line between Nightmare and physical reality must still be badly blurred.
Nelle sat back on her heels, resting her elbows on her knees. What was she supposed to do? She had no idea how to wake herself up. How had Soran done it last time?
Popping up onto her feet, Nelle moved to the larder, thinking to grab a bottle of vinegar or some other strong-smelling liquid and pour it over the shadowy mound. Before she’d taken more than a few paces, she heard an echoing sound of footsteps in the stairwell. She turned.
For a fleeting instant, she saw Soran standing in the doorway, robed and white-haired and