like iron bars clanging shut. His soul cried out in fury and despair, but his sagging mouth could utter nothing more than a faint gurgling groan. He closed his eyes again and sank into the darkness, the oblivion. Maybe Kyriakos’s spell was stronger than he’d thought. Maybe it would kill him, take him out of this world.
Soft fingers touched his cheek, caressing.
My poor, poor love.
His soul tensed. He tried to open his eyes again but couldn’t. He was truly asleep now.
Instead he raised his spirit, looking up from the prone mortal body to face the Nightmare reality around him, the simmering overlay spread across all Roseward.
The Thorn Maiden knelt beside him. Small, frail. Still bound by the Rose Book spell but present here in the realm of the unconscious. Her thorny fingers were covered in rose petals to soften their abrasive touch. Her face was weirdly almost-human, and perfume surrounded her in a dense cloud.
She looked down at Soran and offered a wan smile so like one of Helenia’s smiles that it nearly stopped his heart.
She’s deserted you at last. As you knew she would. Deserted you for another man.
Her fingertips caressed his face again, his spirit face this time as opposed to the figure lying in the dirt. She blinked dark leaf eyelids across the empty holes of her eye sockets.
All women are faithless. Is that not the truth you wrote into the core of my being? All women are faithless, save one.
Your perfect dream.
Soran wrenched away from her, stood upright, and strode away from his physical body, making his way to the gate. There he stopped, gazing out over the cliff’s edge to the dark shore of Noxaur. Already it looked farther off than it had been. Were the currents of the Hinter drawing Roseward onward and away?
He didn’t have much time.
The dense perfume cloud reached out to him from behind. A soft susurrus of rose petals and leaves whispered in his ear. The Thorn Maiden stood at his back, her lips hovering beside his ear.
It will all go back to the way it was. The way it was always meant to be. You and I. Together for eternity.
Her hand slid up his arm, crept to his neck, toyed with the hair at the base of his skull.
You’ll forget her soon enough. You’ll forget all these unpleasant things she’s stirred inside you. And when that cursed book of yours finally breaks—
Soran turned sharply to face the apparition. With a snarl, he clutched her head in both hands and crushed, crushed, crushed it until rose petals burst through his fingers. She was bound. The Rose Book spell still held fast. She could not fight him, could not resist.
She broke apart into a thousand pieces, bits of broken stem and leaf and petal, drifting away on the breeze.
Wiping his hands on the front of his robes, Soran strode back to his sleeping body. He must wake up. There was no time to be lost. An idea was forming, one he hated to acknowledge, hated to face head-on. But if it was the only way Nelle could be saved . . .
Moving with deft experience, Soran lay back down inside his body. It was an agony to feel those paralyzed limbs close in upon his spirit, an agony to strain against the enchantment and his own physical frailty. With a groan, he wrenched his eyes open and stared at the world around him.
It wasn’t the same pitch-dark world he had left behind. The shadows of Noxaur were already on the retreat, leaving Roseward in deep but not utter gloom. How long had he slept? It could have been hours; it could have been days.
Tentatively he tested his limbs. The skullars had savaged his garments but only occasionally managed to penetrate to his skin. He’d suffered worse from the Thorn Maiden and, recently, from the unicorn’s horn. The air of Roseward had already hastened his healing, and a few more disfiguring scars made no difference.
He pushed upright into a kneeling position. Everything hurt, but it was the kind of hurt that assured of life and vitality, not brokenness. The stink of death surrounded him, and when he dared look around, he saw the battered corpses of three skullars, victims of his own magic.
Shuddering, he bowed his head. For some moments he could do no more than remain where he was, breathing in and out, his chin dropped to his chest.
Then he looked up, nostrils flaring.
Somehow he got to his feet; somehow he