The Raven and the Dove (The Raven and the Dove #1) - Kaitlyn Davis Page 0,108

back and forth as her fingers rubbed at her temples, until, with a hiss, she stood. The monarch flattened the wrinkles in her sleeping gown, then she straightened her back and pinched her cheeks, as though even in the privacy of her own chambers she couldn’t afford to show any sign of weakness, or any hint of vulnerability.

Cassi left her to the loneliness of her room and slinked back into the night, not completely sure what to make of the encounter. She let it replay in her memory so she could recount every detail, then cleared her thoughts to concentrate on the only soul she needed to find that evening.

“Did you feel it?” she asked as soon as she finished spinning his dream, placing them back in the dreary gray room with walls that loomed.

“I did,” her king replied, sapphire eyes filled with storm clouds, lips drawn in a grim line opposite to the smile spreading hers.

“It was a sign, the sign we’ve been waiting for,” Cassi said, finally letting some of the excitement from the day leak into her tone. In the world above, surrounded by the corpses of ravens, both children and adult, there’d been no place for eagerness. But in this dream, standing wingless by her king’s side, all Cassi could think was that everything they’d been waiting for, everything she’d been working so hard to achieve, was here. She was almost done, almost free from the cage her dual life had become.

“We both know it wasn’t,” he murmured, frowning.

Cassi scoffed, rolling her eyes. Her king lifted a single brow in response, making her pause, swallow, and remember which world she was in—which monarch stood beside her. “What else could it have been? Lyana’s birthday is only a fortnight away, and if she is who we think she is, it would be no surprise if the power started responding earlier than we thought.”

“It’s possible,” he said sternly as he crossed his arms and turned to the window, watching the clouds churn as though they were real, and as though they carried news. “But so are any number of other things. The magic binding the isles to the sky is not as strong as it once was, you and I both know that, and there’s no telling for sure what disturbed it. Not yet.”

Cassi bit her tongue.

“I received no word of a dragon responding to the call of the magic, and without that, there’s no way to know where the surge came from,” her king continued, just to press the point a little further. He studied her for a moment before taking a seat at the table. “Now, we have more important things to discuss. You have updates for me, I assume?”

“I do,” Cassi responded, emptying her voice of personality as she tried to focus on the business at hand.

With a simple thought, the dream shifted. Two quills and sheets of paper appeared, some blank, some filled with the parts of the plan they’d already figured out. Cassi dipped her feather into a pot of ink and began to scrawl as she described what she’d learned on her many midnight adventures, but only half of her mind was paying attention.

The other half was in her own dreams, not his. Because the earthquake had to have been Lyana. Cassi’s lonely heart couldn’t accept the idea of it coming from anyone else. Her friend was the queen who was prophesized. And in two weeks, Cassi was bringing Lyana beneath the mist. There would be no more lies. No more secrets. No more half-lives. They would walk across the wet wooden planks of the floating cities together. Cassi would show Lyana her power, would show Lyana that magic was to be treasured, not despised. That it was beautiful. That the people who wielded it were beautiful too. And that the life her friend had always been aching for, of adventure and travel and choice, could be hers—could be theirs.

As she bid her king goodbye, other thoughts filtered in.

That she would meet him, see him, touch him.

That in two weeks, she would no longer be the figment of his imagination, the invisible spirit in the night, but a girl, flesh and blood, made of magic and wings. He would see the real her, no more hiding, and she would see the real him.

Malek.

Adult. And grown. And tangible.

By the time Cassi returned to her body, she was wide awake. No matter how hard she rolled from one side to the other to get