Radiant Shadows
Page 40

Rae debated commenting. If she spoke, there was a chance Sorcha would be further displeased. If they slept, Rae suspected she’d be given direction to invade their dreams for some reason Sorcha had devised but not yet shared.
“Tell me what they dream,” Sorcha demanded.
“They aren’t asleep.”
“Of course they are. I told them to sleep. They’ll sleep.” Sorcha’s dispassionate gaze invited no disagreement, but the High Queen was wrong.
“I can’t go into their dreams if they aren’t dreaming,” Rae lied. She could give them daydreams. It took far more concentration, but if they were creative—which most mortals in Faerie were—she could even entice them to sleep. She hadn’t had much experience with that because Devlin kept her so carefully hidden, but there were a few tricks Rae had practiced covertly when mortals or faeries were within reach.
“Make them dream.” Sorcha smoothed down her skirts as she sat on her uncomfortable throne. Her attention to the fall of her attire was more concentrated than her attention to the mortals at her feet.
“They’re awake.” Rae wasn’t sure how much disappointment the High Queen would forgive. She wished that she’d told Devlin good-bye.
“Sleep,” Sorcha repeated to the mortals, but they did not. The High Queen could change everything around them, but even she could not control the biological responses of sentient beings.
“Perhaps if you gave them pillows and something softer than the floor,” Rae suggested.
Before the words were fully said, the room shifted. The mortals were now reclining on beds that were several feet thick, more pillow than mattress; thorny frames twisted up around the pillow-mattresses. From the thorns, Spanish moss hung down like curtains.
The mortals had not moved. The world around them had shifted, yet they remained in the same deathlike positions they’d assumed. Sorcha, for her part, had no reaction to any of it. This was the High Court that Devlin had sheltered Rae from; this was the High Queen in all of her disdainful glory.
Rae, however, was not of the High Court. She was in Faerie by accident, and at first she was only with Devlin out of happenstance. Over time, that had changed: Devlin mattered.
And would be quite welcome right now.
The queen of Faerie lifted her gaze and stared at Rae. “Tell me what they dream. Now.”
On the bed, the mortals breathed slowly and evenly. They fell into sleep, and Rae followed the first one into her dreaming world.
The mortal was a worker of fabrics. In her dream, she was in a great open warehouse. It was piled high with bolts of fabric, swaths of fur, and vats of odd items. Uncut stones and sinuous metals were piled at the ready.
The mortal sat at a table that spanned the length of the room. On it, sketches were illuminated by backlighting, so that the parchment they were drawn upon seemed to glow. Some of the illustrations were already pinned to model forms. Others were cut from the fabrics, but not pinned or stitched together.
The dream wasn’t particularly interesting to Rae. It was simply an artist wishing for more tools with which to create new art. Such dreams were not the most tedious ones in Faerie, but they weren’t particularly fun to tweak either. Mortals were resistant to dream alteration. Artists were worse still. They’d been brought to Faerie for their creativity, and that creativity was their essence.
Rae pulled herself from the artist’s dream.
“Wake.” Sorcha nudged the mortal and then motioned to Rae. “Well?”
“She dreams of her art. Fabrics, a warehouse, some odd accoutrements for the attires she sketches in her dream,” Rae said.
The mortal nodded, and Sorcha smiled.
But Rae felt dirty. It wasn’t that the content was scandalous. It was the sense that she was violating a trust by reporting to Sorcha. She’d never relayed dreams to anyone.
“The other.” The High Queen gestured to the still- sleeping mortal. “What does she dream?”
Rae hesitated, and something in her posture must have revealed that resistance.
Sorcha was beside her, close enough that Rae was tempted to try wearing her body as she’d worn Devlin’s so often. It was a last resort though, a measure to take when she had no other options. It wasn’t a secret she would reveal yet.
“What is your name?” the High Queen asked.
“Rae.”
“I rule Faerie, Rae,” Sorcha breathed, her words so soft that they weren’t even a true whisper. “All here bend to my will. Air, form, everything. You will obey me, or I will not allow you to continue to exist within Faerie.”
Rae stayed silent.
“What does she dream?” Sorcha repeated.
And Rae slipped into the mortal’s mind, hoping that the girl wasn’t harboring secrets the queen would want to know. Inside the dream, the mortal was waiting expectantly. She sat upright in what looked to be the exact room they’d left.
“Return,” a disembodied voice said. In the waking world, Sorcha was speaking to the dreamer.
“What?” Rae asked the girl.
“The queen is summoning you. Remove yourself from my dream.” The mortal was motionless, but then she glanced left and right as if someone else could come into her dream. With a look of alarm in her eyes, the mortal added, “Hurry now. She is not to be ignored of late. The Queen of Reason has become something other than rational.”
Rae nodded and stepped back into the room where Sorcha was. “You summoned me?”