Page 21 of Heavenly Bodies

She watched that small chink, her hand shaking as she reached out towards it. She didn’t know why—didn’t understand the pull she felt. But with the tip of her finger, she touched the ray. It stilled, and warmed her skin with a feathery tingling sensation. She breathed through her terror, forcing her finger to stay for a few more moments. It dimmed, disappearing, and she held her breath, staying tightly crouched; she didn’t know how long for. Only that the sky darkened further, and cramp found its way into her leg.

Her finger smarted, and she rubbed it as she debated whether to crawl to the doors of her room. Cursing herself, instead she slowly straightened, seeing to her relief that the lawn was empty. As she left the balcony, there was a movement. To anyone else, it could have been a flicker from the lamplight that drenched the terrace. But Elara knew better. There, right where the light had been, the tiniest wisp of shadow floated through the air.

CHAPTER TEN

Elara dreamwalked again that night. As she began to fall asleep, she held herself in limbo, the crucial moment between sleeping and waking, and secured her tether to the waking world. A dreamwalker’s tether was their most important item. She always visualized it as a cord, growing from just below her navel, flowing into the ground and anchoring her to the earth.

Her tutors had told her horror stories growing up, of dreamwalkers who had become untethered, their soul lost to the Dreamlands—or, even worse, the Deadlands right beside them—if they had wandered too far, their body cursed to remain in the waking world, sleeping, until it withered and died.

Confident that her tether was secure, seeing the shining, midnight blue rope with its familiar silver patterning, she rose. It always felt a little like falling upwards, her stomach shooting up as her dream-body became weightless.

She looked at the differently coloured and perfumed clouds around her. Each one belonged to a dreamer, and she flitted between them.

There was one that smelled like light-baked earth and sandalwood, another that smelled like amber. A few others smelled sweeter, more inviting. But tonight, she was drawn more to the darkness than ever.

She settled on the deep golden cloud that smelled of sandalwood, and drifted through the perfumed mist and into the dream.

A young boy with shorn hair and torn clothes was climbing up a dew-rose trellis to a balcony in the Palace of Light, a knife between his teeth.

He couldn’t have been older than ten, and yet the way he scaled the balcony with agility and precision made him seem far more mature.

She followed, the surroundings morphing into a grand bedroom, gauze curtains fluttering. The little boy stole through them, taking the knife from his mouth and creeping towards a sleeping figure in the bed.

Elara’s pulse pounded as she watched the boy press his knife to the sleeping figure’s neck.

‘Give me all the gold you have,’ he demanded.

And when the other boy opened his eyes, she gasped.

To her surprise, the little Enzo in the bed did not scream. He laughed, emptily. A laugh too jaded for someone so young. And a blast of light burst from him.

The boy with the knife cried out as he flew backwards, crashing into Enzo’s armoire.

Enzo leapt up, no weapon but his hands as flame flared in one, another ray of light in the other.

‘Who sent you?’ he hissed, as the boy flared up his own light—this one crackling and writhing. When Enzo launched a fireball at the boy, lightning writhed, deflecting it, and Enzo’s eyes widened. The boy gave a grunt of pain, throwing a fork of it at Enzo, and it sizzled against his arm as it passed.

‘Give me your money before I kill you, prince,’ the little boy snapped.

‘You think I’m scared of a street rat?’ Enzo mocked, and this time his powers extinguished as he launched himself at the boy. He pummelled him, so angry, so ruthless with his movements. But the boy held up, going against him blow for blow.

When one of the boy’s punches made contact with Enzo’s nose, the prince stumbled, and his eyes flared with light.

The boy scrambled back. ‘What are you doing?’ he stuttered, as something Elara couldn’t see began to happen between the two.

‘I’mseeingwho you are,’ Enzo snapped. ‘Leonardo Acardi. From the Apollo Row slums. Poor. Destitute. And wants my money to—’

‘Stop!’ the boy shouted.

‘To pay for a healer for his dying mother.’

The light extinguished, casting the two boys into darkness.

Leonardo sat panting, wiping blood from his mouth, as Enzo held his nose.

‘She…she got a fever, a few weeks ago. I thought it would break but it’s only getting worse. And as “street rats from Apollo’s Row”, we can’t afford a healer.’

Enzo looked at him, and Elara guessed he was using his gift again, to see if the boy was lying or not.

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