Page 28 of The Robin on the Oak Throne

A dream. It was just a dream.

Her breath came out in heaving pants as her vision cleared to reveal Graves. She was okay. She was with Graves. He had an arm around her shoulders, and she was cocooned against his bare chest.

“What…what happened?” she whispered.

Already the edges of the dream were fuzzy. Like she’d been clinging to something important that only slipped through her fingers the tighter she held on.

She couldn’t remember what had happened. A woman’s screams. No, had it been a man yelling? Something about hiding or being chased down. It had been terrible. As had most of her dreams in the last couple months.

“You started screaming,” Graves said. “Like someone was harming you and I couldn’t wake you.”

“Oh.” Kierse shuffled upright. She didn’t want to move away from him. In fact, his arms had been one of the few things to silence the terror in her mind. “Sorry I woke you.”

“I don’t care if you wake the entire block. That’s hardly my concern. Has that happened before?”

She bit her lip and nodded. “Most nights.”

At his displeasure, she wanted to take it back. She shouldn’t have confided in him, but having someone there to wake her in the middle of it made her feel safe. Gen had helped her through it in Dublin. In fact, she’d been studying her healing magic to make Kierse sleeping concoctions. And while the brews had dimmed the dreams, they’d only resumed in a murkier and more hypnotic form, as if she were swimming under water. Sometimes she preferred sheerterror to being trapped in a potion-induced sleep.

“Do you dream of the hole under the floor every night?”

Kierse jerked backward. “What do you mean?”

He furrowed his brow. “That is what you were dreaming, correct? Your magic was drained enough that I got a read on it when I touched you.”

“Youreadme?” she accused.

“You werescreaming,” he shot back. “It wasn’t intentional. I thought you would absorb it, and when you did not, you practically threw the images into my mind.”

Kierse pursed her lips. “I did not.”

“How it happened is irrelevant. Answer the question. The same dream?”

“I don’t…I don’t usually remember.” She blinked. Graves couldseeher dream. He could remember it. “You remember it, though?”

“Yes,” he said with a sigh. “I remember. How much do you recall?”

“Mostly the sense of being chased and hiding. I was under the floor?”

Graves sighed. “I came in when you’d already been in the dream. You were young. You called a man Daddy while he put you in a hole under floorboards. He told you to stay quiet as he covered you up. Then there was screaming.”

“The screaming I remember.” She shivered. “The screaming is always there. I hate these nightmares.”

“I don’t think it was just a nightmare. It had the feel of a memory. It’s different than the quality of dreams.”

“But my…dad,” Kierse whispered. “I don’t have any memories of him. Except that I was only six when he left.”

“And that never struck you as odd?”

“What?”

“That you remember nothing else?”

“I assumed the trauma…” She trailed off. “Wait, do you think it was the spell?”

He nodded. “It must have wiped away all knowledge of your parents. And if I had to guess, you’re starting to remember.”

“Oh,” she whispered.

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