Page 148 of The Nightmare Bride
“There’s a nightmare,” she murmured. “Heading this way.”
I tensed, wanting to doubt her, but my best friend never joked. About anything. “Anotherone? But we just had one last week.”
Amryssa didn’t respond, but she didn’t have to—a breeze billowed in, ruffling her skirts, drenching the room with the sticky brine of the sea. A whiff of fire, like burnt parchment, rode the edges of the gust. That distinctive smell turned a thousand screws inside my guts.
“Shit,” I muttered.
“It’s a bad one, too,” Amryssa said.
My hand flew to the dagger sheathed at my waist. The weapon wouldn’t protect me against a nightmare, but the feel of the antler hilt steadied me, anyway. “How far off?”
Amryssa studied the sky. Sickly violet light glinted on her cheekbones, hinting at what massed in the sky above the moss-draped trees. Long seconds passed without an answer.
“Amryssa.”
She blinked. “Hmm?”
I sighed. Her mind had clearly wandered. Again. “How much time do we have?”
“Oh. Twenty minutes, perhaps.”
Twenty... Damn. So close, already? Why hadn’t anyone sounded the bells?
I tossed her nightgown aside and arrowed toward the window. Against the cracked and weather-beaten frame, Amryssa looked almost ethereal tonight—a fragile, albino flower amidst this sea of faded finery. Her bone-white curls frothed on the breeze.
“Come on.” I took her by the shoulders. “Let’s get you ready.”
Her gaze didn’t stray from the sky. “But...I don’t suppose you’d let me go outside?”
My mouth twisted. Always the same question, with her. “No, Am. You know how that’d end.”
“Right. But...what about the prince? Has he arrived yet?”
I grimaced. Fuck the prince. More importantly, fuck the forest, with its twisted purple trees and their putrid purple glow and the bullshit purple weather they produced. I was sick of it, though more for Amryssa’s sake than my own. Within the hour, she’d be screaming more loudly than I would, and gods help me, how I hated hearing her misery.
“No sign of your fiancé yet,” I told her.
“Shouldn’t we wait, then? Make sure he gets to safety?”
“And risk ourselves? Forhim? I’d rather chew on nails.” I steered her from the window, then yanked the shutters closed without glancing out. No need to witness the coming carnage for myself. Already, fear coated my throat, thick and sour.
“But what if he gets caught out in the nightmare?” Amryssa said.
My fingers paused on the shutter-latch as a spark of hope flared beneath my ribs. “Then Zephyrine will have answered her first prayer in nine years.”
That was the thing about living in the only territory in Elara whose patron deity had fallen asleep—no divine ears heard our pleas. No godly caretaker granted our most fervent wishes. Here in Oceansgate, we were on our own.
But since our slumbering goddess, Zephyrine, also dreamed these nightmares into existence, the prince getting overtaken by one might actually count as divine intervention.Unintentionaldivine intervention, but whatever.
I’d take what I could get.
“Whose prayer?” Amryssa’s voice shrank. “You haven’t wished my fiancé dead, have you?”
I snorted. “I’ve wished lots of people dead.Especiallyhateful princes who marry seneschal’s daughters against their will.” Irammed the shutter-bolt home, then locked it with the keyring from my skirt pocket. There. If Amryssa somehow got loose during the nightmare, she wouldn’t be able to swan dive from the tower window.
When I turned, she regarded me with stricken eyes. Their color was so unearthly—not quite green, not quite gray, but some pale in-between, like tidepool water captured in two porcelain bowls. That look seemed to demand something of me—to be softer, maybe? Kinder, like other women?
Well, she’d have to hold her breath on that one.
