Once Broken Faith (October Daye #10)(65)

“I’m really me,” I said. My words, like hers, carried clearly through the water. “My niece is an oneiromancer, remember? She brought me into your dreams because I needed to talk to you. Do you have time to talk to me?”

“Time?” Dianda chuckled bitterly. “I have nothing but time. And really, I should thank you for interrupting. None of my dreams ever get to the good stuff. They get close enough that I start to think maybe taking a long nap won’t be the worst thing ever, and then bam, they break up and turn into something else. I don’t normally dream like that. Something’s wrong.”

“Yes,” I agreed. The elf-shot spell was originally just supposed to knock people out, but it had been around for centuries, and there were lots of different variations. Some of them included a slow poison, one that would kill the sleeper long before their enchanted slumber came to an end. Others had been tooled to condemn the victim to a hundred years of nightmares. What Dianda was describing wasn’t quite that bad, but was possibly even crueler, in its own strange way. A hundred years of unfulfillment, of stories that never reached their natural endings . . . that would be enough to make anyone suffer.

“So what did you want to talk about?” Dianda did a lazy loop-de-loop, flukes trailing like a veil in front of her face before she resumed her formerly upright position. “It’s not like I have any appointments to get to.”

I frowned. “I thought you’d be more upset.”

She shrugged. “I’m livid. So mad I can’t even think about it without losing my temper. But there’s nothing I can do. Either Arden will let them wake me up, or she won’t. If she does, I go home to my husband and son. If she doesn’t . . .” For a moment, her bravado cracked, and I saw how frightened she was. “Dean is a landed Count with a knowe of his own, because of you. Patrick and Peter can go to him, and he’ll take care of them. He’s a good boy. He’ll protect his family until I wake up and can fight to reclaim my demesne from whoever seizes it in my absence.”

“Peter’s a Merrow, like you,” I said. “He could claim your place when he gets older.”

“Please. You know better than that. No matter how often I claim him as my heir, Peter’s a mixed-blood, just like his brother. It doesn’t matter how Merrow he looks. The Undersea will eat him alive and spit out his bones. I knew when I married Patrick that if we had children, I would have to be absolutely ruthless in order to protect them. I forgot that ruthlessness is a fulltime commitment. I dropped my guard. Now we’re all paying the price.”

“About that.” I swept my arms through the water, stabilizing myself. There was a flash of light off to one side, and I glanced in that direction long enough to see Karen, now equipped with a white-scaled, black-fluked mermaid tail, swimming delighted loops through Dianda’s dream ocean. Kids are kids, no matter what kind of magic they have. I looked back to Dianda. “You were facing the door when you were shot. Did you see the person who shot you?”

“See them? Reef and bone, I was about to get out of the water and strangle them when they put that damn arrow in my arm,” said Dianda. “It was that Daoine Sidhe with the green hair. What’s his name, Michel. From Starfall. I don’t even know where that is.”

“Idaho,” I said automatically. “It’s inland. Very inland. I don’t think they even have any big lakes. There was no way you would have met him before this. Did you, I don’t know, drown one of his relatives? Insult his clothes? Anything that might have made him think putting you to sleep for a hundred years would be a good idea?”

“The only Daoine Sidhe I’ve ever threatened to drown was my husband,” said Dianda. “He likes it when I get threatening.”

“Please don’t finish that thought,” I said. “You’re sure this man had no reason to hold a grudge against you.”

“On Maeve’s bones, Toby, if I’ve done something to wrong him or his family, I don’t know about it. We had a fight at dinner, but that’s all,” said Dianda. “I was waiting for Patrick to come back and suddenly there was this green-haired bastard in my room. I felt the arrow hit my shoulder, and then everything went away. I didn’t really understand what had happened to me until you appeared.” She glanced away, off into the watery blue.

Karen’s lucid dreaming effect. It was hitting Dianda also, turning a series of unpleasant, unfulfilling dreams into a prison. It took everything I had not to wince as I realized what I’d inadvertently done to her. “We’ll be leaving soon,” I said. “I’m pretty sure you’ll go back to normal dreams once we’re gone. And we’re working on getting Arden to let us wake you up.”

“She won’t. Not until the High King says she’s allowed to use your precious cure that way—and if he doesn’t, I guess I’m spending the next century or so napping at Dean’s place. He’s a good boy. He’ll take good care of me.”

“It’s not going to come to that.”

Dianda shrugged. “If it does, it does. Patrick and I have dealt with every obstacle Faerie has thrown at us this far. What’s one more? Goldengreen is as good a crypt as anything e—”

She stopped mid-word as Karen flung herself between us, gills flared and eyes wide in her paler than usual face. “Aunt Birdie, you promised,” she wailed, and then a giant, unseen hand was grabbing the bottom of my tail and yanking me downward.