Savage Beauty(2)

They happened again and again and again...

One by one, people began disappearing from the palace and from our lives. It wasn’t until I watched her kill the woman who had raised us without a flicker of hesitation, that I realized it had been Aura making them disappear. It was always her. She’d been killing for years, slaughtering anyone who got in her way.

The mattress dipped under her weight. My blood began to boil. It took everything in me not to backhand her off the bed.

“Do you miss him?”

My eyes snapped open, fixating on her radiant smile, her sunshine hair. She spoke of him as casually as she would the weather. Aura laughed as if she knew what I’d been thinking.

“Sleep walk with me.” Rising from the bed, she took a few steps and glanced over her shoulder, waiting for me to join her. “I think I’ll let him join us today,” she offered.

He was my weakness, and she knew how to wield him like a sword. I tried to be cold and indifferent, but seeing him was something I needed. Not because I yearned to relive the heartache, or feel the guilt and sting of not preventing his death. No, I needed to see him to remind myself of what I must do when I woke on the first day of autumn.

When she killed him, she started a war between us; a war I would fight every day until I could mop my floor with buckets of her blood. What a beautiful sight that would be.

“Very well,” I said, rising from the mattress with a pleasant grin. Two could play this game. But only one would win.

“You’re in awfully good spirits,” she remarked, smiling stiffly over her shoulder. “And I was worried you wouldn’t be well rested. It’s almost time for you to awaken. I’m sure you can’t wait until autumn. I hate my winter slumber probably as much as you hate your summer one.”

I would love my slumber if she would leave it and me alone. It was only her incessant visits that made it unbearable. Thanks to a powerful spell I learned several years back, her constant pestering didn’t drain my power like they did in the past, but allowed me to siphon hers instead. Didn’t she feel herself tiring after our little strolls? I wondered.

The bedroom I was in during this dream she gave—an exact replica of my room in her palace—disappeared, everything fading to white, until she replaced the scene. The scent of rain hung in the air, even though no droplets fell from the sky. Soft, green grass sprouted beneath my feet, tickling my soles. Wildflowers bloomed around us and trees shot up from the ground, growing from saplings to towering giants in an instant, green and vibrant. A brook babbled to my right. The room may have disappeared, but she was never able to erase my bed. It lay in the middle of it all, the covers thrown back, reminding both of us that this walk would only be temporary and that it wasn’t real at all.

She waved for me to follow her. There was a time when we enjoyed our sleep walks, but that was ages ago. Before she tore away my life, my home, and him.

I looked at the scene she created. The leaves of the trees were too bright, the wrong color of green. The bark was more yellow than brown or gray, and the moss was the wrong texture. It was too smooth.

The little details she missed spoke volumes. I couldn’t help but smile. Aura had always preferred the palace over the forest, but when she came for a sleep walk, she always painted an outdoor scene. She must miss it more than she knows. She hated my binding spell as much as I hated her sleep walks. And yet, here we were: her stuck inside the palace grounds, unable to enter a real forest but able to enter my mind and shove me into a fake one, and me stuck with her for a short time.

Aura took one look at the contentment on my face and growled, anger simmering beneath the surface. She waved her hand in front of us and suddenly he was there, freezing me in place. Over time, I’d stopped reaching out for him. I hadn’t run to hold him in seasons. Hadn’t begged her to let him stay with me as I slept, watching as he walked away with my sister or faded to nothing at the wave of her hand, while I lunged to grab him and keep him safe from her, failing every single time.

My jaw clenched, and I relaxed it so she wouldn’t see.

She’d committed him to memory. Every detail. She may have forgotten the look of the forest, but she hadn’t forgotten him. Every strand of his chestnut and caramel hair was exactly right. His musculature and proportions, his height, the beauty mark near his right ear, the small scar on his chin, his proud brow.

She studied him and learned every feature that made my heart ache.

Enough of this. He isn’t real.

He’s dead.

“Luna?” he asked. His voice was drenched in wonder and disbelief, as if he was seeing me for the first time after being away for years. It was as if he was alive.

She’d studied his voice, perfected his mannerisms, his facial expressions and his clean, masculine scent.

My teeth ground together. She had no right to know him so intimately.

“Aura,” I said to my sister. She turned from her creation, a pleased smile on her face. “You must be very bored in your palace to wake me with this nonsense. I no longer care about William.”

Her smile dropped, but only slightly.

It was time to ruin her day—which happened to be the favorite part of mine. I smiled and waved my hand.

Aura watched as the summer sky faded to dull gray-white, and in response, waved her hand. Storm clouds built and churned in the sky. It began to rain.

With a smile, I turned the air cold. A sharp wind cut across our skin and flakes of snow flurried from the sky. The leaves on the trees surrounding us withered and quickly dropped to the ground, and a frigid blanket of white coated everything around us. Aura began to shake, rubbing her arms. “What are you doing? This is my vision!” she screeched.