Dragon Rose(50)

Perhaps that was not completely accurate. Once upon a time, I did have dreams that were true, that showed things as they happened, or were about to happen. It seemed I had not had one, though, since I arrived in the castle. Was it because I had nothing left to see of any importance, or because something in the castle was blocking the visions from appearing to me?

Abruptly I asked, “Who was that man at your wedding?”

“Which man? There were many in attendance.”

“I don’t see how you could have overlooked him. He was tall, and wore a green velvet doublet with a heavy gold chain across his shoulders.”

Her fine brows drew together in a frown. “I saw no one like that.”

“He and I danced ‘Grey Mare’ together, and then…we stepped outside.”

“Did you?” Her eyes glinted. “And what precisely did you do outside?”

I said nothing, but instead pretended to be interested in a collection of pewter plates at the stall where we had paused.

She laughed then. “Ah, I see. So you went outside to kiss this stranger, and now you don’t know how you feel about the Dragon Lord of Black’s Keep.”

That seemed to sum it up neatly. Never mind that the stranger was no more real than the conversation I was presently having with Lilianth. But perhaps she had the right of it. Perhaps this inner obsession with someone I had never actually met or seen with my own eyes was somehow preventing me from admitting that I had come to care for Theran, more than I wanted to say.

Had any of the rest of them loved him, those women who lay sleeping in that secret clearing? And had he loved any of them back?

“Perhaps they all died of a broken heart,” I said, echoing my musings of some days earlier.

In my dream I had made no mention of the place where all of the Dragon’s Brides took their final rest, but Lilianth only nodded as if she knew exactly what I was talking about. Then she tilted her head and gave me a searching look. “People don’t really die of a broken heart,” she said. “That sort of thing is just for stories. Something else killed them, Rhianne, and you need to find out what it was.”

“Before or after I tell my husband I’m in love with him?” I asked, in semi-teasing tones, but she appeared to take me seriously, considering my question before replying,

“Afterward. You are both so busy building walls right now. If you don’t stop soon, you’ll never be able to tear them down.”

I was about to comment on her sudden sagacity, but she seemed to grow insubstantial before my eyes, to waver and then blow away like mist on the morning breeze. All around her, the familiar streets of Lirinsholme likewise began to disappear, the buildings and people and smells and sounds dissolving into nothing. A bright light touched my eyes, and I awoke.

The sun streamed through curtains I had forgotten to close the night before. Unlike the previous storm, this one seemed to have been short-lived.

I blinked, and just as they had done in my dream, the words from my conversation with Lilianth blew away, leaving my mind as if they had never been there. Such was the way with dreams, but this time I had the impression I was forgetting something vitally important, if I could only recall what it was.

However, the harder I tried to hold on to those wisps of memory, the more they slipped away. My head ached, and I found myself feeling disinclined to get out of bed. Well, Sar had told me to get my rest. What did it matter whether I slept the day away or not? Even the thought of getting up so I might paint more was not appealing, and so I rolled over in bed, pulled the covers more tightly around me, and drifted off back to sleep.





No dreams greeted me that time, nothing but oblivion unbroken until I heard Sar’s voice from somewhere above me.

“My lady!”

I rolled over, noting vaguely that the bright sunlight had quite gone. Sar held a tray in both hands; behind her broad silhouette I could see the dim traces of a sullen sunset through one of the windows. Had I really slept the day through?

It seemed so.

“I thought you might like some supper,” she said, her tone uncharacteristically hesitant. “Or do you still feel ill?”

I paused to consider. The ache had gone from my head, though I still felt oddly listless. But my stomach apparently decided that it had had enough of lethargy, and growled.

Something that might have been the beginnings of a smile touched Sar’s mouth. “Not so ill you couldn’t eat, I wager.”

“I could try something,” I admitted.

Suddenly brisk, she set a clever little four-legged tray down on my lap. It was the sort of meal an invalid would be likely to enjoy—potato soup thick with cheese, a fresh wheaten roll, a mug of cider. I set to with more energy than I’d thought I would be able to muster, demolishing the roll and most of the soup before I’d even stopped to decide whether I was all that hungry.

“You seem to be on the mend,” was all she said, but a certain gleam in her eye told me she was almost amused by my wolfish appetite.

“It would appear so.”

I didn’t wish to waste time on speaking then, not while I still had some of that delicious soup to eat. Perhaps I could be excused; it had been a very long time since my dinner the previous night. And although I had not forgotten the shocks of the day before, they’d already begun to take on a hazy, dreamlike quality, as if they had happened to someone else.