WINTER TERM - January 16th
It didn't feel like a dream.
It wasn't one. Couldn't have been.
Ianthe stood at the foot of my bed. This wasn't the bed in my flat in Nizari with the little dragons carved into the headboard, or her bed at the Stag's Court, with its horrible celadon canopy. This was my bed at the Midnight Court, the standard set in all the Vodalysa suites with the simple dark wood bed frame.
She was playing with a strand of her long white hair, though her deep red eyes were fixed on me. "You really left Caburh…" her voice was clear in a way it never had been. It wasn't in my head. "At least Alden's brat put you up in your own room. He must really like you."
She ran a hand up the side of the bed, coming closer. She wore a sheer white nightgown with lace on the hem and sleeves. Her lips were red - a warning, an omen, a terror.
I couldn't move, couldn't speak. I blinked. This couldn't have been a dream.
She reached out and set her hand atop my quilt, over my leg. I could feel the pressure of her touch. How the hell was she here?
I was still paralyzed. I didn't have the option to move or speak, but the feeling of her hand suddenly on me again was enough to tell me I may have been stunned into immobility even if I could have moved anyway. She wasn't supposed to find me.
Her lips twisted into a cruel smile and without warning, she jumped up onto the bed and crawled up over me. I felt her. Ianthe wasn't physically heavy, she never had been, but she wasn't trying to keep from hurting me. The palms of her hands pushed into my gut, my chest, my shoulders. Her knees bore into my thighs, my waist. She must have known I couldn't shake her off me. Even any kind of involuntary reflex seemed impossible.
"Oh, Zephyr." She hovered just over my face. I felt her hand brush through my hair. "Have your fun with the prince while you can. You'll always be mine."
She leaned forward, hand in my hair clenched tightly and pulled. I felt the sting on my scalp. Her lips were on my throat. I could feel the curve of her grin.
"No silver chain," she whispered. "You really shouldn't have…"
And then her teeth sunk into my throat.
I startled awake. Ianthe was gone. That wasn't like any kind of dreamwalking I'd seen before. It had been too real, too visceral. I was clutching the spot on my neck where she'd bit me. It still hurt, though when I expected my hands to come away bloody, they didn't. It was still in my head. It had to have been.
But this time, she'd seen my room at the Midnight Court. I looked around. The curtain was drawn over the window. The rest of the room was so sparsely furnished still there was little to give me away. Less when it came to personal effects. For once, it felt like a good thing. How had she seen it?
The only answer that came to mind was that she must have learned some new techniques. There was no other way to explain it. Maybe a new magical artifact had come into her collection? I couldn't think of anything else. I didn't know enough about any of these things. I was having a hard enough time trying to forget the feeling of her hands on my body again. And her teeth on my neck.
A surge of panic rushed through me. I couldn't really breathe. I kept touching my neck. The bite that was there, that felt like a bite, had felt like a wound, but the skin was unbroken, even as it was still tender to the touch. No blood, just pain. I wasn't going to catch my breath lying in bed.
I ended up down the hall, in the bathroom, staring at the mirror in the low light. For all that had just happened, for everything I was feeling, there should have been a sign of it. Something. But there was nothing on my neck. I was fine.
I didn't feel fine. But it was okay. At least for now, Ianthe wasn't here. She probably still didn't even know where I was. She knew I was with Aries and that we'd left Caburh, but what else?
I parsed through my memory of what she'd said. I was looking for hints. Any indicators that she might know something I needed her not to, but already the exact words were slipping. It had been a dream. The details were fading even as the sting of the bite on my neck had not.
This next part, I hadn't meant to do. Not really. I didn't want to go back to my room. I'd been standing in my underwear in the bathroom for several minutes, mind more on the dream and wound up down the hall. At Aries's door.
Aries answered on the second knock. He squinted, still half asleep, hair mussed, and dressed only in a thin pair of shorts and socks. "Zeph?"
I didn't realize I was crying until I tried to speak and the words were all so hard.
"Whoa, hey," Aries said. "What happened?"
"Who knows that you're here?" It took forever to get the words out. My voice quivered. Aries could tell something was wrong. I might not have shed any tears, but I also can't remember the last time I'd been like this. My hand clutched my neck. I was shivering. I remember he put a blanket over me, thinking I must have been cold, but how could I explain it? Ianthe had bit me.
"I know no one's meant to know you're here, but Aries, who knows? Is there anyone who might-?" I didn't know what I was asking. The only logical answer was that only someone who wished him harm would have told Ianthe he was here. His own situation wasn't significantly better than mine, but he wasn't the one close to tears. Aries stroked my back.
"What happened tonight, Zeph?"
It took me a few minutes to get it out, to try to explain it. How she'd been there, in my room at the Midnight Court, how I felt her touch me, how she'd bit me.
I know he was trying, but he was also looking at me like I was a spooked horse. "It was a dream," he'd said. I don't think he was trying to minimize it, no. He knew about her dreamwalking. He knew what she was. But he wasn't getting it. He was way too focused on my hands, still clutching my neck. The shock of her bite lingered under my skin. I still had a hard time believing there was no wound.
"She's never bitten me," I said. "She's never been allowed to bite me. And even now, I don't know what she did exactly. She was here in my room. Maybe not my actual room, but in my head. My memory of my room here. She saw what it looked like. Where I am. She's never been able to do that before."
"She's not here, Zeph." I know he was trying to be reassuring but that wasn't what I needed. I needed her to still think I was in Fel or to be kept busy looking for me somewhere I wasn't. Eventually, she'd tire of searching and give up. It'd been over six months. Part of me had hoped that she would have already given up by now, but I couldn't be too surprised. She could search for me for two years and I still wouldn't be surprised. She's a vampire after all. Time is a funny thing when you're forever twenty-two.
Aries and I were sitting on the side of his bed. One of his hands was still on my back, over the blanket he'd thrown over me.
"Can I take a look at your neck, Zeph?" He slipped his hands over mine. He wasn't trying to prise them off, but waited until I dropped my hands away.
I kept forgetting there was no blood. The spot still felt tender. "It's okay," I said. "Really."
Aries eyed the spot. Even in the low light, he wasn't going to find something that wasn't there. He was still squinting, overtired. It was the middle of the night. I almost forgot, I'd woken him up.
"You're not going to find anything," I said. "And we have classes in the morning. I should probably get back to bed." Even as I was saying it, I didn't get up right away. I wasn't quite ready yet to part with Aries's blanket or for him to stop rubbing circles across my back.
"Or you could stay?" His voice was soft enough I nearly missed the question. But his hand on my back stilled. That was something we hadn't done. I didn't stay the night.
"You mean so Ianthe can get a look at your room too?"
Aries sighed. "I was thinking more about the protection sigils I'd put up. Even if it doesn't stop her, it might still give us more of a warning."
It wasn't what I'd expected him to say, but he was right. It made too much sense. It wasn't as though I particularly wanted to go back to my room anyway. I knew well enough from scrying on him that his sigils worked. Might not change anything exactly but it was better than nothing.
"You wouldn't mind?" I asked. "I could sleep on the couch." If he really was just thinking of the protection sigils, the couch was fine. It wasn't ideal because it was Aries's couch. It was a magnet for dirty socks and old crumbs, but it wasn't as though we hadn't messed around on it a few times this week already.
Staying over wasn't even necessary anyway. I knew well enough that dreamwalking was exhausting. There was a reason Ianthe hadn't been able to do it since last term. That one terrible day would have been enough to leave her drained for weeks. And this? Logically, I had some time before I could expect to see her again. I knew that, but that didn't mean I wanted to leave.
"Why do you keep doing that?"
His hand slipped off my back. He pulled his legs up onto the bed to better face me. It was way too late at night to be getting into this now, but I narrowed my eyes, daring him to go on.
"You're always acting like we're not-" Aries chewed his lip. Whatever he was going to say, maybe he'd thought better of it. I was really not in the mood for a fight. And maybe, neither was he. Instead he said, "You know I care about you, right? You're here and you're upset. You're staying in the bed. It doesn't have to be anything more than that. Alright?"
Aries flopped back onto the mattress. He patted the spot beside him for me. The beds even in the Vodalysa suites were not especially large. Big enough to feel roomy for one person, but for two?
I realized too that I was still wrapped in a blanket and wearing very little else. I kept the blanket over my shoulders when I climbed over to where he'd gestured and got under the sheets. Aries passed a pillow my way. I set it under my head, minding the horns. If we were going to make this a regular habit, I was going to have to bring my own pillow down the line, mine were a bit more durable, less likely to tear open on my horns at night. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Aries, instead of settling into bed, busied himself grabbing something in the nightstand. He pulled out a bottle, poured a few drops into one palm, and used it to trace a sigil onto the headboard between us. It glowed gold when he completed the shape before fading into the wood, but the bed thrummed slightly with the power of the sigil for the rest of the night.
"It's just water charged under the full moon and marigold petals," Aries said.
I pulled him closer in the bed. He was twisting the cap of the moon water on to keep it from spilling. "I feel safer already," I said.
Aries quickly set the glass bottle aside and stopped resisting my reach. He burrowed a little closer under the blanket until his head was resting on my bare shoulder. I felt his feet next, the soft brush of his socks, his toes carefully nudging at my calves, looking for a way our legs might comfortably tangle.
It was nice. Aries was warm, soft, and real - a physical presence heavy at my side. I didn't realize just how much that alone was enough to help me breathe easier. I'd told him I felt safer, but now I was quickly realizing just how true that was.
I had one arm wrapped around him, under his back. It was going to be easy to fall asleep like this, with Aries curled into me. I nuzzled my face into his hair, breathed him in. The wolf in my head blinked awake if only for a moment.
Aries wasn't asleep yet. His eyes were shut but he rubbed up against me, cuddling. I'm sure that's all he'd say it was, but he picked up the pace once we started making out. I pushed off the sheets - it was too warm for one thing, but also, Aries was lying on his back beneath me. I wanted to see him. The room was still dark, but Aries never shut his curtains. Moonlight streamed in - not from Luna, but Selene and little Pandia were almost full, their combined light was enough to paint Aries in silver. The thought of just touching him alone in the dark was enough to make me shiver.
"We don't have to do anything more if you don't want to," I said. "Or if you just want to sleep…" I was parroting his own words back at him, but I wanted to give him an out. It was late and even tired, I wanted this more than sleep. Aries's head was set back against his pillow. His eyes were dark, breath ragged. I knew I wasn't alone in this feeling.
"Zeph, are you sure?" Aries asked. I wondered if I should have been the one asking him that instead. I kissed him again, a silent yes.
There were a lot of things we were going to need to talk about- histories, preferences, boundaries. We went through a short version of it quickly. His past experience is limited. It can be summed up in a couple of long weekend trips to Nightfront with a cousin determined to get him laid that resulted in a few awkward encounters and a one night stand with a handful of vacationers he never heard from again.
Mine was a little messier, but apparently less messy than he'd expected. My list was: Ianthe my ex-girlfriend of five years and half a dozen or so old friends. A few were dead, but we weren't exactly close. An unfortunate side effect of living in a vampire court. Ianthe had a jealous streak, not that she'd killed any of them, but it meant that I didn't let anyone else get too close.
Then, onto logistics, a shorter conversation. Aries didn't know what he liked and that was fine by me, since there was very little I didn't like. And then, Aries tentatively pulled out another glass bottle from his nightstand. I recognized it from the apothecary's shop in town. "It's just an oil-" he started.
"I know what it is," I cut him off. I'd purchased a similar one a few weeks ago.
I kissed him again, reveling in the feeling of his scruff against my lips. It was late enough I'd already made up my mind that we'd be sleeping through Blackclaw's Hostile Scenarios class the next morning.
I kissed up the side of his jaw. He gasped when I teased the tender skin there with my teeth. I was trying not to rush and Aries was much more focused on trying to slip off the little remaining clothes we still had on. I knew somewhere in the middle of that whole conversation, there was the buried implication that there was going to be more nights like this one. That in doing this, he was trusting me.
It was going to be on me to prove that wasn't a mistake.