Trace of Moonlight Excerpt
Ripples in the darkness.
The pit of my stomach dropped to find
myself here again, the waves pinched with a deceptive stillness. A current
stirred by my toes, the brush of something large sending chills through my
legs. I swallowed hard against a rising panic, and the cotton dryness of my mouth
flushed with salt as a whitecap slapped me in the face.
My breathing went shallow, the rise
and fall of my chest echoed in the hammering of my heart. Dimly I reached for
the training Brystion’s sister, Sonja, had started with me, trying to fi nd the
last bit of calm to gather my power around me and consciously control the
Dreaming.
Shield . . .
I imagined a white light, fitting
it to my skin and pushing out. Something scraped my calf and I bit back a
whimper, the hot warmth of my blood spilling into the stinging sea.
Don’t move . . .
Push. Push. Push.
I got a basic handle on it, finally
opening my eyes to find myself glowing, the edges of my shield a few inches
away from my body. It was enough.
I stifled a scream as the first
shark rolled past me, its tail propelling its massive form with a slow ease. No
rushing in for the kill yet.
The bells in my hair chimed
mockingly. What are you afraid of? You died. What could possibly
frighten you here?
Get over yourself.
The thought splashed over me even
as anger flooded my limbs. It was right.
Was I simply a hapless dreamer?
“No,” I whispered. “No.” I was a
KeyStone. TouchStone
to the King of the
Unseelie Court. Daughter of True Thomas. I’d worn the Key to the CrossRoads. I’d
made a deal with the devil and come back from the dead.
I was a motherfucking Dreamer.
The power exploded from me in a
heated shimmer, white flame pushing away the darkness, the thick sense of
nothingness enveloping me against the glare. For a moment I caught the slivered
edge of a dorsal fin slicing past me and then it skittered away into the void.
A momentary thrill of victory
swelled my chest as I realized I’d actually managed to thrust my nightmares into
some far distant corner. Not defeated, of course. I wasn’t sure if the darkness
that lingered in my psyche would ever truly be lifted . . . but this was a
start.
What had Sonja told me that one
time?
You limit yourself to your own
sense of physics.
The bells sounded a soft ring of
agreement and I scowled at them, the shield settling into a slightly less obnoxious
glow.
“Float,” I commanded, watching as
it became more of a sphere. I shrugged at myself. Glinda the Good Witch it
would have to be. Abruptly, the water around me receded and the bubble
propelled itself upward.
My hands stretched out as though to
lean against the curved walls, but I hesitated, unsure if it would pop should I
touch it.
Which was ridiculous since I was
standing on the thing. I let my fingers slide against the surface of the shield,
a thrum of power racing up my palms to my elbow.
A tingle pulsed in my chest. Home.
The bubble shifted direction,
leaving the cold blackness of the sea behind it. I’d traveled this way
once before, only Brystion had been the one to create and
control it. The memory of it clung to me in an unsubtle reminder of what had
happened next, the way our lives had entwined and the betrayal afterward.
And still. Where had he gone?
Beneath me, the sea faded away. The
sharks did not make another appearance, but I kept a watchful eye anyway. I had
my momentum; I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to get it again if I let my defenses
drop.
Where was the Heart of my Dreaming?
I peered into the darkness, straining to see the shadow of the old Victorian,
the iron gate around it, but in the end there was nothing but fog. I hesitated,
not wanting to press my luck too far. Sonja had told me I had the power to be a
DreamWalker during our training, and Ion had actually shown me the Dreaming
Hearts of others, but the last thing I wanted was to stumble into someone else’s
dreams.
Not like this.
On the other hand, I didn’t want to
wander around in this void for too much longer. And if I stumbled across the
CrossRoads? An uncomfortable twist roiled in my gut. Would the Queen’s geas
apply even here? This was not the time to find out. Besides, even if I could
make it to the CrossRoads from here, my body would still be in Faerie. Without
Ion or Sonja to help me back to the Dreaming, my physical body would die.
I didn’t want to do that again
either.
“A few more minutes and I’ll try to
wake up,” I told myself. Worry niggled at me. Where the hell was my Heart? I’d
always been able to find it before.
The mist began to dissipate as my
brow furrowed and I realized I was standing in the burned-out remains of a
forest. Charred and blackened bark peeled away from a crumpled willow tree, its
leaves nothing more than tattered bits.
I stared at it. I knew this tree.
This was my tree. From my garden behind my . . . house. I stood up with
a jerk, pacing away from the fallen giant. My foot scraped against concrete. I
knelt and the shield faded, taking away most of the light. I’d have been more
concerned about that, but my attention was on the bricks I’d stumbled upon. The
foundation.
My fingers traced a circle in the
soot. The house at the center of my Dreaming Heart had burned too.
What the hell had happened?
