us, and I doubt he still has the same amber. He probably got rid of it minutes after Vi revealed who he was, just in case someone figured out how to get past whatever anti-tracking spells were on it.
I turn over yet again, breathe in a long, calming breath, and wish for sleep to come.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
I’m trapped inside my house. I try to open a doorway to get outside, to breathe fresh air, but something keeps my hand from writing the spell. Even my legs feel like they’re stuck in syrupy thickness, unable to move. The walls start sliding toward me. My chest tightens and panic sucks all the air from my lungs. I struggle to breathe as the walls come closer, closer, closer, transforming into the bars of a cage. A scream climbs up my throat but can’t seem to make its way out of my mouth. I drop to my knees and curl in on myself as the bars form a cage around me.
I’m hanging above the black water again. I remember escaping earlier after I tricked a man into opening my cage. I showed him an image of his master, the scary Unseelie prince, telling him to let me out. I ran through the other room, the round room with the papers and the table, and tricked someone else into opening the sliding stone door. But outside in the passageway, someone caught me. I was carried back in here, struggling and screaming, and thrown into my cage.
I’ll never be free. I’ll be locked in this terrifying place forever, listening to the wails of other prisoners and forgetting what it feels like to not be afraid. I hug my knees and shudder as sobs overpower me.
“Hey, it’s okay,” someone says. “Everything will be all right. They don’t want to hurt us.” I rub my eyes and see a young man in the cage next to mine. “I’m Zed,” he says. “What’s your name?”
“Calla!”
The shout isn’t mine. I look around and see a lanky man with disheveled hair standing at the edge of the water. Gaius? What is he doing here? Abruptly, I become aware that I’m dreaming. I realize this is nothing more than a mixture of memories that can’t hurt me.
“Calla!” Gaius shouts again. “Please don’t wake up yet. I’m in—”
* * *
My eyelids slide apart and my blurry gaze tries to focus on my bedroom wall. I blink and rub my eyes and find my body damp with cold sweat beneath my pajamas. Only a dream , I remind myself as the fear slowly melts away and relief takes its place. That last part seemed so real, though. I push myself up and rub my eyes again. I lift my sticky hair away from my neck and try to remember the last part of the dream, what Gaius looked like and exactly what he said. But the details that seemed so clear at first are already beginning to fade, in that way that dreams do.
I drop my head back onto my pillow, closing my eyes and telling myself that it isn’t gross to lie here in this cold, sweaty mess and that I don’t need to get up and have a bath and that the best thing to do is go back to sleep.
* * *
On Saturday afternoon I’m called into the Guild to have a ‘chat’ with Councilor Merrydale. The vague memory of my dream comes to mind, and I half expect something to hold my hand back when I try to open a doorway to the paths. Then, as I step into the darkness, I expect some kind of siren or alarm to go off. Nothing happens, though. I wonder if, somewhere inside the Guild, guards have just been alerted that a person under house arrest has left her home.
I direct my question to the guard who escorts me from the Guild entrance room up to Councilor Merrydale’s office. “Yes, an alarm goes off at one of the stations in the surveillance department if you cross the tracker spell boundary,” she tells me. “But someone will have been informed that you were told to come here, so the alarm would then be disabled. And the spell tracks your location, of course, so the person on duty can check that you’re on your way here and not running off somewhere else.”
She waits with me
I turn over yet again, breathe in a long, calming breath, and wish for sleep to come.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
I’m trapped inside my house. I try to open a doorway to get outside, to breathe fresh air, but something keeps my hand from writing the spell. Even my legs feel like they’re stuck in syrupy thickness, unable to move. The walls start sliding toward me. My chest tightens and panic sucks all the air from my lungs. I struggle to breathe as the walls come closer, closer, closer, transforming into the bars of a cage. A scream climbs up my throat but can’t seem to make its way out of my mouth. I drop to my knees and curl in on myself as the bars form a cage around me.
I’m hanging above the black water again. I remember escaping earlier after I tricked a man into opening my cage. I showed him an image of his master, the scary Unseelie prince, telling him to let me out. I ran through the other room, the round room with the papers and the table, and tricked someone else into opening the sliding stone door. But outside in the passageway, someone caught me. I was carried back in here, struggling and screaming, and thrown into my cage.
I’ll never be free. I’ll be locked in this terrifying place forever, listening to the wails of other prisoners and forgetting what it feels like to not be afraid. I hug my knees and shudder as sobs overpower me.
“Hey, it’s okay,” someone says. “Everything will be all right. They don’t want to hurt us.” I rub my eyes and see a young man in the cage next to mine. “I’m Zed,” he says. “What’s your name?”
“Calla!”
The shout isn’t mine. I look around and see a lanky man with disheveled hair standing at the edge of the water. Gaius? What is he doing here? Abruptly, I become aware that I’m dreaming. I realize this is nothing more than a mixture of memories that can’t hurt me.
“Calla!” Gaius shouts again. “Please don’t wake up yet. I’m in—”
* * *
My eyelids slide apart and my blurry gaze tries to focus on my bedroom wall. I blink and rub my eyes and find my body damp with cold sweat beneath my pajamas. Only a dream , I remind myself as the fear slowly melts away and relief takes its place. That last part seemed so real, though. I push myself up and rub my eyes again. I lift my sticky hair away from my neck and try to remember the last part of the dream, what Gaius looked like and exactly what he said. But the details that seemed so clear at first are already beginning to fade, in that way that dreams do.
I drop my head back onto my pillow, closing my eyes and telling myself that it isn’t gross to lie here in this cold, sweaty mess and that I don’t need to get up and have a bath and that the best thing to do is go back to sleep.
* * *
On Saturday afternoon I’m called into the Guild to have a ‘chat’ with Councilor Merrydale. The vague memory of my dream comes to mind, and I half expect something to hold my hand back when I try to open a doorway to the paths. Then, as I step into the darkness, I expect some kind of siren or alarm to go off. Nothing happens, though. I wonder if, somewhere inside the Guild, guards have just been alerted that a person under house arrest has left her home.
I direct my question to the guard who escorts me from the Guild entrance room up to Councilor Merrydale’s office. “Yes, an alarm goes off at one of the stations in the surveillance department if you cross the tracker spell boundary,” she tells me. “But someone will have been informed that you were told to come here, so the alarm would then be disabled. And the spell tracks your location, of course, so the person on duty can check that you’re on your way here and not running off somewhere else.”
She waits with me
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