Chapter Forty-Two WITCHING MOON

Chapter Forty-Two

WITCHING MOON

Week Three, Day Three

Year 3000

Sachi woke up screaming.

Chains bit into her wrists, wrapped around her midsection, and squeezed until she couldn't breathe. The world seethed in shades of sickly green and bruised purple, twisted and warped by magic.

In front of her, Sorin tilted her chin up with exquisite gentleness and smiled. "My Empress."

"Sachi!" Warm fingers closed around her hands, and a deep voice rumbled directly over her, shattering Sorin's face. "Sachi, you're safe."

Sachi struck out blindly and rolled away, tangling in the covers in her panic. The room exploded with the sounds of splintering wood and breaking glass, and Sachi gasped for breath, her pulse pounding in her ears.

"Shh, Sachi." Someone tore the sheets away, freeing her legs. The hands that touched her this time were cool and achingly familiar. "It's me, it's Zanya. You're home, Sachi. You're safe."

Zanya. Sachi reached for her, her gasps turning to sobs as she found the unbound length of Zanya's hair and wove her fingers through it.

"That's it." Zanya pulled her closer, stroking soothing hands down her back. "Come back to us, love. We're here."

Sachi shut her eyes tight and breathed in Zanya's scent as she slowly regained control over herself. The dream— the memory —started to fade, to slide back into the recesses of her mind, where it would remain, crouched and waiting like a hungry lion.

Finally, when her arms and legs still shook but she knew where she was, she opened her eyes. Her gaze landed on the other side of the room, where bits of her shattered vanity littered the floor. Her heart began to gallop again when she saw Ash, brushing splinters and glass from his clothes and plucking at his soaked shirt.

Her lips were numb, but she licked them and tried to speak. "I—I'm sorry."

Ash smiled gently at her. " I'm sorry," he replied, his voice muffled as he hauled the shirt over his head. "I know too much about both nightmares and newly awakened gods to have been so reckless."

Zanya pressed her lips to Sachi's temple. "You broke your first piece of furniture. I wish I could tell you it will be the last."

The words were meant as reassurance, and Sachi felt horrible for not being able to smile in return. But the reminder stung, and she slowly disengaged herself from Zanya's embrace. "I'll replace it."

Zanya opened her mouth, no doubt to promise it wasn't necessary. But Ash merely held Sachi's gaze. "If that's what you want."

Someone had bathed her, washing away the blood and dirt that had clung to her hair and skin. Only the bruises lingered, secreted away beneath a frilly white gown. Sachi tugged at the sheets, pulling them back over her legs, and was suddenly glad the nightgown had short, puffy sleeves.

She wasn't sure she wanted to see what her shoulder looked like.

The miserable silence stretched on, and she had to say something. That was what she did, who she was. Cheerful, open Sachi, who never let an awkward moment stand or a lull in the conversation to languish. Her job was to make everyone feel better, no matter the circumstances.

But nothing would come, so she sat and stared at the coverlet instead.

It was Ash who broke the silence, coming to perch on the edge of the bed but not reaching out to touch her. "If you want to talk about it, we're here. If you don't, we're still here."

It wasn't funny, but Sachi started to laugh. How could she possibly explain it to them? How could she make them understand that the Sachi they had loved was gone, swallowed not by an awakening to the Dream, but by lifetimes of torture?

She had to start small. Somewhere. Anywhere. "I don't understand what happened to me. Not all of it. There are some bits that don't even feel real ."

Zanya settled cross-legged next to her, her elbows resting on her knees, her body canted toward Sachi and all of her attention focused on her—the same way they'd sat a hundred times. "Tell us," she whispered.

This was how she and Zanya had always shared their confessions and their pain—side by side, in a rush because they wouldn't come out any other way. If they hesitated, if they stuttered, they would keep it all inside, after all.

So Sachi spoke. "It's my fault that I wound up trapped in the Empire."

Ash made a pained noise.

Zanya toyed with the ends of her hair. "You think he found you because you were searching in the Dream?"

Sachi knew he had—or, at least, that Sorin never would have been able to reach her if she hadn't been so determined. So rash. "You think I'm so noble, so good. But I didn't walk the Dreams because I'm good , and I didn't stay in the Empire because I'm brave." She couldn't look at either of them. "I did it because I was trying to be ... enough."

The bed dipped, and she felt Ash's massive warmth on her other side. But he didn't touch her, just sat next to her, the same way Zanya had. "Enough for what?"

"You're both gods." Sachi's throat tightened with tears that spilled down her cheeks. "And I wasn't even strong enough to stand next to you in battle. I was helpless, and useless— "

"Sachi—" Zanya's voice cracked. Her fingers found Sachi's knee, her touch tentative. "If I ever made you feel that way ..."

Sachi grabbed her hand, desperate for her next words not to drive Zanya away. "Of course you did, but how could you not? It was all true. I had no business being here. You couldn't even make love to me because I was so godsdamned weak ."

"No, I was the weak one," Zanya protested. "I didn't trust myself, but I should have tried harder."

"It wasn't just that," Ash rumbled from the other side. "You told me as much yourself, Zanya. We may not have chained the Dream, but we did lock her up in a castle tower."

"What else could you have done?" Sachi demanded. "One lucky arrow, and I'd be—"

The room fell away in a spinning motion, smoother and softer than the mad whirl Sachi usually experienced, but she knew what it was—a trip to the Dream.

But when the lazy spin halted, Sachi was not in the empty white expanse she'd come to know and recognize. She was in—

Paradise. It was a garden, peaceful and serene, but teeming with life. Stone archways dotted the landscape, each one covered with vines of night-blooming flowers in every shade imaginable. A violet sky unfurled above them, sprinkled with stars that twinkled like the distant, welcoming lights of home. A fountain burbled musically, water flowing over moss and stone.

Sachi turned in a slow circle. All around her, tiny spheres of pure golden light drifted up from the grass and stone to hover near her fingers.

"What is this place?" she breathed.

"The Heart of the Dream," Ash said behind her. "Have you never seen it before?"

Sachi turned to answer, but caught sight of Zanya's face, eyes wide, alight with wonderment. The tiny lights floated up to her, as well, bumping into her hands like a cat in anticipation of being scratched behind the ears.

Sachi could sense that they were deep in the Dream now, nestled beneath its breast, whereas the places she'd been before had felt thin, almost hollow. Reflected light in a puddle of rain.

Sachi had been thin and hollow, too—because of Sorin. She'd never had a chance to discover what she was, much less the most glorious depths of what she could become. She could have believed in the Dream, in herself , with all her might, and it wouldn't have mattered.

Zanya might have sensed the destruction inside her and turned away from it, but Sachi had been chained long before her birth. Any connection she'd felt to her true self had been accidental, because the Dream was simply too large to fully contain, no matter how many bonds you locked around it.

She'd known trickles of power. Hints of belief, of memory. The rest had been stolen from her. Sachi dropped to the ground, sank her fingers into the grass. No wonder it had been so easy for Sorin to drag her out of her bed.

He'd chained so much of her already.

"The Dream has never been like this for me," Sachi explained. "When I go there, it's always white, barren. At least until I find someone or something."

Ash knelt beside her, his expression haunted. "This is the first place most of us learn to come. The only place some of us can visit. I didn't realize that you ..." His voice actually broke, and his eyes darkened. "I should kill him for this alone."

Someday, when it didn't hurt as much, or when they needed to know why she still hadn't stopped waking from her nightmares with desperate screams caught in her throat, she would tell them about her vision atop the tower. They would understand the hell she'd lived alone, a hell no one else would ever know.

For now, she had another confession to make. A more difficult one, but Ash and Zanya both deserved the truth. "I liked being in the Empire. Not the place, or Sorin, or being separated from the two of you." Sachi finally looked up from her fingers, still tangled in the grass. "But it was something only I could do. And maybe ..."

They watched her expectantly, under the violet canopy of the nighttime Dream. This was no place for such ugly things as guilt and sorrow, but Sachi had to get this out , just say it and hope they understood.

"I needed it," she whispered finally. "Something that was mine, that was valuable to the High Court. A way for me to mean something to you that wasn't about smiling or being sweet or pretending to be something I'm fucking not ."

It was Zanya who nodded, her dark eyes soft. "I think I understand. They made us into weapons, and I hate them for it. But it still feels good to use that power for my own purposes."

She understood now, in what she saw as the successful aftermath of the war. But at the time, she'd been wounded to her very soul by Sachi's actions, just as Ash had been.

"I'm sorry I hurt you," Sachi told them.

Zanya reached out to touch her cheek. "I was scared for you, Sachi, that's all. I wanted to be there to protect you. And now I know what it must have been like for you, all this time, watching me go off to wars you couldn't fight."

No, that part of Sachi's life was over. She was no longer a fragile human who had to be kept out of harm's way. She would go with them now. Even if she never raised a hand in combat, she would find other ways to support them—healing, defense. She'd funnel her own power into their bodies if she had occasion to do it.

How she had dreaded being left behind. Now, she feared just one thing even more.

"I'm not her anymore." Sheer terror dimmed the lights that surrounded her. "Sachielle, your impostor princess. I don't know who I am, but I worry that I might be someone ..." Her voice failed her, and she tried again. "Someone you may not be able to love."

"That's not how love works." Ash pulled Sachi closer. "Falling in love can happen in an instant or over a lifetime, and you're always falling in love with the person you know on the day love blooms. But people change. We uncover secret facets of one another. Even Elevia and Ulric still surprise me sometimes." His fingers smoothed her hair back from her forehead. "Change is no reason not to try . Let us learn you, Sachi. Let us love whoever you want to become."

Sachi turned to Zanya, who watched them as bits of the Dream danced around her like fireflies. "Is that how you feel?"

Zanya actually laughed. "I'm standing in the Everlasting Dream. Me. " Her gaze followed the giddy dance of shimmering lights, her smile full of awe. "You love me so much that the Dream welcomed the Endless Void into its Heart. That's all I need to know."

"You protected her before," Ash added. "When you weren't even there. The Kraken's ship took us through the Heart of the Ocean, and I thought it might hurt her. But she said she felt protected. Safe."

Sachi pulled her down beside them. "Because we're not opposites, Zanya. Two forces destined for conflict. We're two halves of the same whole." She framed Zanya's face with her hands, then slid her fingers back to tangle in her hair. "I would not exist without you. I could not."

Zanya pressed her forehead to Sachi's, her voice dropping to a whisper. "I've always known I couldn't live without you. You're my light."

Sachi wanted to stay there with Ash and Zanya. It was where they belonged, after all—in her heart.

But leaving was fine, too. This wasn't an end, it was a beginning. Now was their chance to make good on every breathless, heartfelt promise they'd ever made to one another. It wouldn't be easy, especially as they faced down the mess Sorin's terrible misdeeds had left behind in the Empire.

But they would be together. And that was enough.

"Do you want to stay here?" she asked. "Or should we go home?"

Ash pulled them both into his arms and sprawled back in the soft grass in a tangle of limbs. "We are home."