The Fading Dream_ Thorn of Breland - Keith Baker [65]
He frowned as she took a step back, but she wasn’t fooled. She reached down for Steel, but he wasn’t there. She was dressed as she’d been on the mission, and she hadn’t received Steel until afterward—when Lharen was dead and she was still recovering from her injuries.
“Amusing,” she said. “Very clever. I’ve dealt with changelings before, and I’m not in the mood for games now. I gave you what you asked. Now it’s time for answers.”
He was good; she had to give him that. For someone who’d never seen Lharen before, Cadrel managed his expressions perfectly. The look of concern was just as she remembered it. “There’s no time for talk,” he said. “I don’t expect to walk away from this. But I’ve beaten the odds before. Perhaps—”
Those were his final words, the last thing he’d told her before diving into the core. She wasn’t about to listen to it again. She hit him, swinging her fist forward and letting all rage flow into her arm. The strength of the dragon surged through her, and she felt bone snap beneath her fist. The false Lharen flew backward, falling into the storm of shards. The cry was choked off in an instant, and he was gone.
She was still in the hall. Still looking at the mystic core and the whirling crystals, flecks of blood scattered across the floor. She’d expected it all to fade. And yet … she was still there. What did it mean?
“How did that feel, beloved?”
The voice came from behind her, and Thorn could feel the familiar presence, a scent she’d come to know as well as his voice: Drego Sarhain.
She turned to face him. “I’m not your beloved, Drego.”
He wore the guise she’d seen at their first meeting, the black and silver doublet of a Thrane courtier. Lharen had been rough, scarred by fire and battle. Drego’s skin was perfect and unblemished, not a hair out of place. “You could be,” he said.
She shook her head. “I’m not having this conversation. You’re no more real than Lharen was.”
“Which is to say, I’m just as real as he was,” Drego replied. “And it seems to me that you’ve little else to do. We can sit here in silence if you’d prefer.”
“What do you want?” Thorn said. “And you can stop pretending, Cadrel. I know this is you.”
“Oh, it is, on some level,” Drego said. “Your friend deals with nightmares. The death of your first real lover. And you and I … well, it seems we have unresolved issues. If I’d been in his place, I might have looked for something a little darker to work with, but perhaps it was all he could do with the opening you gave him. Love. Are you afraid of my love, Thorn?”
“You don’t love me,” Thorn said. “And you’re not here now.”
“A part of me is. I’m a memory. A fear,” he said. “I love the shadow within you. I love the dragon waiting to be reborn. You’re not Sarmondelaryx. You’re not the one I gave my heart to in ages past. But you will not last. In time, she will crush your spirit and take your life from you.”
“You sure know how to win a girl over.”
Drego shrugged with that easy grin she remembered so well. “I’m just telling you what you already know. This is your nightmare, after all. The more you use her power, the stronger she becomes. And yet when you struck that shadow a moment ago, the one you thought was this Cadrel, you drew on her strength.”
“I—” She didn’t have an answer. He was right. She was getting used to the power, beginning to rely on it.
Drego smiled. “Perhaps there is too little to hold on to in your life.”
“There is plenty good in my life,” she said.
“Oh?” Drego stepped toward her. “A brother you barely speak to. Father and mother gone. A country your only love, a country you don’t even know whether to trust. What really happened in this place, beloved?”
Thorn stepped back. Part of her wanted to throw him across the room, to banish the shadow as she’d banished the shade of Lharen. And yet … the doubt was a dagger in her heart.
So many things didn’t add up. The Citadel had given her a ring, told her it sharpened her senses and let her see in the dark, but she knew those were talents she drew