Ensnared by the Dream Lord (Dark Lords) (11 page)

Confused, Cerise stayed until Adriana had finally exhausted herself and fallen asleep, then left to discuss the matter with her husband, Daegon.

“How is she?”

Cerise shook her head.  “She will only weep.  She cannot talk for weeping.  That
horrible
man!  I offered to have him tortured by stripping the skin from his hide in little pieces, but she will have none of that either.  She made me promise that I would not do any such thing, but I cannot bear to see her so unhappy.”

Daegon studied her thoughtfully.  “Perhaps it is because she loves him?”

“Pish!  You would not think so if you had seen the way she carries on!”

“It is precisely because of the way she is ‘carrying on’ that the thought occurs to me,” Daegon said dryly.  “Drago did say that she had no interest in going with him until he had told her of the legend.  Until that moment, she seemed very determined that Morpheus would come for her and take her to his castle and she did not seem to dislike the idea, my dear.”

Cerise flopped onto a bench, sighing.  “I hate to say it, but I fear you are right.  How absolutely dreadful for poor Adriana!  What can we do?”

Daegon shrugged.  “There is nothing you or I can do, my love.  Time heals all wounds.”

For a week Cerise soothed and petted Adriana the best she could, trying to tempt her with every sort of special treat that came to mind.  Nothing helped.  It seemed that almost everything she thought to offer reminded Adriana in some way of Morpheus and she would burst into tears again.  She refused to be coaxed from her chamber, or even from her bed.

Cerise ran out of patience by the middle of the second week.  Instead of trying to coax Adriana from her room, she sent Daegon to carry her downstairs and settle her on one of the padded chairs in the main hall.  “I have a letter from father,” she announced brightly when Adriana merely sat like a stone, staring into space.

The comment pierced her self-absorption.  “Father?” she echoed, as if she had never heard the word before.

“Yes,” Cerise said firmly.  “He writes that he misses us both, but he is glad that you and I are having such a nice visit, for he had grown worried about you.”

Adriana looked conscience stricken.  “Oh—oh my!  I forgot that I had meant to send Father a letter once I got here.”

Cerise waved that away.  “I had instructed Drago to leave a note for him so that he wouldn’t worry when you disappeared.  I saw no reason to tell him you never made it until we were assured you were safe.”

Adriana’s chin wobbled.

“Don’t you
dare
start to weep again!” Cerise snapped.

Adriana sniffed.  “I am certain I have cried myself out.”

“I wish I was as certain of it!”

Adriana sent her sister a resentful glare.  “I cannot help that I am so miserable!”

“You can.  You have not tried,” Cerise said bracingly. 

“I love him so much!  It’s horrible to have no choice at all!”

“You made your choice,” Cerise said quietly, but more kindly.  “You loved him enough to give him up so that no harm would come to him.  Now you must go on with your life.”

Adriana stared at her sister, feeling anger slowly surge to the surface.  “That is easy enough for you to say!  You have Daegon, who loves you as much as you love him.”

“But I almost lost him.  I do understand how you feel, whether you believe it or not.”

Adriana lapsed into subdued silence.  She knew Cerise was right.  She had thought at first that she would die of a broken heart.  She had hoped for it, wicked as that might be, but it had not happened.  She had no choice but to pick herself up and go on, even if she didn’t particularly want to.

It was still a daily struggle.  Each morning when she woke, she expected to smell flowers and she would lie in bed with her eyes closed for a long time, hoping the perfume would tickle at her nose.  Misery would descend when she at last opened her eyes and climbed from her bed to face another day, but each day it became just a little easier.

* * * *

Resisting the urge to follow her, Morpheus’ fingers curled against the stone window embrasure as he watched Adriana call to her mare, Misty.  He had decided even before he gave her the mare that he must know if she stayed because she wanted to or only because he held her captive.  He must free her to make the choice.

As she climbed upon the mare’s back and rode away, he remained where he was, reminding himself that she had made love to him the day he had given her the mare.  He had finally broken through the barrier that she had erected between them.  She had given herself to him with the same joy that she had in the beginning, the spontaneity that had been missing since he had captured her and brought her to his castle against her will.

She needed her freedom.  She would come back. 

As the hours ticked by in an agony of waiting, Morpheus told himself over and over again that she
would
come back.  When she did not, anger began to grow inside of him.  He tamped it with an effort, thinking.  When it occurred to him that she might have been injured and that was why she had not come back, he berated himself for a fool. 

Imagining her broken and bleeding, he tore from his castle, mounted his night-mare and searched far and wide for her.  There was no sign of either Adriana or her mare, however, and finally, weary, angry, but still worried sick, he went to the castle of Daegon. There he saw the little winged mare contentedly grazing in the pasture with Daegon’s horses.

Relief suffered a quick death.  Fury washed through him.  He would take the castle apart stone by stone if he had to to find her and when he had found her she would rue the day she had broken his trust!  He would take her back to his castle in chains!  He would confine her to her chamber and use her lovely body until she was old and gray and no man would look at her and then he would cast her out!

Seething, he glared down at the peacefully sleeping castle, as if he could penetrate the walls even from so far away and watch her slumbering in her bed.  “To hell with her!” he growled finally, digging his heels into his mare’s sides and sending her racing through the night sky homeward.

It was his own castle that he took apart in his rage and pain, first destroying all the gifts that he had so carefully selected for his beauty, Adriana, and when he had ground them to dust like the unwanted, discarded nothings they were, he destroyed the chamber he had filled with beautiful things to comfort her. 

His pain and anger knew no bounds.  Instead of flagging, it seemed to feed upon itself, growing harder and stronger the more he destroyed.  When at last he had expended every ounce of his anger, he felt hollow, empty.  As weary as an ancient, bent old man, he climbed the stairs of his castle until he had reached the battlements and crossed to the wall that looked out over Hellsing wood, toward the castle of Daegon many leagues away.

She was gone, he realized finally, and she would never return.  Why, he wondered with renewed anguish, could she not have left him in peace?  He had been content before.  He had not known loneliness or need in so very long that he had grown accustomed to his solitude.  Now, because Adriana had brought light and hope and joy into his empty existence, loneliness and need ate at him like birds of carrion.

* * * *

To keep from worrying her sister, Adriana struggled to control her sorrow and keep her misery to herself.  It took so much effort to try to behave as if nothing had ever happened to destroy her world that even a faint smile was exhausting, and she spent far more time by herself than with anyone, sometimes strolling along the walkways of the castle garden, sometimes curled up in a chair in the library, reading a book.

When Cerise chided her about it, Adriana merely shrugged.  “When Father locked me into the tower, I grew accustomed to having no company but my own.  I’m sorry, but truly, I prefer to be alone.”

One dreary day when she went to the library in search of a book, she discovered a copy of the book of legends.  Tears filled her eyes at once.  Blinking to dispel them, she pushed the book back on the shelf, but even as she began to turn away she thought about what Drago had told her about the legend of Morpheus.

She stared at the book, wondering if she could read the tale without weeping hysterically, but she had to know the ending.  She had to know that, in the end, Morpheus was alright, that he was happy in his domain of dreams.

Glancing around to make certain no one had seen her, she snatched the book from the shelf and retreated quickly upstairs to her bed chamber with it.  When she had climbed onto the bed, she settled the book on her lap and merely stared at the worn cover for many moments, trying to work up her nerve.  Finally, she flipped the book open and searched for the story about Morpheus, Lord of the Night.

* * * *

Cerise was worried about her sister and at her wit’s end to think of anything at all that she could do for Adriana.  She had thought it was for the best when she had bullied Adriana to leave her room and rejoin the world, but she could not comfort herself that Adriana was greatly improved and it had been nigh a full month since she had come to them. Sometimes, Adriana would actually smile and behave almost like her old self, but mostly she moved about the castle like a ghost. 

Finally, in desperation, she sent word to Bianca, begging their eldest sister to come and help her.  To her relief, Bianca came at once.  Cerise greeted her sister at the door.  “Thank heavens!  Adriana is bound to perk up when she sees that you have come!  Let us find where she has gone off to hide.”

Arm in arm, they went first to the gardens to look for her.  Seeing no sign of the girl, Cerise shook her head.  “She has curled up in that stuffy library with a book, mark my words!”

They found, though, that the library was empty, as well.

Cerise looked around the empty room in disgust. 

“Perhaps she went riding?” Bianca suggested.

Cerise shook her head.  “She has not gone near that poor little mare since she came to us.  It reminds her of
him
and she can’t bear to look at it.  Come.  She has gone to hide in her room.  I am sure of it.”

A worried frown creased Cerise’s brow, however, when she had rapped at the wooden panel and gotten no response.  Turning the knob, she pushed the door open anyway.  To her relief, she saw that Adriana was curled up on top of her bed, reading—just as she had suspected—which explained why she hadn’t responded to the knock.  “Look who has come to see you and help me to cheer you up!” she exclaimed, dragging Bianca into the room with her.

Adriana looked up at them, but blindly.  Her face was white as death.

“Adriana!  What is it?” Bianca demanded fearfully.  “Are you ill?”

“I made it happen,” Adriana said in a voice that was little more than a whisper.  “I made it happen.”

Cerise frowned, snatching the book from her sister.  “You made what happen?”

“Look!  Read for yourself.  It says it right there in the book!  Morpheus fell in love with the mortal woman and when she left him he was inconsolable.  To escape his pain, he entered the dream world—never to roam the world of light again.”

Cerise and Bianca struggled briefly over the book and finally shared it, reading the ending of the legend of Morpheus. 

“You don’t know that it is you!” Cerise said sharply.

Tears were streaming down Adriana’s cheeks.  “The winged horse!  He gave his love a winged horse and she left him!  He
did
love me!  And he will never forgive me now!”  Dashing the tears from her face, she leapt from the bed.  “I have to go to him, before it’s too late!”

Cerise and Bianca both grabbed her.  “You can’t!”

“I have to!  Don’t you see!  I thought that I could prevent the legend from coming true by leaving.  Instead, I
made
it happen.  I have to go back, now, before it’s too late!”

Her older sisters exchanged a look, knowing that it was probably already too late. 

Bianca wrapped an arm around her little sister’s waist.  “You must see that we can not let you go like this.  You are distraught.  Stay.  We will send someone to him with a token of love from you and everything will be fine.  You’ll see.”

“I don’t want to send a token!” Adriana said angrily, stamping her foot.  “I need to see for myself that he is all right.”

“You will feel excessively silly if you dash back to him and discover that you have gotten everything wrong again,” Cerise said.

Bianca gave her a chiding look, but she saw that as unkind as the remark was it had given Adriana pause.  “A few more hours can certainly make no difference,” she added. 

“We will send Drago.  He will tell you all that you need to know.”

* * * *

Once Drago had been summoned, the sisters went down to the main hall to await his return.  He would use his magic to hasten his journey, painful that it might be to him.  Too anxious to remain still, Adriana paced back and forth across the room until Cerise at last lost patience and swore that she would wear a hole in the carpet if she did not cease.  Chastened, Adriana moved to a chair and sat, but she only perched for a few moments and then she was up and pacing again.