Such a Daring Endeavor (37 page)

"W
hat’s happening?” Talon demands. He guards the foot of the two cots, his eyes plastered on Ren. Ren hasn’t stopped twitching and jerking, not since the wizard lowered that green mist into his body. Every once in a while, Ambry spasms as well.

“I don’t know,” says the wizard. Behind him, Ayso digs through a trunk frantically, as if searching for the exact object she knows will stop whatever is going on. Ren continues to convulse. Solomus leans over him and presses hands to his temples, and this time, he speaks plain Valadian so anyone listening can understand.

“This will not overtake you. Let it in, Ren Csille. Let the powder do what it needs to. It will not overtake you.”

Ren’s chest rises high; he inhales a long, balanced breath. His body slowly relaxes and then his breathing slows as well, becomes rhythmic and steady like Ambry’s.

Talon would give anything to be able to read minds at this moment. To know what Ambry is feeling. To know what Ren is
seeing.

***

Ren gasps, choking on the drug. His arms whip forward as something hooks him from behind, and then he lands hard, his face smashed against a hazy pane of glass. He reaches out for something, anything, but the glass shifts, uprighting him. Ren wanders, pounding, searching for an exit. Each way he turns, he’s trapped.

Ambry, where have you sent me?

“Ambry?” he calls out. No one answers.

He paces. He paces the room as the sun sets. He paces as the sun rises. He paces as hunger begins filling his belly, as his hair slowly grows, as scruff prickles his chin and bunches out in a beard. He paces as age settles in on his bones, whittling him down, and still there’s no door. He reaches for the changing furniture, now a chair, now an end table. He lifts it to break the glass but the chair only bounces off, knocking him back instead.

It’s no use. Wherever this is, he’s stuck here.

***

“Ambry, Ambry wake up,” Talon says, shaking her. He looks to the wizard. “Something is wrong.”

Solomus stares down at the slumbering girl. Her chest rises and falls. Lines pinch between her brows. She arches her back, gripping the blanket in her fists. This sleep is anything but restful.

Talon lifts one of her eyelids, but it closes once he releases her. “What did you give her?” he snaps at Ayso, who’s chewing her lip and flipping through a book as if looking for an answer.

“So long as he’s in her mind, she won’t wake,” says the wizard.

“Then get him out of there!” Talon cries. “Or send me in. Something has gone wrong, and it’s clear they need help.”

“It’s risky,” says Solomus. “One in her dreams is bad enough, but sending two…” The wizard trails off. “She loves you, Haraway, which could make it even riskier. She may not let you go once you’re in there. Especially if things turn pleasant to her mind.”

“What does that mean?”

“Dreams allow us to live out what we never could in reality. Who knows what she imagines between the two of you, especially considering the way she feels for you? She may never let you go. You may never want to leave. I don’t know what’s happening to Ren’s mind at this moment, being encased in the mind of another. This has never been attempted before.”

Talon stands helplessly, watching Ambry’s face cramp tighter and tighter. Once again she flexes all over, her body going rigid. Simultaneously, Ren cries out and thrashes, then he thumps back onto the cot. Blood begins seeping out the side of Ambry’s mouth.

“She’s bleeding, Solomus! There must be some way to tether me to this side, to get me out again despite what may happen,” says Talon, hovering over her. She’s so beautiful, with her thin-boned face, her soft mouth and long lashes. This can’t be the last he sees of her breathing. It can’t be.

“Let me in. You’ve got to.” Ren cries out again, making Talon flinch. “For both their sakes.”

Worry treads on the wizard’s brow, but he slowly nods. “Get Ren out,” Solomus says. “Only then will Ambry wake. But you’ve got to do it without her dream-self seeing you, or heaven forbid, touching you.”

Talon swallows, heat flushing up his throat. To see her but not touch her. He already attempted that and failed in the worst way. What are conditions like in her dreams? Will he be swept up in her fantasies, unable to help himself as well? The thought is too tempting. He clenches his teeth, forcing himself not to wonder about the possibilities.

“It won’t be a problem,” Talon says, hoping to sound convincing.

The wizard raises an eyebrow, and Ayso emerges from the book absorbing her attention. She removes her glasses. “Perhaps we should call Shasa back. Someone else should go, someone not quite so…attached.”

“It won’t. Be. A Problem.”

“The pressure is too much on her already, having him in her mind,” Ayso argues.

“But it’s clear he’s stuck—something has gone wrong,” Solomus says, overriding her. “We don’t have much other choice.”

Ayso’s eyes boggle wide, but she doesn’t argue.

“All right. Put this on,” Solomus says, pulling a ring from his finger. He mutters more of that language, and Talon feels the ring heat against his skin the moment it touches his palm. “That should bind you to me. You should be able to do magic in there. Stream a sizzle of magic into it when you have her brother in hand, and I’ll know you’re ready to be removed.”

Nothing he can’t handle. 

Ambry winces and coughs. Solomus dabs her mouth and the kerchief returns bloodied.

“Solomus,” says Talon uneasily.

“Lie down and close your eyes.”

***

Talon gasps at the color of Ambry’s mind. It’s no pleasant, sunny day, but the sky is filled with fire.

“What nightmares are causing this?” he wonders.

Soon the fires burn out, and he’s sitting on a couch in a warehouse while vendors scatter around him. He recognizes Ayso and Zeke, along with the man at the bar who sold him a drink and promised not to tell Micro he was there that night all those months ago.

Ambry’s dreaming of Black Vault?

Talon rises from the couch toward where a crowd of people huddle. Ambry’s bobbing up from the center, shoving past for all she’s worth and shouting her brother’s name over and over. The sight of her slams into him. She wears a purple tulle skirt going just to her thighs, while a jacket hugs her torso. Thigh-high socks climb her legs, followed by tall boots. Her hair is pulled up, flowing over one shoulder like stones that glisten with flecks of gold.

He’s never seen her look so beautiful.

“Ren!” she cries again.

“Ambry!” Talon shoves people, lifting them as though they’re rats instead of humans. Their bodies shrink in his hands, growing tails and becoming scratchy with fur. He drops them just as fast.

Whoa.

It wasn’t Ambry who made that comparison; it was he.

He whirls around, his senses growing clouded by the incense in the air. The wizard was right. They’re dealing with something they have no clue how powerful.

“I should never have come here,” he mutters, searching for the door. But he didn’t enter, not really—one minute he just appeared. Talon wheels around and heads back for the couch he was sitting on, taking his place once more.

He works to clear his mind, to contact Solomus somehow. He fingers the ring Solomus gave him. Inhales. Exhales. Where has Ren gone?

And then Ambry approaches, frustration on her face. “Will you get off already?” she demands, shoving him hard, her skirt flouncing. And the surprise is clear on her face when her shove works. Talon rises to his feet, quickly regaining his footing to stand right in front of her.

Vreck.

Her face alights at the sight of him as surely as a sunrise cresting at the edge of a moor. Everything about her comes to life, her eyes, the glow in her cheeks, and her smile—that perfect bud like a timid flower blossoms now to a full sideways crescent, cutting straight through him.

Warmth sears his veins. There’s so much he can never tell her. So much he could say here, in her dreams, that she’d never know the difference.

“You’re up,” Ambry says.

Talon glances around, fighting the instant and flowing awareness of her. Heat reaches to him, calling him nearer. She reaches for him, her eyes full of open, glittering anticipation.

He can imagine what it will be like, to take her, hold her to him. To caress her skin with no worries, no limits, with not even the hint of an interruption. Her lips are full and inviting, and she blinks, devoting all of her attention to him.

Can she tell how he feels? How she centers him on an axis where she is his trajectory?

All at once the people fade away, and they’re standing in the empty warehouse. Paper, discarded cups, and other fragments scatter across the concrete floor. The vendors, even the couch they were sitting on is gone. The lights still flicker dimly, and unease streams around, muddying his senses.

“We’re alone, Talon,” she says in that soft, sweet voice. “What are you afraid of?”

He had a reason for coming here. Something important… and pressing.

“Where is your brother?” Talon asks with effort. He forces his arms to his sides. He can’t lift them. He can’t give in.

Ambry gives him that smile, the one that reminds him of a bright star, that gleams direct-center in her expressive eyes. The tingling is back—a sensation that tells him everything will be okay the minute he holds her. His throat tightens, and he retreats a single step.

“Ambry, I’m serious. Tell me where Ren is.”

Talon glances away, but she’s there, in every direction. Her gaze trails down his throat, to his chest, drinking in the sight of him clear down to his hands and back up again. That crescent-bud mouth crooks up at the corner, and her left eyebrow arches just slightly and lowers again.

She tiptoes up ever so slightly, those gray eyes of hers playing with his, teasing. Light hits the flecks of gold in her hair, making it glisten. He grips her arms, holding her aloft.

“I can’t,” he says, struggling to remember. Something was going wrong, a reason he came here, something urgent. His hands fold into fists. He tries stepping back, but his feet won’t move.

“Ambry—we must wake. All of us.” The last statement dies off with a moan as her mouth finds its way to the hollow below his ear.

“You’re only saying that,” she says in a mumble, her breath caressing his cheek, “because it’s what I wanted before. But Ren is fine. He’s with Gwynn.”

She points behind her.

“It’s only us now, Talon,” Ambry whispers, rubbing the hair at the back of his neck.

A conversation floats in the back of his mind, but it’s not prominent enough to hold him back. He’s wavering the longer he’s here with her, a stone at the precipice.
It’s a dream,
he tells himself, irrationality dominating.
If it’s a dream, why not give in?

Ambry’s fingertips trail from his shoulders and down his arms to brush the skin at his wrists just below his gloves. The pools of her eyes string through his, and that push-pull urgency hazes over in place of this moment. He can’t remember what was so crucial. He doesn’t care to try any longer.

She fills his arms, full softness and delicate angles and curves, and he holds her to him as tightly as he can. Her hair cascades over his skin. He tucks his nose into the crook of her neck and inhales, taking in her scent of black currant and vanilla. She fidgets in his arms in order to more securely wrap hers around him, driving him mad.

“Ambry.” He moans her name as if trying to taste it, as if it’s the only word he ever wants to speak again. She plants small kisses along his cheek and up to his temple, and her hands lace into his hair.

“Tell me you love me,” she says.

He holds her tighter, never wanting, never able, to let go. Every word, every thought he’s had building up to this moment drizzles out in a careful confession, in a way he would never do in reality.

“I love you. I love you as that fearless girl determined to rescue her brother. I love you finding your magic and shocking sense into that group of deserters. You’re like a metaphor, being one thing while meaning something else entirely, and yet being both things all at once. You’re both to me, Ambry, the description and the reality, both, everything, all. I loved you that night you demanded I kiss you. I love all those hidden parts about you, like a box of candy where each piece is a hidden flavor and I don’t want to share.”

“Talon.” Her hands cradle the back of his head, knit into his hair. And tears glisten in her eyes. Tears bright and clear and alive, glossing over and trailing down her cheeks. Talon leans in and kisses the first one as it escapes, trailing down her cheek. And then his mouth finds hers, parts her lips and explores. The taste of that tear on his tongue amplifies, and Ambry lets out a little cry. He molds her to him, lifting her from the ground, cradling the tenderness of her jaw in his hands, tangling his fingers in her hair and clutching her smallness to his chest.

He’s so caught up in the way they both seem to float, in the realness of her despite this make-believe existence, in her heart tapping against his through the thin fabric of their clothing, the smoothness and gentleness and yet flair of her that makes him dizzy. He’ll never let her go, never lose this strength that only she can bring to him, this precious thing that trusts herself to him. She gives herself to him in a way that says she depends on him, needs him. And his mouth conveys that need a thousand times without words.

And while he knows that, he can’t help speaking them.

“It’s never enough,” he says, spreading kisses in between each vowel, “and will never be enough, because I’ll always want you more. After every smile I’ll want one more, every touch I’ll want one more, every kiss makes me want one more kiss—I’d kiss you all day if I could.”

She grins at this through the tears streaming down her cheeks. His thumbs scale up to her face now, wiping those tears. Clear tears, not blue. Just pure and simple and open, purging and redemptive and honest, like she is.

Protectiveness builds in him the longer he takes in the sight of those tears. He’s a fighter, and he would fight for her. He would protect her, no matter what.