Empress of Dorsa (The Chronicles of Dorsa)

“The king says she is,” Rennus replied. “The king says the line of the House of Dorsa was broken centuries ago, and your paramour is as much a commoner as you. The House of Dorsa is tainted. It’s been tainted for centuries. You may see the King as a conquering enemy, but he is only working to restore the true bloodline of the House of Dorsa.”

Joslyn said nothing. Rennus favored his injured leg, just slightly.

“Where did you deposit her?” Rennus asked, and instead of the palace gardens, they stood atop a bell tower overlooking the main market square of Paratheen. “Somewhere in your hometown?”

The market square was replaced by a red-brick courtyard surrounded by an adobe wall. Captain Samwin’s manor in Paratheen’s wealthy northern end.

Joslyn’s jaw clenched.

“No,” Rennus said. “Not here. Too many unhappy memories.”

The courtyard morphed into a grassy mountainside. Smoke curled lazily from the chimney of a nearby hut, and hens clucked contentedly to themselves as they pecked the ground for seed.

Rennus studied Joslyn’s face. “Not here, either. Too obvious.”

“You don’t know me,” Joslyn said, voice low and dangerous. “You may think you do, but you don’t.”

They stood beside the window in Tasia’s bedchamber. The day outside was bright, and in the courtyard below, the white songbirds brought to the palace by Tasia’s mother flitted from tree to tree.

“Perhaps,” Rennus said coyly. “But I think you are a simple creature, Commander. A powerful dreamwalker, true, but still simple. I think you utterly lack curiosity – a shame, really, for someone with your talents. You could have explored the whole world – and the minds of the whole world – with power like yours, but instead, you care only for your sword, your lover, and maybe those young people you like to pretend to parent. In the end, it will not be my swordsmanship that you fall to, but my imagination.”

Tasia’s bedchamber began to fade – not disappearing instantly like all the other times the scene had changed, but gradually grew transparent like mist. Before Joslyn could make sense of it, blinding pain exploded in her head. She doubled over, grabbing her head and squeezing her eyes closed. The world went topsy-turvy, the floor melting out from under her.

At first, Joslyn thought Rennus had tried throwing her from a great height again, or drowning her in the ocean. But when the pain stopped and Joslyn opened her eyes again, she found herself staring at fabric. Thin, semi-translucent fabric hung in broad troughs high above her, its shape obscured by darkness.

Joslyn pushed herself halfway up. She was lying in a canopy bed – a canopy bed somehow familiar to her. Yet something told her this was not her own memory. Nor Rennus’s.

A shape shifted next to her, and Joslyn sat all the way up, lifting Ku-sai’s sword. But it was only Tasia, shifting in her sleep.

Except that it couldn’t be Tasia – could it? Tasia was still safe in the city of the small men inside a separate q’isson. Rennus hadn’t found that q’isson, not yet.

Steel rang against steel, breaking through Joslyn’s confusion. She shifted her attention away from Tasia and saw the outlines of two figures beyond the muslin mosquito netting surrounding their bed.

Linna,Joslyn realized, alarmed.

Everything came into focus. She’d been right – this dream wasn’t hers or Rennus’s. It was Linna’s. Rennus couldn’t gain the upper hand with a sword, and he couldn’t find Tasia to use as a hostage. So he’d done the next best thing – he’d stopped searching the dreams-within-dreams and brought them both into an actual dream.

Linna’s dream.

And unlike Milo, Linna wouldn’t be able to heal herself if Rennus ran her through.

Joslyn leapt from the bed, pushing open the muslin just in time to place herself between Rennus’s blade and Linna’s heart. She knocked his sword away. Rennus danced back a step before lunging again, but Joslyn had been studying him, studying the way he favored one side, and she was ready this time. She plunged her sword into Rennus’s torso so deeply that its tip protruded through his back.

Rennus’s eyes locked onto hers, mouth falling open in shock. And then he disappeared like he was just another dream fragment.

He would return to his physical body, wherever it was. Out of desperation, even though he knew better, he would try to heal himself. But there would be no healing from this. Not from a blade specifically designed to destroy what inhabited the Shadowlands.

“Ku-sai?”

Joslyn turned. “Linna. How I have missed your face,” she said in Terintan. She began to explain where they were, how they had become trapped, but then something behind her let out a blood-curdling scream.

The deathless king. His form was incomplete, nearly as translucent as the muslin mosquito netting.

Still weak,Joslyn thought with some relief, remembering the frail, ancient man she’d met in the throne room. That’s why Rennus guarded us instead of him – he has enough strength to keep us imprisoned but no more.

Yet apparently he had just enough power to manifest here.

He swung at Joslyn, and she brought Ku-sai’s sword up just in time, blocking the blow. When his half-formed hand met her blade, the air itself shimmered from the force of it, ringing like a bell. Joslyn braced herself for another attack, but instead it turned on Linna.

The girl was fast – faster than Joslyn would ever be. A deft reverse frog moved her just out of the King’s range. When he moved to close on Linna again, Joslyn rushed to place herself between him and her protege.

Her Kuna-shi.

Joslyn would no more allow him to harm Linna than she would Tasia.

“The King,” Joslyn said breathlessly. “He knows I’ve slipped his noose. I can hold him off, but only for moments. He has the power to kill you, even in a dream. Wake, Linna, wake!”