Dreaming Awake Read online

  "Grand General Grayna, I have never known you to be a coward, to suggest we surrender to our enemies." The Ilahi cut in just as the Grand General opened his mouth to speak.

  Anaka glanced at the god of Yeraz, his perfect, unchanging face, marveling at his ability to keep his every emotion hidden. The council knew he was no god, but an ancient, immortal mage named Sebastian Elspeth, a relic from times when such magic was possible. They kept this secret to themselves, as control of the people depended greatly on their belief they were led by the divine, and when not in private, called him only by his title Ilahi, which meant god in an ancient language long forgotten.

  He had black hair and eyes, dark as a starless midnight, skin pale as ice and he was inhumanly beautiful. Anaka knew that he'd used magic on himself to change his looks when he was young, before he'd traded his abilities for immortality. Beauty is power, he'd told her. People follow it, believe in it, would die for it. She knew more about him than anyone else, which only made the council resent her more.

  "We still have the school here in Yeraz, which houses nearly 500 sorcerers–" he said.

  "Students!" Grayna yelped. "You dare to suggest that we send untrained children into the battlefield? And let us not forget, Dalga's forces hold Tibre as a bargaining chip. They require neither the land nor the farms and if we try to break down the gates and fail their king may very well put our main source of food to the torch."

  "Of course we would only send those who are of age," The Ilahi countered, raising his voice over the protests of the other councilmen. "We will not fail. Those farm lands are as good to us burned to the ground as they are in Dalga's possession. We must take them back!" The Ilahi yelled over the increasing protests. "And show no mercy."

  "Silence!" The Grand General shouted over the din. "We will put it to a vote. All in favor of using of age students from the school to clear a way to Tibre?" Feet shuffling, hands folding, wiping robes and foreheads. Yeraz's god cast his vote and after a silent battle of wills, so did Sundry and Umber.

  "Against?" Grayna prompted, immediately followed by assent from the remaining ten men. Anaka looked on, unable to vote with her honorary seat. The Ilahi would be furious. She could scarcely believe the council would dare to vote against him – they never had until now. Grayna was gaining more influence than she'd thought possible.

  "So the matter is settled. Now, as for the terms of the peace treaty, King Eide is willing to relinquish Tibre, and in exchange we will withdraw the bulk of our armies that currently surround Kinjia–"

  "Enough talk of this treaty!" The Ilahi cut in.

  "It is not cowardice to recognize the situation we currently face is insurmountable by an open show of force!" Grayna yelled over him. "We sign the treaty now, and then go after Dalga once we are in a better position."

  "We will have no need of the treaty once the queen crushes Dalga with the Sphere's powers," The Ilahi argued.

  "When?" Grayna countered. "If. If we're lucky. For reasons unknown to this council, the queen would rather watch her people die than step in and finish the job herself. Another reason we waste our time and resources with this entire endeavor."

  "Leave the queen to me," he said ominously. "And Grayna, if you move those troops an inch you will have more than ten-thousand dead men to worry about." The Ilahi rose from his seat and headed toward the door.

  "Leave this room and lose your vote, Sebastian," Grayna warned, slipping in the Ilahi's given name as a subtle reminder that he was no god and could be opposed.

  "There isn't going to be any vote, Earl," he said quietly. "Yeraz remains at war." He walked out, the door clicking closed behind him. An oppressive silence descended with his exit, Anaka fidgeting in her chair. In her mind, there had never been a doubt who really ran the empire of Yeraz, and it wasn't the council or the queen.

  The meeting concluded shortly after The Ilahi's outburst, the councilmen nervous and twitchy. Anaka made the return journey to her rooms before midday, crossing no one in the vast palace halls. She unlocked the door to a crackling fire that she hadn't lit and two cups of gras, hot and ready on the table.

  "Well that didn't go very well, did it?" Anaka said to The Ilahi, to Stellan, his real name, though she only dared use it when they were alone. A true name has limitless power. By trusting you with mine I am placing my life in your hands, he had told her, though she doubted any ancient magi capable of invoking such power had lived in the last two-thousand-years. She sat next to him on the blue sofa and took the cup, sipping the warm, liquor infused tea that was traditional in the north.

  "No," he said, his face an emotionless mask, though she could still read him.

  "Don't do anything rash," she said. "How do you think you're going to get the sorcerers out of Yeraz and all the way to Tibre, without Grayna noticing?"

  "I'll find a way."

  "And if you fail? If we lose those students, there will be no more magic in the empire."

  The school recruited students from all fifty-two of Yeraz's provinces, gathering them for study in the capitol. Magic was bleeding out of the world, and had almost gone completely. Stellan would be foolish to risk them, though for a man who'd lived over three thousand years, he often did foolish things – like trusting her, for one. And he did trust her, more than anyone. Risk everything or live not at all was what he always said to her.

  "I won't fail, and once we regain Tibre we will rip Dalga from Alaric Eide's hands. We will own the world." Anaka said nothing, only sipped her gras and stared into the flames. A long silence spread between them before she filled it.

  "And if we lose the students, will you then consider the treaty?" A flash of rage in his dark eyes, quick as lightning and then gone again, leaving her wondering if she'd imagined it.

  "Yeraz is better than that. We will not bow to another empire. I told you, this world is ours."

  "Who is we? You? Elixa?" she pressed, Stellan replying with a snicker.

  "Right, the queen is just your tool; the knife you use to make the world bleed," she added. "How far will you go? Will you keep pushing until you only rule over ashes and death?"

  "Yeraz will not back down from a war," he said coolly, setting down his cup and regarding her with his cold, black eyes. Most considered the queen's closest advisor, her beautiful, immortal father to be emotionless, frozen, like a machine. But Anaka knew that wasn't true. She'd seen them before; flickers of despair, fury, passion – the flashing, transitory flames of his truths. His fears. His weaknesses.

  "Even if it costs us everything? Destroying the world isn't worth the price of owning it. How many people have to die before you realize that?" She didn't really care how many died, which cities fell, which villages burned. She needed Dalga, whole and intact, a place to run and hide. She needed to be certain that Stellan would never be tempted into signing a treaty.

  "Oh, Annie," he said, the ghost of a smile playing at his lips. "Feeling sorry for the peasants now, are we? Don't you dare pretend you're any better than I am. I've seen you. You're just as wicked, just as cruel," he whispered, leaning close to her, his breath hot on her neck. He always ended their arguments this way – distracting her until she forgot them.

  His subtle scent filled her, like rain and lightning. Her heart hammered. Go away; go away, she begged silently. Stop doing this to me, I can't take it anymore. She longed for days past, when she could love him without guilt, without her secret betrayals stacking up between them like blockades.

  "I know I am," she breathed, flushing with both shame and desire. She wanted him, but she needed to be strong enough to break him. And she would be, and she didn't want to be. He was right about her, she was wicked – just as much for the things she had done as the things she planned to do.

  His lips pressed against hers and they were warm and soft and filled her with fire. He pressed against her and she wrapped her arms around him, digging her nails into the soft skin of his neck. The whole world fell away until all that remained was the outline of his body agai
nst hers, his fingers twining through her long hair and their mouths moving together like crashing waves.

  Chapter 2

  I

  The windswept voices chased her through nightmares, clinging to her like vengeful ghosts, icy fingers probing into her consciousness until she was devoured by cold. Blinking frost-laced lashes, the sharp air slicing through her silk skin, Elixa peered at the shadowy ruins of a dead kingdom that loomed before her in slovenly lumps like slumbering giants. Bone dust was brushed over the ground like cake icing, silvery skulls glinting in the light of dying stars. Perhaps she dreamt of this place as an omen; a frozen kingdom of nightmares the only thing the Queen of Dreams deserved. A tower jutted up from the cragged rocks, the tallest ruin left standing in that desolate valley of the dead. Crafted of black rock, uneven and brutal, sharp as a knife, it pointed accusingly to the sky like a demon's horn.

  In her mind, she resurrected the world, its fortresses, its defenders, rising from the gray dust of eternal defeat and into life once more. There were faded outlines of streets and houses, of temples once glorious and towers once strong. Yet even in life this place had been desolate, bleak, aching; a truth she knew without knowing, buried deep within. The Sphere had sent her to this place countless times, and each was worse than the last, as if the weight of this forsaken kingdom was slowly crushing her will to wake.

  When her eyes finally opened to the cream colored wallpaper of her tower room, silent tears were pooled in the corners of her eyes and a weight like a thousand pressing hands bore down on her chest, as if the shades of that old world had followed her to Yeraz, punishing her for not saving them. Elixa rose from her bed and had her servant girl draw a hot bath before dressing, rinsing the feeling of that place of dead dreams of lost men from her milky skin.

  Her cherry wood desk was smooth to the touch. She slid the reports across its surface, examining each complaint, request, and petition from her citizens. There were many, and many more for food. Soon her father would update her on the council meeting; perhaps peace with Dalga could be agreed upon. He was bent on war with that southern kingdom, but if they could not regain Tibre she would rule over only ashes and dead men, like the kingdom of her nightmares. Surely he would see the same. A salty burst of cool wind whipped into the room, spiraling the queen's reports into a tornado before scattering them to the four corners of her study.

  Cursing, Elixa strode to the offending window, slamming it shut before any more damage could be done to her already overflowing workload. With the storm raging outside, she was certain the window had been closed, but in a palace as old as hers things were bound to fall apart. The reflection of a pale face materialized suddenly beside her own. Elixa gasped and spun around, half expecting to meet a ghost, but it was only her father.

  "You startled me," she snapped at him, moving past him to the desk, gathering her reports from the floor as she went. "Tell me about the council meeting," she commanded, resuming her seat at her now orderly desk. He paced in front of her, something like annoyance swirling in his black eyes.

  "Where do you go at night?" he asked, his voice a frozen tundra; cold, still and calm, like always. He forever reminded her of a knife, even when she'd been a child. Sharp, perfect, deadly, inanimate.

  "Wherever the Sphere takes me," she replied. The dream world, her hollow kingdom of ghosts and dying stars was a place she'd never shared with him. He knew too much already and some secrets were better left unspoken. Also, the queen didn't know what that place meant for her and didn't want to find out any sooner than she had to.

  "But not to Dalga," he pressed.

  "No, not to Dalga. Never there. I have tried, you know I have. I think of nothing but Dalga, but the Sphere does what it wants. There's something in that land that's blocking me. We need to send the peace treaty before our people all starve."

  "There isn't going to be any peace treaty," he snapped.

  "What? Did the council reject it?" Elixa asked.

  "No, I rejected it. We can't just let this second rate kingdom do whatever they want, Elixa! We are the ones meant to rule the world, and that means all of it, including Dalga."

  "Are you insane?" Elixa shouted, rising from her chair. "Our people will die! Do you think you can just do whatever you feel like? Are you the queen or am I?" His black eyes shone with fury, yet even his anger was cold and distant, like the light of dying stars.

  "You are queen. I am god." Elixa laughed, a rough sound that betrayed her rage.

  "We both know better than that," she argued. "Just because the peasants believe you're divine doesn't make it true."

  "In the face of belief, truth is irrelevant. I am immortal, and that's all that matters."

  "Immortal and powerless," she reminded him. "If you had your own magic, you wouldn't need me."

  "Need I remind you that your magic comes from me?" he asked, narrowing his eyes at her. She longed shake that coldness from him, to force it out until the only feelings remaining her good ones, though she knew that was foolish. The great Ilahi had no love for her or anyone else.

  "Do you even care about me at all?" she asked, despising the whimper in her voice. If he cared he would let her run the empire; he wouldn't allow her to be the queen that starved her nations.

  "Of course I do."

  She stood as close to him as she dared, his icy aura enveloping her like a tomb and stared right into his abyssal eyes, which sometimes flickered with emotion in the rarest of moments. "Tell me you love me."

  "I love you, Elixa. I always have."

  Liar.

  The word came almost as much from the outside as her own thoughts, a truth whispered in the wind that chased her through dreams under moonlit midnights. Her eyes brimmed with tears. The window slammed open again, whirling her papers through the frigid air. In the storm of parchment she slipped past him and up the staircase to her rooms, the only place to hide in her prison of a tower.

  If her own father could not love her, who would? Locked in her tower, the all-powerful Queen of Dreams, nothing more than a sliver of glass, already shattered. An idea, a weapon, an idol, the Queen. But not a person, a mind, a body, a woman. Never that. Elixa chained her bedroom door, burying herself in a heap of fluffy blankets, giving in to the agony of her lonely heart. The previous winter, in the worst fight they'd ever had she'd begged her father to find her a husband, not caring if it was arranged, or if the man had six toes and one eye. She would do anything, anything, anything not to feel so alone.

  You are the ruler of the largest empire in the world. I will not sell you off like a horse. The Queens of Yeraz do not marry. They rule with their magic as their sole partner.

  Broken hearted, she'd hid in her room for three days, refusing any service. After her mother died, shortly after she'd become queen, she was left with only her father. Grand General Grayna met with her frequently, and then there was Anaka, but she had never been enough. Three years prior her Handmaiden had also taken on the role of the Black Hand, a job that kept her constantly busy, and even though her training had been at Elixa's request, she still felt the loss. The queen of the grandest empire had no one but her tyrannical father and nothing but her tower and a dream kingdom of dust.

  II

  Hours passed her, the crushing loneliness morphing slowly into thin remembrances of pain, as if her own emotions were grains of sand slipping through her fingertips; too tiny to cling to, or perhaps too vast for her to encompass even a fraction of. Her tears dried, she wandered to the window that overlooked the furious northern sea, the wind whipping mercilessly against the glass. Pressing her palm to the icy pane, Elixa gazed upon the outside world as a prisoner might from behind steel bars. What was it that held her in that gilded tower, that place where portraits of queens long dead watched her with painted eyes, where the wind howled in the voices of a hundred ghosts, where her father pushed her across the chess board of life like a pawn. She could leave, if she wanted. Just walk out the front door and never glance backward again.

&n
bsp; But she was the queen, not a pawn. This was her empire, not his and though her power may have come from him, she was the one who commanded it. The queen dressed in her finest gown; gray silk to match her eyes and a white lace corset to accentuate her flawless figure. And on top of her long, honey-brown hair was perched the Ten Pound Crown, the most ostentatious and ceremonious of them all. For this meeting she would look no less than her rightful place; as Queen of Dreams, the Empress of Yeraz.

  Fearful servants melted into shadows as their queen descended all the stairs in her tower, on a warpath to her throne room. Two queen's guards watched the outside door clad in polished ebony Stilethen armor and gripping feather-tipped staves. One of them she sent to summon Grand General Grayna. Her father would not interrupt, not after the sky had purpled with twilight and the stars were shyly peeking out from behind the haze of the setting sun. He would be with Anaka now, and though many, her father included, believed her to be ignorant of life's passage outside her tower, they were mistaken. She knew more than she ever wanted to.

  Seated on the twelve-hundred-year-old high throne of pure silver and thrice reupholstered violet velvet, which had sat in that palace since the time Yeraz had been an insignificant kingdom bordering the technological superpower of Arzu before their fall, Elixa waited for her Grand General. It seemed forever before the doors parted and Grayna stepped in, adorned in his finest decorated uniform for the occasion. He bowed low and long, and then rose to meet the gaze of her cold steel eyes with his brown ones.

  "How may I serve you, my queen?"

  "I heard my father rejected your peace treaty," she commented, noting the shadow that passed darkly over the Grand General's face, though he said nothing. "I know he likes to act as though he runs this empire, but that is not the case," she said. Through playing prisoner and pawn, she vowed in that very second never to defer to the will of the self-titled Ilahi, an ancient man and fallen mage grasping at the last remaining tendrils of power, ever again. This was her empire, and she would rule.