Unwilling to Succumb (The Dragon Lorde #2)

Chapter Twenty-Three: Land err Spotted?

The velvet darkness of the sky was a canvas before my eyes and as far and untouchable as it is, the most glorious art was stroked upon it. Twisted and warped shapes that the stars made against the dark, like beautiful blinking fairy lights in every child's imagination.

One could say they appeared in the sky like fireflies, burning brighter against the black satin of the night, dancing alongside the milky speckles, painted through sky.

At the moment, it feels as if they're vibrating somehow, whispering not in the way the ears could hear, but by the tiny and indistinguishable sense of sight.

"Your dreams." A cool voice whispered, beside me, pulling my gaze from the stars above.

I sat leaning against one of the wooden masts, a large wool blanket covering my legs and beside me sitting so silently that I had almost forgotten his presence, was Lorde Kaede.

"What of them?"

"They were not created from any hallucinated conscious. They were shown to you, Emoriah." Kaede stared at me with a calculative look, almost as if he were assessing to see if I could handle his next words. "They're real."

Images shook my mind like tendrils of fire licking the carbon dioxide from the air.

Thale. His two young prodigies. A blood-stained table. The Ogon. Books shriveling grey from one long fingernail. Screams. The malicious glint of the woman's red eyes.

My jaw dropped. "Wha.... how do you know?"

"I did not see it at first, but it is there. A faint string connecting off your dream."

"A what?!"

Lorde Kaede rolled his eyes heaven upward, sighing in almost barely restrained annoyance. "A faint string, a line that holds the mass information of our identity. In other words, Miss Emoriah, our conscious."

"Yes, your talking of my own. But how does that relate to someone else?"

"It does because this string is a weak shade, a vast difference to the brightness of your own."

I shifted closer towards him, as a spray of cold salt water hit my face. "So, you are stating that there is a foreign conscious linked to my dreams? Someone I have no knowledge of even knowing?

"To a certain extent."

Now it was my turn to lift my eyes to the sky and wonder how long it would take to pull such a simple answer from this man. "What does that mean?"

Lorde Kaede stiffly laid down against the vessels flooring like a boulder tipping sideways off a cliff, swiftly and silently. "That you may, or may not, know this person in great detail."

Great bloody balls of damnation. This could be someone I know?! A friend? A superior? A bloody dragon?!

Glancing at Lorde Kaede from the corner of my eyes, I immediately forgot my troubles, as I admired his long lean legs spread out across the floor and the smooth skin at his face. Though his breathing was evened and deep, there was a certain stiffness in his posture, a tightening in his limbs almost as if he were preparing to jump away at any moment.

How interesting. I thought with a smile.

Stretching my arms high above me, I mimicked a yawn, then laid down beside him.

"What are you doing?" Lorde Kaede's voice suddenly, demanded, in an icy whisper.

Smiling mischievously to myself, I slid my hands further up his chest. "Sleeping."

"Oh, is what you call it?" Lorde Kaede hissed, halting my hands between his own, as they grew more and more curious.

"Indeed." Noticing he still held onto my hands, I smiled sweetly up at him. "Now, are you going to let me go?"