Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chapter 1

“Nothing happens unless first a dream.”

-Carl Sandburg

You could taste the anticipation on the tip of your tongue.

The Burgess mansion loomed as the taxi cab you were riding in slowed to a stop just in front of its intimidating face. The mansion, once a hub for magic-seekers of all kinds and parties of lore, was now dark and lifeless. Since Alex Burgess fell into his golden years, the flicker of life once held by the sprawling brick structure began to fade.

You were a fan of all things supernatural, unusual, unexplainable, and magical for as long as you could remember. You’d been drawn to this place since you came across the first article on Roderick Burgess and his infamous exploits involving the occult. There had been rumors, for decades, that the sorcerer had managed to trap the devil in his basement and draw from his powers.

This, you were sure, was fiction, but you couldn’t deny your curious urge to find this, and many other mysteries, out for yourself.

While conducting your regular searches online concerning the Burgesses and their historic house to see if you could uncover anything new, you came across an urgent job ad for a caregiver for Alex Burgess. He was now confined to a wheelchair, and his husband was unable to care for him around the clock as he was getting older in years himself.

You wondered why the Burgesses, with the money and fame they had, wouldn’t hire directly from some fancy English care service. Maybe the rumors about misfortune slowly shadowing the family a few decades ago when some of Roderick Burgess’s favorite items were stolen was true. Maybe they couldn’t afford anyone but a last-minute hire with limited experience that caught a redeye from America.

Your train of thought was interrupted by your driver clearing his throat.

“We’re here, miss.”

“Yes, of course. Thanks,” you said quickly, opening your door. The dark gravel crunched loudly underneath your heels.

The cab driver met you at the trunk of the bright yellow car and dropped your bag unceremoniously onto the ground. He glanced nervously at the house, as if he was afraid it would come to life and eat him. You chuckled lightly.

“I’m guessing you’re ready to get out of here, huh?” you asked, a slight smile tugging at the corner of your lips.

The nervous man scratched his mustache uneasily and removed his hat, placing it over his chest in apology. “If you don’t mind too terribly, miss.”

“You’ve heard the rumors then?”

“Everyone in England knows about this house and its goings-on, and I got no desire to see the skeletons in that closet for meself,” he explained, ducking his head and avoiding another glance at the mansion.

“I get it,” you said gently, reaching into your purse to pay the man. You added on a nice tip, thankful that after finding out your destination he still decided to give you a ride.

He nodded his head in thanks and didn’t stick around for more conversation. He simply added a quiet, “Be careful, miss,” before shutting his car door and speeding off down the long driveway.

You watched the bright yellow car disappear against the backdrop of thin, grey fog that was fading away in the morning light. The air was cool and crisp and the birds were just beginning to chirp in earnest. You checked your reflection in one of the front windows, adding a bit of lipstick and straightening your blazer, before picking up your luggage and ringing the doorbell.

A deep melody of chimes rang inside the home, echoing throughout the large house. After a few moments, you heard the clicking of locks being slid open and a cautious face appeared in a small crack between the open door and the doorframe.

“Hello,” you grinned, taking a step toward the door with a bright smile. “I’m Y/N Y/L/N. I just got in this morning.”

The old man’s eyes lit up with recognition and he opened the door all the way. He smiled a friendly, but still cautious grin.

“Paul McGuire,” the man introduced himself, outstretching a hand for you to shake. You obliged.

Paul glanced around behind you, as if checking to make sure you were alone, before motioning for you to come inside. He offered to take your bag.

The click of your heels on the hardwood floor echoed all around the enormous entryway. You couldn’t hold back the awestruck sigh that escaped your lips as you looked around, doing your best to take in every magnificent, hand-carved detail. Roderick Burgess spared no expense when commissioning skilled craftsman to hand-carve every gargoyle and intricate curve of the dark wooden panels surrounding the home. You had only ever seen pictures of the home online, but your new employer didn’t need to know that.

In fact, he had no idea that you knew anything about the Burgess mansion or its history, and you planned on keeping it that way.

“It’s beautiful,” you said after a beat, doing your best to hide your excitement. You’d dreamed about visiting this place for many years. For reasons that you weren’t sure of, it had drawn you like no other occult location in the world. There was just something about it; mysteries that you wanted to unravel yourself.

Paul looked around, obviously disenchanted with whatever may have once held wonder for him.

“It’s alright, I suppose,” he mused. He wiped a finger on the nearby stairway rail, holding it up for you to see. A thick layer of dust was almost black on his finger. “It isn’t what it once was.”

You sincerely hoped that cleaning would be in your line of duties – it would give you an excuse to snoop around.

“It just needs a bit of elbow grease,” you said lightly, shrugging. “Maybe I can help you out with that when I’m not taking care of Mr. Burgess.”

Paul nodded. “That would be lovely.” He dropped your bag at the foot of the stairs, then stood up slowly with a poorly-hid grimace. It occurred to you that he was probably older than he looked and that he shouldn’t be toting around your heavy bag.

“Don’t worry about that,” you insisted, bending to lift the bag before he could protest. “Why don’t I put this in my room, and I’ll fix us a nice pot of coffee.” You then remembered where you were. “Or tea – you’d prefer tea, right?”

Your new employer grinned at you. “I think we’ll get along just fine, Miss Y/L/N.” He pointed up the wrapping wooden staircase. “Your room is the third door on the right.”

“Great,” you smiled. “I’ll be right back.”

You lugged your heavy suitcase up the stairs but did your best to make it look like it wasn’t a difficult feat. Once you reached the top of the landing, you caught your breath and blew a stray piece of hair out of your face. You took in the new surroundings. Everything from the Turkish rugs, to the ornate furniture, to the golden accents screamed luxury. But it was all dirty and covered in a thick layer of dust and neglect.

With a hint of pity for the home’s lost glory, you slowly walked down the hallway and found your appointed door. You gently swung it open to find an equally once-beautiful, but now forgotten bedroom. The decorations were too classic to be considered dated, but it spoke to the spark that was fading from this once-bustling place.

Eager to get a tour of the mansion and not wanting to keep Mr. McGuire waiting, you quickly descended the stairs and met him not far from where you’d left him.

“I hope you find your room acceptable,” he said, motioning for you to follow him. You nodded quickly, unable to hide your nostalgic grin. Endlessly studying the same photos of the home over and over again and actually being here were two completely different things.

“It’s all that I could hope for,” you answered earnestly.

“Brilliant,” Paul replied.

He escorted you through a few rooms, explaining to you what they were and their purpose (although you already knew), and eventually led you to the kitchen. A kettle of water was already heating on the stove.

“I hope you don’t mind, we’re a bit short on coffee at the moment,” he said apologetically, motioning to the tea kettle that had just begun to whistle. “It quite slipped my mind that you would prefer something other than tea.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it at all. I love tea,” you smiled kindly, taking the kettle from its burner and pouring you both a steaming cup. “Should we make a third cup for Mr. Burgess?”

“He’s still sleeping,” Paul shook his head, taking his teacup and sitting at the small kitchen table. He glanced out the large windows wistfully, fixating on a crow that had just landed in the garden. “He… he sleeps later and later these days.”

You weren’t quite sure how to answer that, so you settled for adding a small spoonful of sugar to your cup instead. The tea was still steeping.

“Speaking of Mr. Burgess,” you began a bit awkwardly, twisting the warm teacup around between your fingers, “what can I do? I know we briefly spoke over email about my duties, but—”

“Ah, yes,” he said, seeming to come back from whatever forlorn train of thought he had begun. His demeanor became a bit more business-like. “Alex… well, as you know, he’s in a wheelchair now. It wasn’t much of a problem until recently. You see, age comes for all of us in the end, and I’m afraid my back isn’t as strong as it once was. I can still assist him in the lavatory, but I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be able to do even that.”

You nodded understandingly.

“We need assistance making meals, keeping track of when to take his medicine, a spot of cleaning… even simple companionship,” he continued, taking a sip of his tea now. You did the same. “As much as we love one another, I’m afraid Alex may be a bit tired of only seeing my face around here.”

“Your garden is beautiful,” you observed, following his gaze out the window to the lush green plants and colorful flowers. “I’m sure Mr. Burgess would like a daily stroll around outside. Getting some fresh air can sometimes be the best medicine.”

“He would like that quite a bit, I think.” Paul smiled gently at you. “I haven’t been feeling quite up to pushing him around outside as of late. We used to take daily walks in the garden when we were young.”

Paul recounted romantic tales of their youth, often taking place in the garden in secret. You had to admit, you were a bit jealous. You had never been in love like that.

After another hour or so of pleasant conversation, Paul took you on a tour of the rest of the estate, inside and out. There were a few places that you hadn’t seen photos of before, and you reveled in it. As he led you around the massive home and recounted stories to you, you couldn’t help but feel a bit guilty. Your true intentions weren’t to be here for Mr. Burgess’s care – it was to satiate your own burning curiosity. You would, however, do the best you could to make life easier for the aging couple. They seemed like nice people.

There was one door, however, that Paul McGuire didn’t open for you.

In the back corner of an ornate hallway was a large and heavy door. You’d seen pictures of this door before, and all of the online gossip and guesses as to what may lie behind it. It was the door to the basement.

You played dumb.

“Mr. McGuire, where does this door lead?” you asked nonchalantly, running your fingers along it’s patterns and rivets in wonder.

Paul’s demeanor changed instantly.

He grabbed your wrist, jerking your hand away from the door with a speed and strength that was surprising for his age. There was a shadow over his face. Conflicting emotions flitted there, eventually settling on bitterness and fear.

“That… that is one threshold that you cannot cross,” he warned quietly. The hairs on the back of your neck stood on end and a chill creeped through your veins like an army of spiders. It was his fear that frightened you.

You struggled for something to say, but as quickly as it had appeared, his frustration dissipated.

“Well, now,” he said cheerily, glancing at the watch on his wrist, “I believe it’s about time to wake up Alex. Allow me to get him ready and I’ll happily introduce the two of you.”

You were dizzy from his sudden change in attitude, watching in confusion as he passed you and walked toward the staircase. When he disappeared into the upstairs hallway to presumably wake his husband, you cautiously stepped toward the forbidden door. You traced your fingers over its patterns again and pressed your ear to the barely-there space between the door and its frame.

You could hear voices, barely – a man and a woman talking to each other. You were not able to distinguish what they were saying.

But it was what you felt that nearly knocked the breath out of you.

It was an intense humming, a vibration, that radiated from your ear to your toes. It settled in your bones and resonated in your chest as if you were standing next to an amplifier ringing out a deep bass chord. You didn’t know where it was coming from, but you did know one thing: it was power. You stepped back from the door quickly, startled, but the vibration continued to hum within you. It was going deeper, as if into your soul. It was primordial.

Frightened by the sheer intensity of the sensation, you exited the hallway immediately and weakly took a seat in the kitchen where your now-cold tea waited for you. You reached for the cup, but your hands were shaking. It clattered against its saucer.

You gulped, running a sweaty hand through your long hair. You marched toward the sink and ran the cold water to soak your trembling hands and splash the cold droplets over your forehead and along the back of your neck. In all your years studying the supernatural and visiting historically magical places, you had never felt anything akin to this.

The most primal of human instincts told you to run, but the simmering curiosity that brought you here, that initially sparked the fire of your obsession for this place, kept your feet rooted to the kitchen tile and began to calm your frantically pounding heart.

To busy your hands, you began preparing another kettle of hot water to pour Mr. Burgess some tea. You wanted to make a good impression on the son of the infamous sorcerer. After all, the better impression you made and the more trust you built with Alex Burgess and Paul McGuire, the more freedom you could take advantage of.

To find out what the hell is in that basement, you thought.

It wasn’t long before Paul announced their arrival, rolling an exhausted-looking Alex Burgess through the large kitchen doorway. Alex had not aged as gracefully as his husband, years of stress and disappointment etched in the lines of his face. Nevertheless, he did his best to give you a friendly grin.

“Alex Burgess,” he announced, outstretching his hand for you to shake. You firmly shook it. He drew it back in faux surprise, shaking it as if in pain. He chuckled. “My goodness, miss, that’s a firm handshake, that is!”

You laughed at his antics, as did Paul.

“I’m Y/N Y/L/N, it’s wonderful to meet you, sir,” you said earnestly. You longed to ask a hundred questions about his father, the home, and the widely disputed events that took place here, but you bit your tongue. “Hopefully I’ll be making your life a bit easier.”

“Well, aren’t you just a breath of sunshine?” Alex grinned. “She’ll bring some much-needed light to this old house, dontcha think, Paul?”

Paul nodded in agreement, placing a chaste kiss on his husband’s cheek and walking to the stove to begin preparing more tea. He nodded to you appreciatively for starting the boiling water.

Most of the day went by in a hurry as you were deeply embedded in conversation with Paul and Alex. You really did like them. You carefully avoided discussion of anything related to the basement, gleaning over your awkward interaction with Paul when you recounted your mansion tour for Mr. Burgess. They asked about you and your life, and you told them what you could while skipping anything having to do with your fascination for magic and the unexplained. Which, admittedly, was quite a lot.

After a quick meal that you prepared within twenty minutes, Alex and Paul graciously complimented your culinary skills and the room fell into a comfortable silence. After a bit, Alex told his husband that he was tired and ready to retire for the night. You joked about your jetlag and mentioned that you would be going to bed soon as well. You discussed details for the following day with Paul, then bid them goodnight as they exited the kitchen.

You held your breath, ears perked for the faint sound of the couple’s bedroom door closing.

And there it was.

Your eyes shot toward the hallway that housed the humming portal to your deepest curiosities. You wanted to go back, to feel that power again radiating through your being. Your fear had turned into fascination, as it always did.

But it was still early in the evening, and Paul and Alex had just gone up to bed. You couldn’t be too eager, it was only your first night. You needed to play it safe.

You’d heard a man and woman speaking through the door earlier in the day. They had to come out eventually right? And when they did, you’d be there.

You slowly walked past the hallway that was trying to draw you like a magnet and continued into the library instead. Paul had told you that you were welcome to read any of the books on the shelves, although he mentioned that many of them had belonged to Alex’s father and that he was “a bit of a nutter”. You’d pretended to be disinterested but the childlike excitement inside of you had been longing to claw to the surface.

You barely contained your giggle as you rushed to the shelves, fingering through dusty first editions of now-popular occult study books and examinations of all things unusual. Your imagination was running wild. How many of these books did Roderick Burgess actively use himself?

Were any of them used to summon whatever powerful creature was hidden in the basement?

You told yourself that it couldn’t be the devil, as many online video bloggers and supernatural gossip sites liked to suggest. You weren’t even sure if you believed in the devil… but you did believe in evil. Whatever it was that you’d felt at that basement door, it didn’t feel evil to you. Or at least, you didn’t think so. Would you even know if it were?

A heavy desk with papers strewn all over the surface caught your eye. How many nights did the infamous sorcerer himself sit at this desk, pondering his next spell? You ran a curious finger over the desktop, carefully moving around the forgotten papers and miscellaneous pieces of trash.

A large black mark caught your eye.

It was scorched.

You sighed, running your hand over the old ashen surface. The burn was old. What happened here? An incantation gone awry?

You walked a circle around the desk, taking in every detail. Your fingers brushed the cold metal of the drawer handles. You wanted so badly to open the drawers, to peer inside Roderick Burgess’s personal notes that may lay there. He may have been a bit dark for your tastes, but he had possessed so much knowledge about things known by so very few.

Slowly and carefully, as quietly as you could, you pulled open the top middle drawer.

Old pieces of notepads and parchment were disorganized inside. They held nothing of significance for you, even if some did contain some odd sigils and languages that were lost to time. You had no clue how to decipher them. You put the paper back exactly where you found it, anxious to hide any evidence of your nosiness.

The second drawer was on the righthand side of the desk, already slightly opened. Maybe that meant it contained something of importance? You were disappointed again. This drawer simply contained overdue notices for credit cards and years’ worth of bills. Your assumption that misfortune had struck the Burgess finances turned out to be accurate.

There was a third and final drawer. You pulled it open gingerly, as if it would break if you were too enthusiastic, hoping that something worth reading—anything, really—would be waiting there. A long piece of parchment that was obviously very old was rolled into the bottom and the back of the drawer. You were almost afraid to touch it, scared that it would fall apart in your hands, but your insatiable curiosity got the better of you.

Much of the scroll was faded beyond recognition and at least a third of it was burned away (perhaps from the same fire that burned the desk?) You were, however, able to make out a few things. In tight, neat cursive script, read the word Dream. Some crude sigils were sketched around the word, then a carefully crafted drawing of… a ball? Or was it a special kind of amulet or circle? What did it mean?

Finally, at the bottom, right beside the singed black edge of the soft paper, was a delicately sketched face—well, half of a face. The other half had burned away.

It was a man’s face with thick and wild hair like raven’s feathers and a searing eye, shrouded beneath a dark brow. His sharp jaw was clenched, like he was daring the observer to do something. The artist was talented, and even through these faded pencil strokes the sheer intensity of the man’s eye burned through you like the fire had burned the scroll.

Something inside of you told you that this mattered, even though you couldn’t articulate why. You gently touched the cheek of the sketched man.

“C’mon, Hattie, our shift’s up.”

You startled, hastily rolling the scroll back up and throwing it in the back of the drawer. In your panic, you shut the drawer more loudly than you probably should have. You held your breath and winced. Did the possessor of the voice hear you snooping?

It was quiet, but to your relief, no one came around the corner to see what you were up to.

“Where’s Edwin?” you heard a woman ask exasperatedly. “It’s his shift tonight, innit?”

“I dunno,” the man replied, obviously irritated.

On tiptoes, you crept to the library doorway and peered into the hall. You could see the long shadows of two people in the adjacent hallway stretched across the wooden floor. The woman’s shadow threw its hands into the air.

“Well, I’m not in the mood to wait on ‘im,” she seethed. “He was late last week, and twice the week before. We’re not gettin’ paid overtime.”

“Cheap bastards,” the man muttered. “But you know we ain’t supposed to leave it in there alone. They said its bloody bird started a fire last time a guard left ‘is post.”

The woman’s shadow tossed its head back in frustration. She groaned.

“Yeah, yeah, I know, Randy.”

A beat.

“But that was decades ago, ain’t it? What’s the chance o’ that happenin’ again?”

“I don’t even think it did it,” the man named Randy whispered conspiratorially. “I mean, you see what it does in there all day? Just sits there, starin’ a hole through ya. Why ain’t it started another fire to get out, huh? If it can even do that?”

You were at the edge of the hallway now, getting closer and closer to these two—what were they, guards? You licked your lips in sweet anticipation, straining to hear every word.

Just then, you heard the squeak of the front door opening. Heavy boots thudded across the floor and a new man’s voice spoke.

“Alright, alright, I’m here,” said the voice. “You can stop your griping.”

“I got a husband and kids to get home to, Edwin,” said Hattie. Her shadow crossed its arms. “You got to start bein’ on time.”

“I said you can stop your griping,” the guard named Edwin repeated, obviously not in the mood to be scolded. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Yeah, finally,” Randy spat, and his shadow began to disappear as he stomped toward the front door. “I got a nice brew and the wife’s homemade Sunday roast waitin’ for me. I’m poppin’ off.”

Hattie sighed and followed him out.

Then it was quiet.

Holding your breath, you peered around the corner.

Edwin’s back was to you, and you heard a faint melody of beeps. He’d opened a hidden wall panel beside the basement door, punching in a series of numbers. You tried to see what they were, but his large shoulder was covering your view. With a final beep, you heard a large bolt unlock in the door and echo. Edwin shoved a piece of gum in his mouth and sighed heavily as he opened the door.

“Take the job at the Burgess place, they said. It’ll be fun, they said,” he murmured under his breath. The door bolted shut behind him.

Despite your exhaustion from the time change, you had a lot of trouble sleeping that night. The intense eye of the half-face on the scroll was flashing in your mind, initiating a faint echo of that power deep in your chest. You played the guards’ conversations in your head over and over again. Was the scroll you found connected in some way to whatever was being held in the basement, or was it just some random person’s doodling? Whatever it was had started a fire? It must have been that fire in the library. You didn’t remember reading about any fires in the mansion. They must have wanted to keep it quiet.

After three hours of tossing and turning in your bed, you groaned in resignation and climbed out of it. You trudged into the bathroom connected to your bedroom and threw some cold water on your face. You looked at your reflection, narrowing your eyes.

“How are you gonna get the combination to that door?” you asked yourself. Unsurprisingly, your reflection didn’t answer.

You pulled on a pair of soft shorts over your underwear and threw on a comfortable crop top. The upstairs hallway was dark as you ventured into it. You paused for a moment to allow your eyes to adjust. Once the shape of the stairs began to emerge in the darkness, you carefully tiptoed down them. The mansion felt quite different in the dark, much more sinister. You didn’t like it.

Your sock-clad feet (better for sneaking, you noted) noiselessly carried you where you longed to go. The door was even more daunting at this time of night, upright and unwavering like a black hole waiting to suck you in. With a lick of your lips and an excited inhale, you pressed yourself to the door. You used your entire body this time, splaying your hands out at the sides of your head.

It was back, that bone-shaking tremor of something unmistakably unearthly. It felt even stronger this time, making your nails scrape the ornate door and your eyes drift shut. It reverberated through every cell in your body.

You felt… you felt… actually, you didn’t know what you felt. All you knew was that you had to get through that door.

You lifted the weight of your body off the doorway, body still singing, buzzing, as your hand gently traced the wall in search of the hidden key panel. You traced your index finger underneath the dark wooden grooves that were carved midway into the wall. You went back and forth, gentle fingers probing, but found nothing. You then used both hands to gingerly push on each wall panel, hoping that something may pop out. Still, nothing happened.

You stood back from the wall, hands on hips and eyes searching in the low light. You didn’t want to attract any unwanted attention with the light of a flashlight, so you only had the glow of the moon to go by.

“Come on, where is it?” you asked yourself in the darkness.

Your eyes quickly followed the shape of a faded gothic scene that had been carved into the wood almost a century ago. A gargoyle was swooping down on a crowd of frightened people, all of them crying and screaming. Your brows furrowed. Weren’t gargoyles supposed to protect people from evil?

The disturbing carving glowed in the moonlight, and that’s when you noticed it.

The carving was old and the stained wood was faded by years of sunlight. But there was a man, standing bravely in the middle of the scene, holding some sort of amulet toward the heavens. The amulet in his hand wasn’t faded at all, the stain was too fresh. It stood out, darker in the midst of the faded wood tinted blue by moonlight.

You stepped toward the wall again, fingertips tracing the amulet. Cautiously, and oh so slowly, you pressed down on it.

Click.

The sound was so faint that you almost missed it. To your immense glee, a small square panel had popped open beside the basement door. If you hadn’t known it was there by spying early that night, you never would’ve found it.

You greedily pulled the panel open the rest of the way to find a simple keypad glowing green in the dark. You didn’t know the combination, and you certainly wouldn’t find out by guessing and setting off alarms on your first night at the mansion.

With a bit of irritation at the obstacle, you shut the panel back in place. You were optimistic, though. In only your first night, you’d already figured out step one. You were good at things like this, at unraveling hidden things that you wanted to know.

As long you did a good job taking care of Mr. Burgess and keeping Paul happy, you had nothing but time.

Chapter Text

Chapter 2

“Dare to dream, then decide to do.”

-Annette White

With every passing night, you itched to type in the magic code that would open the forbidden doorway to you.

Days went by slowly. You were doing tasks that held no interest for you—not that you didn’t enjoy the companionship of Paul and Alex, but your heart didn’t lie in elder care. Guilt was eating at you more and more with each passing day. Maybe it would be better for someone more passionate about this job to be there, you thought, but then your imagination ran wild with the possibilities of what could be in that basement and your guilt was beat back until the next day.

Your favorite part of daylight hours was your daily walk and talk with Alex Burgess. As the days passed, he began to open up to you bit by bit. He had lived a very interesting life full of meeting interesting people and seeing amazing things. But you knew that he was leaving pieces out, painful things. The person that you were curious about most of all, his father, was a topic that he was always quick to gloss over. You didn’t push it, afraid your eager and well-informed questions would betray you.

But one day, Paul joined the two of you on your stroll. He kept a slow pace beside Alex’s wheelchair, holding his hand. You smiled at the simple but meaningful touch.

“When did you two fall in love?” you asked, eyes on their interlocked fingers.

Alex looked up at his husband, eyes full of stories. Paul glanced down at his partner with a tender fondness.

“Well, I don’t know about Paul, but for me it was right over there,” Alex said wistfully, pointing to an old gazebo with a covered bench. You’d read a book or two in that seat during the past week.

“Aw, really?” you smiled.

Paul chuckled. “Yes, I remember it like it was yesterday. It was the day your father died.”

This piqued your interest.

“That’s kind of a sad day, though, isn’t it?” you asked innocently. You squinted through the rare sunshine at Paul.

Alex chuckled dryly.

“Not sure I’d call it sad.”

“It was raining,” Paul told you, still holding onto his husband’s hand. The other was in his pocket. “I noticed him sitting there, alone. He was just… blank.”

You weren’t sure what to say, so you didn’t say anything. You glanced at the back of Alex’s balding head, and he seemed far away.

“I asked him if he was okay, what was wrong. He told me that his father had just died.” Paul squeezed Alex’s hand. “I told him that I was sorry, and I worked up all the courage I had in me to hold his hand.”

“That’s when I knew,” Alex chimed in quietly.

Paul nodded.

You took a deep breath and decided to risk it, to ask a prying question. It seemed like the right time.

“If you don’t mind me asking… how did your father pass?” you asked quietly.

Paul stopped walking, so you stopped pushing the wheelchair. Your heart was pounding, worried you’d crossed a line. But they weren’t looking at you, they were looking at each other.

Alex sighed, strained. “He died in the basement. Hit his head.”

It was evident that the conversation was over.

The three of you continued the walk in silence. You said a few passing comments about some new flowers that were beginning to bloom, but your mind was reeling at this new information.

Roderick Burgess died in that basement.

This added a whole new layer to the mystery.

You wondered if whatever was down there had killed the elder Burgess or if it had been an accident, but Alex was so vague about anything relating to his father that you couldn’t be sure either way.

After a while, Alex said that he was tired and asked Paul to take him inside. You stepped away from the wheelchair so his husband could take over. The look on Alex’s face was anything but tired, though. It was angry. He whispered furiously to Paul while they rolled back toward the house.

You were not able to catch everything that they were saying, but Alex wanted something and Paul was furiously trying to talk him out of it.

“Take me there,” you heard Alex hiss, turning his head to look at Paul in frustration.

“It isn’t a good idea,” Paul whispered, irritation of his own evident in his tone. “You know that he won’t speak to you. He never has. Your blood pressure—”

“Fuck my bloody blood pressure,” Alex spat. You’d never heard him speak in such a way. “I want to go down there, Paul. I want to see him. Now.”

Paul sighed loudly, his shoulders tense, as they walked back to the house. You kept your distance but trailed behind them, stopping to study a flower as they opened the back door and disappeared inside. As soon as they were out of sight, you power-walked to the door and opened it gingerly, sliding in.

You knew exactly where they were going.

You were hoping this was your chance, that you would finally see what the code was to open that god forsaken door. By this point you knew the best corners to hide behind to observe the guards entering and exiting the basement, but they were always standing in the way of the keypad or partially blocking your view. With Alex at a lower height in the wheelchair, you were desperately hoping that you could see the combination being entered above him..

You hid in the foyer nearby, peering out from behind an antique grandfather clock. You had to keep yourself from screaming yes! when your prayers were answered and the keypad was very much visible to you above Alex Burgess’s head.

Paul typed in the code, and you were sure you’d never paid such hard attention to anything in your entire life. By now, you knew that it was a six-digit code and you recognized the varying melody of the correct sequence—but today you would finally know the corresponding numbers.

Four.

Zero.

Seven.

Three.

Seven.

Four.

Forty, seven, three… all numbers with biblical significance, you thought.

Easy enough to remember.

The heavy bolt slid and clanged within the large door. Paul opened it. The two disappeared into the ensuing darkness.

You cautiously approached the entryway, pressing your ear to it once again. You had done this many times over the past weeks, always late at night after the shift changes. Edwin was still always running late, and you could count on him to complain to himself almost every night, which you could sometimes make out through the door. You were getting better at deciphering conversations. The continuous hum in your bones every time you neared the basement was always distracting, but you slowly gained the ability to push it aside when you needed to concentrate the most.

You closed your eyes, hoping with all of your might that you would be able to catch some of the confrontation that was no doubt happening below your feet. Alex didn’t look to be in a playing mood.

“I don’t understand!” you heard Alex cry in frustration, and you didn’t have to strain your ears to make it out at all. He was screaming. “Why won’t you speak to me?! I want to help you!”

You could make out the warm tone of Paul’s voice trying to comfort Alex, but you couldn’t tell what he was saying. Your mind was running a million miles a minute. Whatever creature resided in the belly of this house was apparently a silent one, and Alex Burgess wasn’t happy about it.

“You’re only harming yourself!” Alex yelled. “Don’t you want out?!”

You heard a hesitant voice of a woman, one you recognized to be Hattie’s. You couldn’t tell what she was saying but you caught the word “relax”.

“Don’t tell me to relax! I’ve been trapped in this damn house for the better part of a century, waiting for this—this thing to release me! Just speak! Just promise you won’t kill us and I’ll let you out!”

You hadn’t realized it, but you were biting your lip so hard that you were beginning to draw blood. You cursed under your breath and sucked on it, nails scraping against the door in anticipation. You were finally getting more answers.

Alex Burgess wanted a deal with the entity trapped in the basement and the entity wasn’t playing ball.

Why? you found yourself wondering. Who in their right mind wouldn’t just say what someone wanted to hear to get out of a situation where they were being held against their will?

You heard footsteps below and dashed to the kitchen to avoid detection. You pulled a novel that you’d been pretending to read out of its hiding place and opened it, stuffing a nearby cookie in your mouth. You leaned back against the counter casually.

After just a few moments, you heard Alex’s strained voice tell Paul, “I need a bloody nap.”

You heard the whir of the mechanical chair that would carry Alex up the stairs and heard Paul’s ascending footsteps accompany it.

“A nap sounds brilliant,” Paul sighed. He sounded spent.

You closed your book and returned it to its hiding place, popping another treat into your mouth. You couldn’t stop the satisfied smirk that was creeping onto your face.

You were finally getting into that basement.

Tonight.

You waited as you always did until the shift change, knowing that Edwin was reliably at least twenty to thirty minutes late for his shift every night. Beginning the week before, Hattie and Randy had run out of patience and decided that come what may, the consequences of leaving the creature unguarded for less than an hour was worth getting home to their families.

Now that you knew the code for the keypad, that time window between the guard shifts was your lifeline. You prayed to God that tonight wouldn’t be the night Edwin would decide to get to work earlier than expected, resulting in you being caught red-handed down there. If that happened, you would be fired by the next morning.

Around ten, like clockwork, Hattie and Randy opened the basement door and were putting on their coats. They didn’t even bother waiting to see if Edwin would show up in the next few minutes. After bidding their goodbyes and climbing into their cars, you watched out the window as their tail lights faded down the long driveway.

It was now or never.

With sweaty palms and a racing heart that pounded in your eardrums, you bolted to the gothic wooden carving on the wall and pressed the amulet. As expected, the disguised panel next to the basement door revealed itself. Slowly and carefully, you opened your palm to read the combination that you’d written in pen. You’d stared at the code on your hand enough times throughout the day to have it memorized, but you couldn’t afford to make a mistake.

Desperately trying to control your trembling fingers, you wiped your wet palms on the soft fabric of your sleep shorts. This had to be flawless.

Four.

You exhaled shakily.

Zero. Seven.

You could do this.

Three.

The door would open at any moment now.

Seven.

You could practically taste it.

Four.

There was silence. You felt like you couldn’t breathe.

Then, the familiar slide of the heavy deadbolt within the basement door echoed through the night air. With a disbelieving laugh, you pulled it open. It was finally happening.

That familiar tremor, that overwhelming shudder of unearthly power that radiated to your body any time you were touching that doorway, almost knocked you off of your feet. With the door now open, there was no barrier between you and this primordial being. You gasped, holding onto the barely-lit railing that lined the descending stairs. The door shut and loudly bolted behind you.

You suddenly weren’t sure if this was the best idea.

You had no idea what the hell was down here, and if that aura of power was that strong at the top of the stairs, what were you in for when you reached the bottom? Were you in danger?

Alex Burgess knew to be afraid of it. He wanted to be rid of it. He begged it to promise it would spare them.

“No,” you whispered to yourself, shutting your eyes as tightly as you could, “you did not stay up late for weeks on end just to chicken out now. Get yourself together.”

You took a deep breath through your nose and let it out through your mouth. You did this a few times to calm your thundering heart. Once the dizziness subsided, you took one step down. Then another.

You were going to be one of the few people on earth to know what was actually in the confines of this basement. Your steps sped up as you neared the bottom of the staircase, anxious now to get the answer to the mystery that you had hungered for years to solve.

A set of glass doors met you at the bottom landing. You slowly pushed them open, glancing around in every dark corner to make sure that no guards were waiting there and no monster was going to jump from the depths to devour you.

Once you ensured that you were very much alone, your eyes settled to the middle of the vast room. You recognized the giant glass orb as the mysterious circle meticulously sketched on the scroll of parchment you found. Now you knew what it was.

Your feet were soundless as you took measured steps toward this encasing of glass. Something was inside of it. With every inch that drew you closer, that ancient power got stronger and stronger. You could even feel it buzzing in your teeth.

Despite your fight or flight instincts ringing every last alarm bell in your head, you refused to listen. Your unquenchable curiosity won over—it always did.

As you neared the center of the room, you noticed a circle of symbols and sigils etched on the floor surrounding the strange glass orb. You knew enough about magic to recognize this as a summoning circle, although you’d never seen one quite like this before. It was strange and incredibly detailed.

Your eyes traveled from the summoning circle to what was trapped inside of it, and whatever it was that was imprisoned in that basement with you knew you were there.

You stopped in your tracks, mouth going dry.

It wasn’t a monster at all. It was a man.

What you originally thought was a pale, bony creature was nothing but a very naked man folded on top of himself, trying to protect his last shred of dignity. Your heart dropped into your stomach. He had noticed you, and as you began the final steps toward the glass prison, you realized that you knew this haunting face. It was the same one you thought about nearly every day since you found that scorched parchment.

His face was partially obscured by a pale and lean arm. He was glaring at you with eyes so intense and otherworldly that you instantly feared he could read your every thought. The power radiating from him almost made you feel ill, and you knew when you met those unforgiving eyes that he wasn’t really human.

You wanted to say something to him, but every word that bubbled in your throat seemed contrite. Eventually your heart stopped pounding in your eardrums long enough for you to think a coherent thought.

“Oh my god,” you breathed, eyes prickling with tears. It hit you like a ton of bricks how wrong, how inhumane this was. Roderick Burgess had deprived him of any form of comfort—no blankets or pillows, no food, not even simple clothes. You didn’t know if an entity like himself actually needed any of those things to survive, but that wasn’t the point.

This was cruelty in its purest form.

Your reaction obviously wasn’t one that he was expecting. His head raised ever so slightly, revealing the rest of his face to you. Your eyes rested on the strong jawline and full pink lips.

As intimidating as he was, he was beautiful. Unnaturally so.

That blistering power that had previously made you feel nauseous was starting to become bearable. It was reminiscent of the almost-comforting hum that you’d grown to know by leaning against that locked basement door.

“I’m so sorry,” you whispered, longing to touch the glass. Longing to break it. Your heartbreak clearly showed on your face, because the unearthly man’s stony expression flickered for just a moment. It was barely there, but you saw it. He was confused; confused by your empathy.

The sheer intensity of his gaze was unwavering, making you squirm, but you didn’t break eye contact. Something told you not to. His eyes were hard and so very off-putting, but you held their stare. He never blinked.

You took another step closer, almost at the edge of the summoning circle. His eyes darted to your feet and then back to you. Your mind, heart, and soul were all contradicting one another the longer you stood there in his presence. Your heart longed to release him, because this was wrong. Your mind argued that he’d kill you and everyone in that home. Your soul wanted something else, but you couldn’t begin to fathom what it was.

He was sitting up now, leg still strategically positioned to maintain some sense of pride. He was leaning toward you. His expression was carefully guarded and emotionless, but his ethereal eyes revealed it for just a fleeting moment: hope.

A lump had formed in your throat and was aching. You didn’t know him, didn’t know who or what he was, what he was capable of, but it didn’t matter. It pained you to see something—someone—so beautiful ensnared in a situation that was so utterly degrading.

“How long have you been here?” you asked in a watery whisper, fighting back the angry tears that were threatening to spill. You were infuriated.

He didn’t reply, but something in his face told you it had been a long time. He was weary and so very thin, but somehow the taut muscle rippling underneath his ghostly skin still held him together.

“I heard them talking down here today,” you told him, knowing now not to expect an answer. “Alex Burgess is afraid of you.”

Something in his endless stare told you, he should be.

“I’ve been trying to figure out how to get down here for over a month,” you said, feeling a sudden urge to explain yourself to this man, this being. “They hired me. To help with Mr. Burgess. But I – I had to get down here. I don’t know why, but I think… I could feel you.”

The otherworldly man cocked an eyebrow. It was the most expressive thing he’d done yet.

“Your…” you struggled to explain, motioning with your hands, “your presence, your power, I don’t know—I could feel it at the door. It’s like… like little—” you rubbed your fingers together, trying to express the buzzing “—in my chest, ya know?”

His other brow raised, and you gathered that he was at least vaguely interested in what you were saying. It just now occurred to you that maybe other people didn’t feel this sensation that you were describing, which for whatever reason felt embarrassing.

You hoped he didn’t notice the color tinting your cheeks but you seriously doubted that those eyes ever missed anything.

“I wish I knew your name,” you said to him. He rested his forehead against the glass, leaning toward you as far as his transparent prison would allow. He still hadn’t blinked.

You took another step forward, now as close as you could possibly be without disturbing the sigils surrounding the orb. Your toes were centimeters from the circle. The man didn’t make any effort to hide that he was watching your every step, every breath. Gingerly, he moved. His white palm rested against the glass, his eyes shifting from your feet to your face. He didn’t need to speak for you to hear it in volumes: Please release me.

There was nothing in the world you wanted more.

Suddenly, his head snapped up, eyes piercing the doorway behind you where you entered. You were startled, afraid that you’d been so ensnared by this being that you’d forgotten to keep an eye on your watch. He still didn’t speak, but the panic in his expression told you everything. He could hear someone coming.

“I’ll come back, okay?” you promised, the aching lump in your throat rising. You didn’t want to leave him, not yet. His other hand pressed against the glass too, his icy eyes full of anguish. “I’ll come back tomorrow night!”

It took everything you had in you to turn and run toward the exit and not look back, telling yourself repeatedly that you couldn’t help him if you were caught. You bolted up the basement stairs, opening the heavy door and closing it behind you. You could see headlights shining through the front windows and heard a car door close. The imprisoned man was right, Edwin was coming.

You hid in the kitchen, knowing that you wouldn’t make it up the stairs to your bedroom in time. You pulled a bottle of water from the fridge, opening it and chugging it as if you’d been stuck in the desert for days.

You heard the familiar squeak of the front door and Edwin’s exasperated voice talking to someone. When no one replied, you assumed he was on the phone.

“You bet your arse it’s bullshite,” he whispered heatedly. “I just sit all night, nothing to do. I can’t even leave the fucking room.” You heard the faint beeping of the security pad. “I’ll tell you what, bruv, if that job at the bank works out, I’m outta here.”

The basement door shut behind him.

Chapter Text

In Your Dreams

Chapter 3

“A heart without dreams is like a bird without feathers.”

-Suzy Kassem

You didn’t sleep for the rest of that night. You couldn’t. How could you when a being like that was trapped beneath your feet?

You still weren’t sure if you were frightened by him, or by how much you wanted to be near him.

You rolled onto your side for the millionth time, leaning up to punch your pillow again. You slammed your head back into the normally-comfortable fluff that, for whatever reason, felt hot and scratchy tonight. That ethereal man’s eyes flashed through your brain like a sight you barely caught out of a speeding car window. The sketch of the hauntingly beautiful face flitted through your mind’s eye.

A thin sheen of sweat had broken out on the back of your neck.

You climbed out of bed with a frustrated huff and took a warm shower, trying to wash the night’s events out of your head and off of your skin. By the time you shuffled out of your bathroom the light of dawn was beginning to peek through the foggy grounds. A bird began to chirp outside your bedroom windows.

You tried to doctor the dark circles forming beneath your eyes with a cool eye mask and some concealer, but they were there to stay. You hoped that your obvious exhaustion wouldn’t raise any suspicion with Alex or Paul—after all, how long could jetlag be a viable excuse?

To avoid Paul or Alex getting a good look at your tired eyes that morning, after you prepared their tea you volunteered to give the mansion a good, thorough cleaning. They seemed quite happy that you mentioned it, in fact.

“You’re a godsend, you are,” Paul whispered to you, putting both his and Alex’s teacups in the sink. “If I mistake another dust bunny for a mouse I think I may have a coronary.”

You chuckled as you opened the door to the closet adjacent to the kitchen that contained the cleaning supplies. “Just doing my job.”

While the house actually was in desperate need of another one of your cleaning sprees, you really just wanted an opportunity to go into every room and snoop—especially the library and its adjoining study. There had to be some forgotten book or neglected journal hiding in the crannies of this house that told you more about the man in that basement.

A physical therapist would be coming later in the morning to see to Mr. Burgess, and you knew that Paul was always present for those appointments. That would be the best time for you to look around in their bedroom, something you hadn’t yet had the opportunity to do.

You started in the library just in case you’d missed something in your previous excursions, but you came up emptyhanded. You organized the papers that were strewn across the burned desktop, keeping your eyes on the doorway to the study and your ears peeled for any approaching footsteps.

After giving every wooden corner a thorough rub with your dust rag, you gently pulled open the drawer that you knew housed the only thing of importance you had found. You gave the doorway another glance and pulled out the aging scroll. You spread it across the desk. As it always did, the sketch of the man’s face pulled your gaze. You gingerly stroked the drawing’s cheek with your finger, your chest tightening.

The parchment was covered in faded words, phrases, and chicken scratch that you were still unable to decipher. The crude sigils held no meaning for you. But your eyes settled on the word you first noticed when you originally found the paper.

Dream.

Did the powerful being encased in a prison of glass and magic below your feet have something to do with this word? After a moment, you returned the scroll to its home and ran upstairs to your room. You pulled out your laptop, plopped onto your bed, and waited for your home screen to come to life. When it came to the Burgess house, Google had always been your friend. It was time to see what you could find.

You pulled up the familiar search engine and typed in that fateful word.

Meaningless articles about the purpose of dreams and scientific studies on the subject were all you could find at first, so you searched for the phrase “dream man” instead. Artistic renderings of handsome men lined the top of the page, followed by dating site advertisements for finding the man of your dreams. You rolled your eyes.

You chewed your bottom lip.

Then, slowly, you typed “Roderick Burgess dream man” into your search bar.

Blogs on Roderick Burgess and Aleister Crowley appeared one by one, but you spotted a post that you weren’t familiar with. You clicked on it. The screen went black before pictures and blood red text began to emerge. The blog post was called “Roderick Burgess: Dream or Nightmare?”

The beginning of the post was filled with background information about the Burgesses and their mansion that you already knew and read a thousand times before. A few quotes followed from some of Roderick Burgess’s followers, claiming that they’d seen something unnatural in the home of their beloved leader but were unwilling to divulge more detail. The writer theorized what kinds of creatures Burgess could have trapped to cipher away their powers, including the devil. You groaned, having seen all of this before.

But then, the writer began a new thread.

            I come to you all with newly-acquired information from a former employee of Roderick Burgess’s only surviving son, Alex Burgess. This man claims to be a security guard that was hired to watch over the “entity” that resides within the dark bowels of the Burgess mansion. When I asked why he was sharing this information with me, he divulged that he’d been sacked for getting sleepy on the job.

“So you’re a disgruntled ex-employee, then?” I asked him.

“No, that’s not it,” he told me, shaking his head. “I don’t care that I was sacked. I had a new job lined up with me uncle already.”

“What, then?”

“If your boss gets mad at ya for gettin’ tired on the job, it’s ‘cause they’re pissed you ain’t doin’ your work, right?” he asked me. I nodded. “It was bein’ sleepy that was the problem. They didn’t give two shites about me doin’ anythin’ important while I was there. They didn’t know that my wife just had a little one and we weren’t gettin’ much sleep between the two of us.”

I told him that I still failed to see his point.

“It’s the SLEEPIN’,” he told me again, insistent. “Alex Burgess caught me startin’ to nod off and threw me outta there screamin’ “You can’t sleep around ‘im!””

Your eyes narrowed. No one was allowed to sleep in the being’s presence? Why? What did that mean?

You thought back to the parchment. Dream.

“Not skiving off, are you?”

You jumped. Alex Burgess had rolled into your open bedroom doorway.

“What? N-no, no,” you said quickly, your heart doing its best to rip its way out of your chest. You slammed the lid of your laptop. The old man’s eyes looked at your closed computer then back to you.

“Relax, Y/N, it’s all in jest,” Alex smiled, rolling a foot further into your room. “Didn’t mean to interrupt anything. The door was open.”

“Oh,” you faltered, forcing a laugh. “Yeah, right. Sorry. I was just… emailing my, uh, mom.”

“I’m sure you miss her.”

“I do.”

A beat.

“I never really knew my mum.”

You smiled sadly, slipping the locked computer behind you and out of Alex’s field of vision. You weren’t sure what to say.

“I’ll just, um, get back at it,” you grinned awkwardly, grabbing the dust rag and cleaning spray from your nightstand. Alex nodded and backed out of your doorway, giving you room to exit.

“Think you could make me another cuppa before you do?” he asked you.

“Of course.”

That night was colder.

The pajamas you brought didn’t cover enough skin to keep you warm, so you grabbed a knitted cover off the back of the sitting room couch to wrap around your shoulders before hiding behind the grandfather clock to wait. The guards’ shift change was approaching.

As they always did, Hattie and Randy emerged from the basement at exactly ten o’clock. While Hattie was pulling on her thick coat, Randy groaned.

“What?” she asked.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Randy hissed, shaking the cell phone that he had just pulled from his pocket. “I just got a text from Edwin. He ain’t comin’.”

“At all?!”

“No, he quits.”

“Bugger,” Hattie spat, planting her hands on her wide hips. “Well, what the hell are we supposed to do? I’m not workin’ a double that I’m not gettin’ paid for!”

“They don’t pay us enough to deal with this shite,” Randy agreed, pulling on his coat anyway. He lowered his voice. “It don’t sound like Mr. Burgess is wise. Let’s just pop off and we’ll tell him in the morning.”

“We shouldn’t tell ‘im now?” Hattie asked.

“Old codger’s asleep by now. Anyway, he’d ask us to stay. I don’t wanna give ‘im the opportunity.”

Hattie hesitated, looking at the closed basement door with disdain, then to the front door longingly. She sighed.

“What Mr. Burgess don’t know won’t hurt us, right?” she conceded hopefully. Randy chuckled and followed her to the front door.

You couldn’t believe your luck. Edwin wasn’t coming. You had nearly eight hours before the next shift.

Joy was a new spring flower blossoming in your chest. Could this be the night you helped the man escape? Every moral fiber in your body told you that it had to be done. However, the possibility of sentencing yourself and your employers to almost certain death was holding you back. You certainly weren’t ready to die.

But you knew that if it wasn’t tonight, when would it be? Alex and Paul would know by morning that they needed to hire a new night guard, and there was no guarantee that whoever they hired would run late enough to give you your valuable time window.

Then a horrible thought occurred to you. What if Mr. Burgess changed the security combination every time an employee left? It had taken you weeks to get that code, and you didn’t know when or if you would ever have an opportunity to return to the basement if that happened.

You chose not to think about that now, not yet.

The familiar hum of the mystery man in the bowel of the basement began to strum through your bones, making you sigh. In a strange way, at this distance, it was almost a soothing sensation.

You pressed the carving of the amulet on the nearby wall and the keypad appeared.

Four.

Zero.

Seven.

Three.

Seven.

Four.

As it did the night before, the intensity of the entity’s presence knocked the breath out of you as soon as you opened the basement door. You knew to expect it this time, though. A wall of freezing air hit you as you reached the bottom of the steps, soaking through your thin blanket. Winter had seeped into the ground.

Undeterred, you gently pushed open the glass doors and stepped forward with more confidence than you had the previous night. The vibrations in your chest seemed to hum in approval as your eyes settled on the unnaturally striking man that was curled inside the translucent orb. He was sitting in the middle of it now, upright, chiseled face as stoic as ever.

His gaze was hooded and pierced through yours. Your memories did not do those fathomless eyes justice.

In steps, you were centimeters from the edge of the intricate summoning circle. The pale light of the basement cast his cheekbones in sharp relief. Your nerve endings felt like they were on fire and his relentless stare was making them sear. Goosebumps erupted in a tickle over your skin, but whether it was the cold or his smoldering stare you didn’t know.

“I told you I’d come back,” you breathed, voice barely above a whisper. It hit you just how much you’d been longing to be in this exact spot all day long.

He rested his forearms on his knees, ankles tactically crossed to cover his manhood. He barely cocked his head, studying you. You again had the suspicion that he was carding through your every thought. You sincerely hoped that he didn’t have the ability to do that, or you were going to be incredibly embarrassed.

Despite the chill, you could feel your cheeks beginning to heat.

“So,” you offered lamely, clutching the thin blanket around your shoulders, “I realized that it wasn’t very fair of me to ask you for your name without telling you mine.”

His chin lifted ever so slightly, looking down at you through his thick curtain of lashes. You took that as a signal that he was listening. You licked your lips.

“I’m Y/N,” you said, offering a gentle smile.

His intrusive gaze raked from your face to your feet, and back up again. You tightened the blanket around you even more. You felt very exposed, which was ironic, considering that the only naked one here was him. The heat had spread from your nerve endings to your cheeks now. You knew he was noticing.

“I—I still don’t know your name,” you said, doing your best to gulp down your blush, “but I don’t expect you to tell me. I get the feeling you’re not much of a talker.”

At that, the corner of his full lips twitched. It was almost imperceptible but you got a rush from his brief moment of amusement nevertheless.

“I get why you don’t talk,” you continued. “You don’t owe them anything. Especially with… all of this.” You jutted your chin toward the glass orb in question. “But if all you had to do was make a promise to get out of there, I have to admit I’m a little confused as to why you won’t just do it.”

His lips pursed at that. His steely eyes were hard.

“Unless… you know that when you do get out, you’ll hurt them. You want to hurt them.”

It wasn’t a question. The flash of anger across his face confirmed it for you. He was waiting to take his revenge, but was holding onto his honor enough not to lie in order to get it. Fear trickled down your spine when he glowered like that with so much barely-contained rage, even if the fury was for Alex Burgess and not for you.

He’s dangerous, you reminded yourself. You need to remember that.

Even though your logical mind knew this, your heart ached for him nonetheless. You weren’t the one responsible for his imprisonment, but you had the power to end it. If you just stood around and did nothing that made you no better than Roderick Burgess, in your opinion. This being was not meant to be here. Whatever ancient power he possessed was meant to be out in the world, not in the dead Demon King’s basement.

“I may not know who you are, but I think I’m starting to figure it out,” you said, desperate to change the subject and get that furious gleam out of his eyes. You watched the placement of your feet as you began to pace around the golden circle of sigils. His head turned to follow you.

You stopped to watch him.

“I found this old scroll rolled up in Roderick Burgess’s study. I think it’s about you,” you told him. You licked your lips again, always feeling your mouth turn to cotton when you held eye contact with him for too long. “I couldn’t figure out much, but I could still make out one word: Dream.”

His head lifted fully now and his pale body turned to face you. You were on the right track, then.

“Is… is that what you do?” you asked measuredly, beginning to pace again. His unrelenting attention trailed you as you walked. You returned to the front of the circle. “Do you have something to do with dreams?”

His countenance was as stony as ever, like unyielding white marble, but he leaned toward you the same way he had the night before. His face was an inch from the glass. You wished so desperately that you could touch it, that you could get even closer. You wanted to caress his cheek like you had his drawing many times before.

You searched his endless eyes for answers. It seemed like he wanted to give you something but he was waging an internal battle with himself. You leaned toward him, matching his motion, but your toes stayed in place. You hoped that he could see—feel—from you that you were worthy of his trust.

For the first time since you first laid eyes on him, he blinked. There was emotion there. His forehead gently touched the glass with his imploring orbs searching yours. His lips barely twitched open, like he wanted to say something, but he didn’t. You could see every dark lash that surrounded his beautiful eyes now.

“You… you control dreams?” you asked, your voice a wisp of its former self. The sheer feeling in those eyes directed at you stoked the searing flames in your gut. That pulsating hum was so very strong now.

His eyes were shining. Pale forehead still against the glass, he nodded. Your connection to him in that moment felt inexplicably intimate.

You let out a breath that you didn’t realize you were holding. His unworldly beauty made sense now. You remember thinking that you could only dream up someone like him. It was fitting.

Your eyelids fluttered, fighting back the tears that were threatening to spill at the intense emotions that were congealing in your throat. His imprisonment was the greatest tragedy you could imagine. Dreams were such an important thing. Dreams made humanity what it was, made people strive to be better.

“How could they do this?” you whispered, a profound hate boiling in your blood for Roderick Burgess. “How could they do this to you?”

Your empathy still seemed to confuse him, but his expression had softened. It occurred to you that very few, if any, people that he saw every day for countless years ever showed him any kindness or care. Alex Burgess, Paul McGuire, the guards… they all regarded him with nothing but contempt, entitlement, or fear. You had eavesdropped on enough conversations to know that.

You doubted that this man wanted your pity, but you felt betrayed by Roderick Burgess. You were betrayed on behalf of humanity for depriving you of him, of this ethereal being—this man of dreams.

Ever since your childhood, you’d had the most vivid of dreams. You always remembered them, but more importantly, they were almost always lucid. You knew that you were dreaming while you were still in the dream, giving you the ability to change things, people, places. You were the master of your own universe.

You slept often and for long periods of time because your dreams were always so much better than your reality. If you’d had it your way, you would have stayed in bed for the rest of your life just to continue your fantastical imaginings. It sparked your curiosity for all things unexplainable. However, when you overheard your parents one day discussing sending you to a sleep specialist, you knew that you had to come back to the real world.

Your most recent dreams had been of this house, of you finding your way to it and walking through dark, candlelit hallways with hooded figures darting in and out of sight. You thought that it was just your obsession for the paranormal history of Roderick Burgess and his ancestral home swimming through your subconscious, but maybe it was something more. The sorcerer and his infamous magic wasn’t why you always felt drawn here, that was clear to you now.

It was him. Maybe you were meant to find him.

Once you made that realization, something inside of you slid together like a puzzle piece. The Burgesses had made their bed, and even though you never wanted harm to come to anyone, your purpose was clear.

“I’m getting you out,” you choked.

The emotion on the dream man’s face was unfathomable, his limitless blue eyes glistening with unshed tears. He breathed a disbelieving sob that made the aching lump in your throat clench. His pale hands pressed desperately against the glass on both sides of his head. A rogue tear slid down his sallow cheek.

You gulped down an empathetic cry that was threatening to tear through your throat and threw the blanket off of your shoulders. You ignored the intense chill that encased your under-clothed body.

“First things first, I have to break this circle,” you murmured. You positioned yourself at the very front center of the golden sigil and pressed your socked foot onto the most outward line. You looked up. The man was standing now with his forehead and hands still glued to the glass. His taut chest was heaving up and down, his tongue darting between his pink lips. His eyes were stirring with an emotion in their depths that you couldn’t name, but whatever it was pulled the fiery blush back to your cheeks.

Slowly, deliberately, you put pressure on your toes and slid your foot backward. The most outward line was broken.

You could tell instantly that the air had changed. The effervescent power that until that point had only thrummed inside your body was overtaking the entire basement. It was like a trembling bass that had been pulsing in your earphones alone was suddenly reverberating through a massive amplifier.

You didn’t stop there. You knelt and rubbed your outstretched hand over the remaining lines and sigils that you could reach.

The summoning circle was broken.

You closed the distance that you’d been longing to close and pressed your hands against the invisible barrier. The dream man dropped to his knees, head thrown back toward the ceiling and arms outstretched. It was like he was a ravenous traveler that had been stranded without water for years, and he was finally getting a drink. His chiseled chest was heaving faster now, his nostrils flaring.

Abruptly, he dropped his head and pressed his face against the glass again, right in front of yours. It was the closest you’d been to him yet and your body was singing. His ghostly palms went as far as they could, thudding against where yours rested on the other side.

You had to tell yourself to breathe.

“Can you break it?” you asked him desperately. He shook his head once, but tilted his chin toward the corner of the basement closest to the door. There was a small guard’s desk there covered in computer screens.

You bolted toward it, sweating palms searching for anything you could use to hammer against the glass. There were papers, two keyboards, and trash leftover from someone’s dinner, but nothing you saw that could be used to break a thick glass prison.

“Fuck it!” you exclaimed. You grabbed one of the wooden chairs and dragged it toward the orb unceremoniously. “You might wanna stand back.”

He didn’t listen to you.

He was unmovable with hands pasted to the barrier and eyes on fire. You lifted the chair, and with all your strength, threw it against the glass. You weren’t surprised when it didn’t break but you tried again. You hurled the chair a third time, but it didn’t even leave the faintest of cracks. You wanted to scream. You were so close!

You took a step back, your chest now heaving as well. Your eyes darted all around the glass prison, looking for a weak point, looking for anything.

“Wait,” you grinned. Your smile was alight with the promise of a new idea. You didn’t know why you hadn’t already thought of it. “I know where they keep their guns.”

For the first time, a true smile tugged at the unearthly man’s lips. You tore yourself away from the addicting sight and ran toward the glass doors. With a speed that surprised you, you were up the stairs and out of the basement door in seconds.

With light but hurried feet, you ran down the dark hallway and toward the study, heart hammering against your ribcage. You stopped underneath a hideously eerie stuffed deer head and swung open the doors of a large wooden cabinet. There, the Burgess family’s old hunting rifles sat behind glass. You didn’t have the key and you had no idea where it was, but this glass looked much thinner than whatever was incasing the being downstairs.

You prayed a quick prayer to whatever god was listening that you wouldn’t wake up the sleeping elderly couple and seized a nearby fire poker in your hands. With one strong swing, you shattered the glass. You dropped the metal tool at your feet and grasped the first rifle you could reach.

You sped toward the basement door, not even bothering to look upstairs to see if you’d woken anyone. There was no time.

Your quick feet trampled down the flight of stairs. Within seconds, you were blowing through the glass doors and toward the last barrier between you and the otherworldly man that overtook your senses.

You hoped against hope that the gun was loaded.

With a deep breath to steel your courage and a whispered prayer, you lifted the gun to your shoulder and slid off the safety. You cocked it, and with relief, you heard the click of a round sliding into the chamber.

“I won’t hurt you, will I?” you asked abruptly, dropping the barrel toward the ground.

The man showed no sign that he heard you. He was bracing against that glass, every muscle tensed, jaw clenched and eyes ablaze with something primal and barely-contained.

You raised the gun back to your shoulder, aimed, braced yourself, and pulled the trigger.

BOOM!

The moment the bullet hit the glass, the entity inside jumped with something that was akin to pleasure. His forceful eyes were dark and zoned in on you, commanding you to do it again. With a fire that licked your innermost soul, you pulled the trigger a second time.

His muscles contracted, his mouth falling open in a way that was sinful as a crack began to snake its way in front of his face. His scorching glare was black with furious expectation, imposing his will upon you once more. Again.

BOOM!

You heard it before you saw it.

The glass was shattered.

Chapter Text

Chapter 4

“A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.”

-J.R.R. Tolkien

It was like a bomb went off.

Blinding blue light, a suffocating vortex of wind, a bone-shattering tremor of ancient power that sought to pull you apart at the atoms.

You tried in vain to shield your eyes with a shaking hand, hoping to catch even the smallest glimpse of something, anything, to ground you. The basement was shaking. It felt like the floor had been ripped from beneath you, as if some primordial force of nature was drawing every ounce of oxygen from your body. The blustering, lashing gusts were making it almost impossible to breathe.

But then, whipping turned to a gentle touch.

You slowly opened your strained eyes to see glimmering white sand barely shifting in the now-tender breeze. A luminous blue sky opened above your head, dotted with fluffy white clouds and brushes of glowing pink. A gem-colored ocean lazily lapped at the soft sand and a waft of salt water tickled at your nose.

You knew this beach.

You had daydreamed many times here in your youth, using it to escape the confines of your increasingly dull reality. You lost count of how many afternoons waned away in this place with a book of unusual subject and a sleepy smile. It was exactly as you remembered, maybe even more colorful.

A seagull called overhead. But the sound was wrong, forebodingly sharp.

The bird flew over your head and carried with it a dark sky, full of swirling grey clouds. Distant thunder rolled and the landscape began to fade away. The beautiful sea vanished and was replaced with dunes of rough, unforgiving sand. The breeze, no longer a featherlight touch, was dry and strong. It told of a storm coming.

The chill of fear trickled from the top of your spine and creeped underneath your skin. It was ice freezing in your veins.

A figure was beginning to emerge from a wave of reflective heat and blinding light. Its silhouette was growing closer, its gait graceful but powerful. As it drew closer, you recognized the head of wild dark hair and the outline of bone and sinew.

You could see him clearly now – imposing, ethereal, and still gloriously naked.

Your eyes raked from his sharp collarbone and defined shoulders to his icy blue eyes. He was terrifying, but still so beautiful. Your mind was having trouble wrapping around him. He reminded you of a fallen angel, dangerous but with a rippling undercurrent of seduction.

The otherworldly man bent slowly, dark eyes never leaving yours, and stretched his long fingers through the coarse sand beneath his feet. His palm closed, grasping onto the grains with a clenched fist. He rose again to his full height, slow but purposeful, and took a step toward you. For the first time since seeing him inside of that glass prison, you were truly afraid.

His power was radiating through the air, through every modicum of sand. It was unfettered. It felt limitless and boundless in your bones. You were feeling the brunt of it, not filtered by a binding circle or glass orb, and it felt so incomprehensible that it scared you.

He stopped a few paces in front of you, eyes unblinking and fathomless. Your breathing was shallow and your chest was heaving. You were dizzy.

His head lowered so that his face would be closer to your level. His dark brows were furrowed and framed his penetrating stare in a way that made you gulp.

His full lips parted.

“You have freed me.”

His voice was amber and honey, soft but rumbling like a distant summer storm. The sound poured over you in a warm wave, leaving your skin prickling.

A very uncomfortable combination of fear and awe had congealed in your throat, capturing all of the words that you longed to say. One question finally made its way out of your mouth.

“Who are you?” you asked. Your voice was small and breathy.

He took another step closer, only a few feet away now. His shoulders squared and he drew to his full height, sharp jaw clenching with thinly-veiled pride.

“I am the King of Dreams,” he breathed, his tongue caressing every syllable like a sonnet, “the Ruler of Nightmares. I am Lord Morpheus, Dream of the Endless...”

You swallowed hard, so hard that it was painful.

You hadn’t just released any dream creature, any old manipulator of nighttime fantasies—no, you had a released a god.

“That’s…” you gulped again, your gaze struggling under the weight of his, “that’s a lot of names.”

His expression was impassive, but he saw something in yours that made him take another step closer. He could not be any closer now without touching you. Was this it? you thought. Was this the moment he killed you?

“You need not be afraid,” he said, voice gentle but flowing with quiet authority. Your heart was thundering painfully in your ears at his proximity, at the pull of his voice. It ghosted across something deep within you.

“Okay,” you whispered. The word was trembling, struggling to break through that lump in your throat.

The king’s head tipped to the side, eyes studying you in a way that made you feel like the exposed one. He was standing so close that most would consider it socially unacceptable even if he was clothed. The Lord of Dreams was so regal, and still so strikingly naked. Your face felt so hot that your cheeks were tingling with numbness.

“You showed me kindness when I had become quite convinced that humanity was incapable,” he breathed. His eyes had been wandering your every feature, like it was some kind of puzzle that he was trying to solve. He was still confused by your empathy.

You couldn’t help it, your gaze darted to his lips before settling on his incredible eyes again. He was so close that you could feel his breath ghosting across your face.

“I… I just did the right thing,” you replied. Your voice was finally starting to return, as pitiful as it sounded. “It wasn’t a hard choice to make.”

The air was filled with a thick silence. He regarded you, head still cocked, bold gaze searching your eyes for anything deceitful. After a beat, he let out a breath through his nose and straightened again to his full height.

“I am grateful,” he stated. His tone was measured, like he was being careful not to come across as emotional, but there was an undercurrent there of feeling there that you were sure you weren’t imagining.

The air was charged, the ashy clouds swirling faster. Your fingers itched to touch his alabaster skin, now so very close and unobstructed by glass. You wanted to somehow show him, through your touch, that you expected nothing in return. That you simply cared.

Morpheus moved back, as if he could sense your intentions, and dropped his stare from yours for the first time. Something in your chest deflated. It felt like you had been unplugged.

He turned away from you, heading back toward the direction from which he came. You were stunned by the intensity of just how much you wanted him to stay and you couldn’t stop the plea that burst from your throat.

“Wait!”

He stopped, back rigid and ramrod straight. He did not turn toward you.

“Where – where are you going?”

It came across much more desperate than you would have liked. How contrite your emotion must sound to a god.

“I must attend to unfinished business.”

His tone was full of vengeful promise, the clouds above your head darkening from grey to black. A very ancient human instinct squeezed your stomach, warning you of the danger in the air. You sincerely hoped that one day you would never be on the receiving end of his wrath.

He was walking away again, strut full of menacing purpose. So many questions and pleas burned in your chest: Don’t leave me, Take me with you, Will I ever see you again? But you shoved them down.

Instead, you called out, “Will you be alright?”

He stopped again. This time, he fully turned toward you, something swirling in his icy orbs that took your breath away. He didn’t answer your question.

He breathed your name, his tongue twirling around it and lips caressing it in a way that sent a jolt of heat through your insides. The foreboding landscape dissolved away around you and was replaced with the scorching blue light and thrashing gales.

Through the howling wind, you heard it. So soft, so seductive.

“Sleep.”

The King of Dreams raised his closed fist and opened his long fingers with gentle care, revealing the mound of sand that he had taken from the desert inside of your head. His lips formed a perfect ‘O’ as he blew it out of his palm and toward you. The sand expanded and became a dark cloud against the blinding blue light, dancing and snaking around your body with ease.

It touched your skin like a lover, poured into your mouth like warm syrup, and you were fading from the world. Happily.

Your knees buckled, your body ready to drop to the hard concrete floor. But it didn’t.

Two strong arms caught you.

The hard outline of his body was the last thing you remembered before being lost to that tempting pull of darkness.

Your sleep was the deepest you experienced in years.

It was almost dreamless.

It was so very warm, so very pleasant, until you were plagued by terrifying visions. You saw it like flashes from a camera bulb, quick but intense. A black cat, a journey down a dark hallway, and a menacing black silhouette with the glowing eyes of a stalking predator.

“Alex! Alex, please! Wake up, darling!”

You were jolted from your sleep, gasping, disoriented. You were in your bed.

Paul’s screams were echoing down the hall in the early morning light, desperate and panicked. You jumped out of bed as fast as your unsteady feet would allow, a choking feeling of despair in your chest. Something inside of you told you what you would find.

You bolted into the master bedroom, hair flying and a sob on the edge of your lips. Alex Burgess was lying in the bed with eyes darting around inside of his closed eyelids. His head was moving back and forth, as if he was fighting something, disturbed whimpers escaping from his lips. The emerging light of the sun through the bedroom windows shined on his sweaty skin.

“He – he won’t wake,” Paul sobbed to you, turning to meet your concerned gaze with eyes full of tears. You gulped back the cries that wanted to rip from your throat, immense guilt enveloping you like a suffocating blanket.

“Paul, I – I’m so—”

You stopped yourself. What were you going to say? Paul, I’m so sorry for releasing the vengeful God of Dreams from your basement that I wasn’t even supposed to know about in the first place? Or what about, Paul, I’m so sorry, but I’m the reason your husband is gone forever?

You exhaled shakily. “I’ll call the doctor.”

The doctor confirmed what you knew in your heart. Alex Burgess had fallen into a coma that he would never return from. An inconsolable Paul looked sick when the basement guards told him that Edwin had quit the night before and never showed up for his shift. When Hattie and Randy saw his tear-streaked face, they knew. They blamed themselves, but Paul, in his infinite grace, did not.

He descended to the basement with you in tow, telling you hoarsely that he wanted to show you something.

Paul opened one of the glass doors for you. You stepped into the dark room slowly, guilty tears stinging your eyes. The binding circle was blurred, the glass was shattered, and the familiar hum that you’d grown to love was gone. The room was empty, dead.

“I should’ve known,” Paul’s sorrowful voice echoed through the shadowy room. “I knew it would happen one day… just not today.”

Your gaze dropped to the glass-covered floor, blinking back the tears that were begging to fall. This was all your fault. You knew, deep down, that this would happen if you released the Dream Lord.

“Those – those guards, they feel awful,” you said hesitantly, unable to meet his eyes. You had been formally introduced to them that morning. You felt awful is what you really wanted to say.

“It’s not Randy or Hattie’s fault,” Paul sighed, taking a step toward the broken orb of glass. He kicked a shard on the floor absentmindedly. “It’s ours. Mine and Alex’s.”

“Why would you say that?”

“Because, Roderick Burgess trapped something in this cellar that was never meant to be held,” he replied almost instantly, forlorn. “And we… we were too afraid to fix his mistake.”

You knew in your heart that this was true, that the ultimate fault really did lie with the Burgesses. But you had played your part, and for a kind heart like yours, it was a heavy burden.

“I wish… I wish there was something I could do to help you,” you offered, heart breaking for Paul. The love that you observed between him and his husband for the weeks you were there was truly beautiful to witness.

Paul gave you a watery smile and put a hand on your shoulder.

“Maybe help me with – with some preparations?” His voice broke on the last word.

“I’d be honored.”

After Alex Burgess’s funeral and a heartfelt goodbye to Paul, you left the Burgess house for good. Not quite ready to go home, you rented a small cottage in a nearby town from a kind elderly lady. Flying back to the States already meant that you would be returning to your old life, the one with something seriously lacking, and you didn’t want to do that. Not yet.

Something inside of you wanted to stay here, in England, at least for now. You wanted to be close to where you met the otherworldly man with eyes that told of universes. You were afraid that the further away you got from the Burgess home, the further away the memories would drift from you.

You never wanted to forget him, the King of Dreams.

You closed your eyes and remembered Alex’s casket and Paul’s tear-brimmed eyes. Don’t forget, you told yourself, he’s the King of Nightmares too.

Despite now knowing who he was—what he was—you couldn’t just let him go. He was powerful, dangerous, something other, but to the despondent ache in your chest none of that mattered. That hum, that vibration that resonated in your very cells… you missed it. Now that you’d experienced it, you weren’t sure that you could ever live without that feeling again.

But you were only human, and he… he was something so ancient that words couldn’t do justice. You were but a blip on his radar, a tiny ant in an ever-expanding universe that he would surely forget if he hadn’t already.

It had only been a week since you released him, but it felt like so much longer. Every time that you fell asleep, you appeared in a world that you recognized as your beloved dream universe. You hadn’t been here in ages, especially since you’d arrived at the Burgess house. Your sleep was fitful, fleeting, and dreamless while Lord Morpheus was locked underneath your feet. Now, it was like a veil had lifted and you were able to return home.

But your haven of escape had changed. Something was different.

You could see past the borders of your own dream now. The hills of tall, green grass that danced in the fragrant breeze ended abruptly, revealing a wasteland of dark rock and churning clouds. Previously, you never even noticed that your dream had a border. But now that you could see the desolation stretching on in the distance, you wondered how you had ever missed it in the first place. It was like someone had removed your rose-colored glasses.

Every night you ventured closer and closer to that border, working up the courage to breach it. You were a consistent lucid dreamer and you were always aware that you weren’t in the real world the moment you closed your eyes. You would fabricate flowers and trees, rivers and brooks, beaches, even small creatures that would roam your little stretch of dreamland. But every time you tried to create something to root beyond the border, it would dissipate into a pile of dark sand and blow away.

You chewed on your lip and twirled the cup of Sleepytime Tea in your hands. It had grown cold. You must have been daydreaming.

The one thing that you longed for more than anything else was to see Dream again. It was a pull in your gut that made you want to sleep every hour of the day. Every night since his release, you called to him in your dream world, but he never came. You couldn’t help but wonder if he was beyond that imposing line, that if you finally had the courage to go poking and prodding into the dark that you would find him.

As you settled into your small bed, you decided that you would venture into the unknown. You would tread the soil untouched by you and test its limits. The emptiness of what lay beyond that border reminded you of a nightmare, but you would search there anyway. Your unbridled curiosity always won over in the end.

You turned off your bedside lamp and closed your eyes. You made a conscious effort to slow your breathing when you noticed swirling shapes begin to dance behind your eyelids. This was always how your dreaming started.

Those shapes flowed, fluttered, and changed colors. They stretched and molded and glimmered until they began to settle at your feet, turning into lush green grass and pirouetting butterflies. The familiar scent of white poppies tickled your nose and you opened your eyes. The two suns that kissed in the sky moved, bringing swaths of pink and orange light with them. They began to set on the horizon of the ocean you’d created the night before, casting vibrant hues that danced in the water.

You turned around.

Behind you, only a few steps away, was the border. Lightning struck in those curling dark clouds, a warning.

Even though you felt like this was something you shouldn’t be doing, that you weren’t allowed to do, you took a deep breath and held it as you scooted a toe past your remaining grass and into the black sand. Thunder rolled over your head, like a growl in the chest of a beast. With bated breath, you moved your other foot away from the soft carpet of green and into the ominous grains.

You stood there for a moment, waiting for lightning to strike you dead or for a gaping mouth of sand to swallow you whole. But nothing happened.

Hesitantly, you stretched your hand out in front of you. It was shaking and damp with sweat. You steeled yourself, then with everything you could muster, you visualized a winding road taking shape before you. You wanted bricks of white, smooth marble to cut through the bare landscape and lead you to Morpheus.

Slowly, so slowly at first that you thought it was just a gust of wind tickling the ground, the sand began to move. It was stubborn, like it didn’t want to move for you, but you just focused every thought on Dream, on how badly you wanted this, of that intoxicating quiver that encased your bones when you were near him. As if giving up, it parted like water, revealing a path of snaking black marble cut with veins of gold.

Well, you were going for white marble. But that’s okay.

You let out a gleeful giggle of disbelief and placed a bare foot onto the road. The golden veins glistened to greet you, as if saying hello.

“Wow,” you sighed appreciatively. You brought you other foot to rest on the marble. It was cold.

You cautiously moved one foot in front of the other, eyes in front of you taking in the ever-parting black sand and stormy clouds. With every step you took, the sand parted a bit more, as if where it was leading you was a secret that would only be revealed once you reached your destination. You felt powerful, but also a bit like you were sticking your hand in a proverbial cookie jar.

You weren’t sure how long you walked through the endless dunes of black, but after what felt like an eternity, an ocean appeared and stretched in front of you. The water was almost as dark as the sand, but it glittered with bits of dancing purple and starlight. The streams of glistening color moved through the calm waves as if alive, as if waiting to shape themselves into something once commanded.

It was the most beautiful thing you had ever seen.

The dark sea sleepily licked the black sand that blew toward it, dancing out of your way. The path was beginning to curve into the water.

With slight trepidation, you edged your big toe into the waves. It swirled around you, tickling your skin, and began to part as well. You placed both feet into the dark ocean with more confidence now. The waves began to divide like the Red Sea. The colorful slivers of starlight were an aurora, swaying through the walls of water. Suddenly, the path dipped deeper into a descending crevice. You couldn’t see the bottom. The edge of sea floor ended abruptly.

Well, you’d made it this far. It would be a shame to turn back now.

With bated breath, you gathered every ounce of courage that you possessed and took the leap. Literally.

You were falling, but it was gentle. The lightless air swirled through your hair like water, but then you realized, it was water. An invisible chord pulled you by your ankle. You were sinking further, further. Your world was shifting and spinning and you didn’t know which way was up.

Then, as quickly as it had begun, it stopped.

You were emerging from the depths, floating into the air, gasping for cool and forgiving oxygen. The sea dripped off you quickly, as if it couldn’t wait to leave your skin, and you were instantly dry. Gently, almost kindly, the dancing air lowered you onto a dark wooden dock.

The sight that met you was unbelievable.

A gargantuan wall of horn and ivory towered in the distance. It was laced with the most beautiful and intricate carvings of faces, creatures, and landscapes that you had ever seen. Even from this far away, you could tell how utterly massive it was. It stood, erect, in the middle of the black sand beach. Unwavering and unmovable.

The moment your foot kissed the black sand, it twisted and separated for you, revealing the same black marble. The golden veins snaking through the stone glimmered again in greeting, like it was happy you’d made the journey.

A childlike smile tugged at your lips. This was more beautiful than even your wildest imaginings.

You followed the welcoming path all the way to the gates, absolutely enthralled by their sheer size the closer you drew. You noticed a massive carving in the middle of the doors, of something resembling a spine connected to the head of an insect. The image reminded you a bit of an antique gas mask.

With tentative but curious fingers, your touch brushed a white gate door, featherlight. You pulled your hand away to find that golden sand was stuck to your fingertips. It glistened in the faint light of the cloudy night sky.

The sound was so deep and trembling that it made you jump back in surprise. It reverberated through the immense ivory walls, making them shake loose more golden sand. You were afraid that you’d broken something, that a giant monster was finally coming to swallow you for wandering outside of your dream, but the sound stopped.

The echo of an enormous bolt unlatching vibrated through the gate and through your body. The marble beneath your feet hummed. The gates were separating for you.

An ever-widening sliver of a view appeared as the doors continued to open. Expecting to see mind-blowing beauty that you couldn’t formulate in your craziest fantasies, you held your breath and resisted an excited giggle.

The sight that met you stole the breath from your lungs.

It was hollow, dark, desolate; an endless stretch of colorless grounds covered in murky water. And at the middle of it all, a once-glorious castle that was crumbling before your very eyes. Gaping holes sat where towers once stood. Spires were bent and decayed. Arches that spoke of past splendor were disintegrating as you watched. Thunder rolled somewhere in the foggy distance.

You had never seen this place before and you didn’t know how long it had been like this. However, something in your gut told you that this was the ultimate tragedy, that this place was once a shimmering gem in the center of this land. A piece of your heart fell into your stomach like a piece of stone falling from the castle wall.

Your quick footsteps echoed around you in the eerie silence. You were certain that if anyone still resided in that castle, without a doubt, they would hear you coming. You were the only speck of life on this bleak stretch of swamp and sand.

You were overcome by a sense of urgency, a need to enter the castle. Would you finally find him, the King of Dreams that overtook your every waking thought? Your chest ached with a longing that felt quite pitiful, really. You were a bit embarrassed by its intensity.

You walked through the decaying threshold. The castle was falling apart just as much on the inside as it was on the outside. You had to keep your eyes on your bare feet to avoid sharp stone and shards of broken glass.

“Excuse me.”

You jolted in surprise, panicked gaze rising to see a figure approaching you from a cracking entryway. She stood at your height, clad in a neat dark suit with coattails. Her chocolate skin was smooth and almost glistened. She had no hair to hide her pointed ears or her deductive gaze. Her brown eyes were full of intrigue as they assessed you over the top of her circular spectacles.

“And who, may I ask, are you?” she questioned. Her tone was business-like but not unfriendly.

You felt like you’d been caught doing something naughty.

“I’m, uh, I’m Y/N,” you replied meekly. The woman’s gaze continued to study you.

“Well, Y/N, I’m afraid you must be lost,” she said, taking a step closer to you, “for you are not supposed to be here.”

You gulped, feeling admonished. So, that gut feeling of doing something you weren’t supposed to be doing was right on, then. The woman’s eyes narrowed curiously and she tipped her head to the side, still reading you.

“How did you get here?” she asked.

You looked down, shyly pushing a dull piece of rock around with your foot. You shrugged.

“I just wanted to explore,” you admitted quietly. “Something told me to venture out of my dream. A path led me here.”

“A path?” she repeated, perfectly shaped brows rising in surprise.

“Yeah,” you nodded, eyes rising from the floor to meet hers. You felt a spark of pride in your chest. “I made one. If you look outside of the gate, you may still be able to see it.”

The woman’s eyelids fluttered in disbelief, taking another step closer to you. She was reviewing you closely now, like if she looked hard enough she would see a clue on your skin.

“You – you created something here in The Dreaming?”

Your brows knitted, confused by her shock.

“Sure. I change things around in my dreams all the time,” you replied, not understanding what the big deal was. You chewed on your lip thoughtfully. “Today was the first time I was able to make something outside of that border, though.”

“Border?” Her voice dripped in incredulity. “You were able to see the border between your dream and another?”

“I haven’t always been able to see it,” you said quickly, like a child trying to placate their parent. “It only started a week ago.”

The woman seemed equal amounts shocked and concerned. Embarrassment poked underneath your skin at her astute stare. She regarded you with a look that made you wonder if you were growing a second head.

“You should not be able to leave your dreams,” she said finally, shaking her head. You thought you detected underlying fear with her concern. “And you should not be able to create whatsoever, let alone a path through the waters to lead you here.”

“Where is here?” you asked, swallowing down your prickling sense of shame.

The woman adjusted her spectacles, sighing. “You are in the heart of The Dreaming.”

“This is the heart?” you asked, looking up at the disintegrating ceiling and destroyed stained glass windows. “It looks… broken.”

“It is,” she said solemnly.

Your reason for being here prodded at the base of your neck, imploring you to ask her what you wanted to know more than anything else.

“Can – can I ask you a question... I’m sorry, what’s your name?”

“Lucienne,” she replied. Her eyes were suspicious but not unkind.

“Lucienne,” you repeated, giving her a kind smile. “The only reason I left my dream was because I was looking for someone. Hoping to see someone, actually.”

You had piqued her curiosity. She watched you over the edge of her spectacles again.

“And who, pray tell, would that be?”

“Morpheus.”

She blanched, but recovered quickly. “You know Lord Morpheus?”

“Well, yeah,” you shrugged, a bashful smile overtaking your face at the very thought of him, of those eyes that seemed to peer into the depths of your soul. “I released him.”

Lucienne gasped. The sound echoed through your head like a ringing church bell, and suddenly she was gone. The castle melted away and you were surrounded by black nothingness. It was cold. A force pulled at the back of your navel and you were falling, falling, falling…

You shot up in your bed, breathless and gasping for air. Your wobbling hand reached up to your forehead and wiped away a thick layer of sweat.

You collapsed back onto your wet pillow, clamping your eyes shut and punching your soaked sheets.

You were so close.

Chapter Text

Chapter 5

“Life is a sleep and love is its dream; and you have lived if you have loved.”

-Alfred de Musset

The following day felt longer than you would have liked. You were anxious for the sun to set, and with it, the answers that would quench the fire of burning curiosity in your mind. Why was the heart of The Dreaming rotting away? Why were you able to escape the borders of your dream and travel there, and why was Lucienne so obviously disturbed by it? Where was Dream? But, most importantly, why did you feel the need to be there in the first place? Why couldn’t you come to terms with this entire experience for the incredible magical adventure that it was and just let it go?

Even though you were filled with more questions than ever before, you could feel in the deepest recesses of your soul that the solutions to all of them lay in The Dreaming.

Your enthusiasm to return to the palace caused you to have trouble falling asleep for the first hour that night. The castle was your new Burgess house – mysteries hid there that tickled at your insides, that whispered to you in the darkness of the night to uncover them.

Finally, after tossing and turning, your eyes fluttered closed and stayed that way. Shifting shapes whirled behind your eyelids, flitting from corner to corner, until they gently settled into the outline of a horizon. A warm sun began to rise and filtered light onto the dark line, illuminating the scene for you. You instantly recognized the scent of poppies on the breeze.

That fragrant wind whipped through your hair lovingly, like the soft fingers of a curious child, swirling around your form. You spun with it, arms outstretched, grinning from ear to ear. How you wished with everything within your heart that this place was real, that this is where you could spend the waking hours of your life.

You opened your shining eyes to see the parting gate of horn and ivory before you. You hadn’t even needed to start the journey within the confines of your own dream this time – you were already here. Your path of glinting black and gold marble was still below your feet, humming with welcoming warmth.

You couldn’t contain your happiness when the dividing gates revealed a view to you that had shifted from the night before. The stretches of murky water were trickling into a singular crystal river, sparkling blue and immense. Where unforgiving rock and dark sand had suffocated the landscape, beautiful blades of grass and stretches of green ferns were beginning to emerge. You recognized your favorite flower, blooming white poppies, dancing in the breeze on the riverside. An enormous bridge was sliding into place over the river, cradled by gargantuan stone hands that surfaced from the crystal water.

Creatures were returning, beautiful and terrifying alike, flying through the milky blue sky and snaking through the growing grass around your feet. The air was no longer choked with an eerie silence; insects buzzed, water rushed, citizens of The Dreaming were laughing.

Life.

You followed the massive bridge of stone to the center, where the once-crumbling palace was being rebuilt in the gleam of glorious sunlight. Fallen walls and castle turrets were reassembling themselves brick by brick with meticulous accuracy, as if someone had hit rewind. Rusting spires were shedding their coat of orange muck and shining gold. Magnificent archways were mending their own cracks and rising tall, transforming from ashy grey to glimmering white.

The heart of The Dreaming was returning to its former glory. Pure joy blossomed in your chest like the rosebuds of a vine that was bending around the pillars of the bridge.

You walked into the castle entryway, still grinning like a fool, as you looked up and watched every shard of broken glass and every crushed stone float into the air and return to their homes. A beautiful stained-glass window was mending directly above your head. The colorful fragments gradually slid together to form the image of a Pegasus, and as the last piece fell into place, it sprang to life, neighing triumphantly and beating its wings.

“Not too shabby, huh?” came a proud voice from behind you.

You spun to see a tall scarecrow-like figure with the head of a pumpkin approaching you. His face was the cut of a jack-o-lantern, crooked mouth pulling up at the corner in a tilted smile. He stopped by your side and put his branch-like hands on his thin hips, gazing up appreciatively at the work of glass art. You tried not to stare too rudely at him.

You turned your head back toward the magnificent window, now casting rays of colored sunlight onto you and your Halloween-like companion.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” you replied truthfully.

He grunted in agreement, then looked down at you. His triangular eyes narrowed.

“Hey, ya know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you around these parts before,” he said. “You new?”

Your lips upturned at his gutteral New York accent. “Yeah, you could say that.”

“Lotsa new folks all around this joint today,” he said, shaking his large head in amusement. “Guess that’s what happens when ya hammer a few nails and splash on a fresh coat a’ paint—everyone comes back to tha neighborhood.”

“It does look pretty inviting,” you agreed, turning to face him. You stuck out your hand. “I’m Y/N.”

The pumpkin-headed man stuck out his wooden hand and shook yours firmly. “I’m Mervyn, but everybody calls me Merv.”

“Hi, Merv.”

He chuckled and crossed his arms. “Well, considerin’ you bein’ new and all, why don’t I give ya a bit of a tour? It wouldn’t be my first one today.”

“I would love that,” you beamed, resisting the urge to clasp your hands together like a schoolgirl. Merv nodded and turned, motioning with his stick-like hand.

“Well, then, c’mon.”

He walked like a puppet would without strings, you thought, as you followed behind him. You struggled to keep up with his long strides. Mervyn led you through a hallway that had one wall built while the opposite was still floating together. One piece of stone almost hit him in the head on its way back to its appointed position, and he cursed at it.

Once through the hallway, you turned into a winding staircase that glinted with intricate gold. As you followed Merv’s spindly legs up the flight, you appreciated the view to your left of an assembling tower. After a few more steps, you reached the top.

“First things first, here’s our pride and joy,” Mervyn announced grandiosely, spreading out his arms for dramatic emphasis. Your jaw dropped. “This is the library.”

The room was warm wood, cozy sunlight, and beckoning shelves that stretched on for as far as the eye could see. Books were everywhere, of every size, color, and age. You ran your finger along a nearby shelf, tickling their spines. Some looked thousands of years old, others as if they’d come off the press minutes before.

“How many books are in here?” you asked in wonder, turning in a full circle to better take in the view.

“A helluva lot,” Mervyn answered slyly. “To tell you the truth, I’m not the one you should ask. Lucienne’s the librarian in charge.”

At the sound of her name, the woman that you had met the night before emerged from behind a nearby cascade of bookshelves. Her eyes smiled at Mervyn, but then they settled onto you.

Lucienne’s face paled.

“You’ve returned,” she breathed, striding toward the two of you with a haste in her step, “and so soon.”

“Oh, you’ve met before?” Mervyn asked, eyes shifting between the librarian and yourself.

“We have,” you told him, trying to make sure your grin didn’t turn into a grimace.

“Just last night, in fact,” Lucienne added. Her perceptive gaze wandered over your nervous form.

“Last night?” Merv repeated incredulously. He motioned over his shoulder. “But the boss hadn’t even started rebuilding yet! How’d she—?”

“A question we all would like to know,” Lucienne answered, fixing you with a penetrating stare over the top of her round glasses. She clasped her hands behind her back expectantly.

“Hey, I’d like to know too,” you said defensively. You crossed your arms, but then dropped them to your sides, not wanting to come off as defiant. “I’ve already told you everything that I know.”

“Lucienne, who is this?” Mervyn asked curiously, pointing a thumb at you.

The librarian sighed heavily but her eyes softened. Her tone was gentle, appreciative. “This, Mervyn, is the young lady that released Lord Morpheus from his prison.”

“No kiddin’?! That was you?!” he questioned unabashedly, shock evident in his wide eye sockets.

You shrugged, not a fan of the intense attention. “Well, yeah… but it’s really not that big of a deal…”

“Not that big of a deal?” Mervyn repeated, voice dripping in astonishment. “Are you kiddin’ me? This place would still be fallin’ apart if it wasn’t for you!”

“That’s why everything looked the way that it did the last time I came?” you asked Lucienne. “Because Dream wasn’t here?”

She nodded somberly. “He was captured for nearly a century and was unable to return. Everything was dissipating, disappearing… it cannot exist without him. He is The Dreaming.”

“But it’s been over a week since I helped him escape,” you said, confused. “Where has he been all of that time?”

“Lord Morpheus was traveling the realms on a quest to reobtain his tools.”

Something hopeful fluttered in your chest. Those nights where you’d been calling out to him and he hadn’t shown himself… it wasn’t because he was ignoring you, it was because he wasn’t even there in the first place.

“Look, uh… I hate to interrupt this conversation,” Merv cut in, scratching the back of his pumpkin head uncomfortably, “but… shouldn’t we tell the boss that she’s here?”

Joy sparked in your chest at his words.

Lucienne hesitated. “There’s still so many questions that remain unanswered. We don’t know how or why she is able to leave her dreams, let alone create a path from their border and through the waters to the palace.”

Mervyn didn’t have eyebrows, but if he did, you were sure he would be raising them in surprise.

“I didn’t have to use the path this time,” you told her, biting your lip. “I just kind of started at the gate.”

“You materialized here, in the heart of The Dreaming?” she clarified, voice filled with bewilderment and cut with that undertone of concern again.

“That ain't normal,” Mervyn shook his head.

“It appears that each time you fall asleep, you are somehow able bypass steps that you’ve previously taken,” she said thoughtfully, almost to herself. “You’re no longer appearing within the boundaries of your own dreams.”

An excited smile pulled at your lips. “Cool.”

“No, no, not ‘cool’,” Lucienne admonished, turning from you and Mervyn to start rifling through a stack of books resting on a nearby table. “This behavior is quite abnormal, even for a lucid dreamer such as yourself.”

“Lucid dreamer, ‘ay?” Merv inquired, crossing his reedy arms over his chest and leaning back against the shelf behind him. “Not too many a’ you guys left no more.”

“Really?”

“They’ve become exceedingly rare,” Lucienne confirmed, finally picking out a book from the pile. “Consistently lucid dreamers existed more commonly thousands of years ago. Now, well…” her eyes roamed over your confused face “…you’re the first I’ve seen in, at least, a millennium.”

“You always been able to do that?” Mervyn asked you. “Change stuff around?”

“Since I can remember,” you shrugged, pulling out a chair at the ornate table in front of you and sitting. “I’d sleep the day away just to keep dreaming.”

“But roaming through the dreamscape, you said last night that you had only just started?” the librarian asked, peering over the edge of the thick book in her hands. She joined you at the table.

Something caught your eye. The book that Lucienne had plucked from the bunch was bound in black with two golden words emblazoned on the cover: your first and last name.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, what’s that?” you questioned enthusiastically, scooting your chair closer to her. “My name’s on there!”

A proud smile creeped onto the head librarian’s face. “This library contains every story ever written and unwritten, finished or unfinished, everything that has been and will never be.” She tapped the hard cover of your book with a manicured nail. “And this is yours.”

“Wow,” you sighed, resting your chin on your palm. Lucienne’s smile grew at your awestruck expression. “So, what all is in there about me?”

“Everything,” she answered simply.

You gulped. “Like, everything everything?”

She laughed. It was a harmonious sound.

“Relax, even your most embarrassing of moments pale in comparison to many of the things I read every day,” she assured you, eyes twinkling with amusement. She became serious again. “I thought it advantageous to find your book after your unexpected visit last night. I had to be sure that you weren’t a threat to The Dreaming.”

Your smile fell. “I’m – I’m not. I don’t want to be a threat to anybody.”

Lucienne sighed, expression trickling with pity.

“I know those aren’t your intentions. But the fact remains that your recent abilities are those that no mortal should possess.”

“Don’t worry, kid,” Merv said, standing from his perch against the bookcase to lean against your table instead. He grinned crookedly at you. “We’ll get this figured out. If anyone can sniff out what’s goin’ on here, it’s Lucienne.”

You let out a shaky breath, nodding. The thought of being some kind of danger to this beautiful place rattled you. All you had wanted was to find Morpheus, to make sure everything turned out okay after you released him. After all, being imprisoned against your will for a hundred years had to be traumatic for anyone, right? Even the King of Dreams?

You had more selfish reasons, too, but those would stay private.

Suddenly, a voice called out.

It echoed into the large room, gentle but authoritative, soft but commanding respect. With a wave of warmth washing over your skin, you knew that you would recognize that beautiful sound anywhere.

“Lucienne,” his voice called, “I believe it is time we review the findings from the census.”

All three of you froze in place.

The King of Dreams emerged from the nearest aisle, graceful stride filled with purpose. He donned all black, a sweeping floor length coat flowing behind him as he walked, regal. His alabaster skin almost seemed to glow against his dark attire. His hair was as black as his clothing, still so gloriously messy and wild.

He was in his element, thriving and flourishing in a way that radiated from his very being. This was his domain.

Morpheus’s icy blue eyes moved from Lucienne to Mervyn. Then, they locked onto you.

Your breath hitched as you stood, chair screeching back noisily. That feeling, that delicious humming in your bones, it was different here, more alive. It was starlight sparking in your spine. He stood at least ten feet away, impossibly still, but you could feel his presence as strongly as you would if he were inches from you. Time stood still.

A myriad of emotions flickered through his fathomless eyes at the sight of you, none of which you could place, but whatever they were made the air in the library thick. Your eyes drank in his face and his roamed yours, penetrating but swirling with something soft.

Mervyn cleared his throat uncomfortably. It just then occurred to you that you had no idea how long the two of you had been standing like that, staring at each other.

The sound seemed to bring Dream back to himself.

“Lucienne. Mervyn. Leave us,” he commanded quietly, but he didn’t look at them. His intense gaze never once broke from yours.

Their replies came quickly and in hushed tones, almost as if embarrassed.

“Of course, sir.”

“Sure thing, boss.”

They scurried away with heads down. As they reached the exit to the library, you could hear Mervyn mutter, “Well, talk about some tension...”

Morpheus blinked at the comment, but you didn’t miss the almost-imperceptible smirk that tugged at one corner of his lips. He was still staring at you.

With a smile that revealed every whisper of your heart, you broke the silence.

“Hi.”

Dream took a slow step toward you, measured. Then another. The curtain of dark lashes framing his endless eyes fluttered as he took you in, gaze roaming to your feet and back up again.

“Hello.” His voice was velvet.

You swallowed, begging the blush that you could feel creeping up your neck to go away. Couldn’t you have at least one interaction with him without your body betraying you? You felt like a fucking teenager.

“You, um, never answered my question,” you said, taking a step toward him as well. One of his dark brows rose. “You put me to sleep first. Rude, by the way.”

His smirk wasn’t nearly as well-hidden now.

“My deepest apologies. And what question would that be?”

You took another step closer, still not breaking eye contact. You clasped the back of a chair with one hand to ground yourself.

“You’re… you are alright, then?” you asked quietly. For the smallest of moments, his eyes betrayed everything. He was touched by your concern.

“You have journeyed through The Dreaming, to the heart of my realm, simply to ask after my well-being?”

His voice held an undercurrent of emotion, but he attempted to hide it with the slightest lilt of tease.

A playful glint sparkled in your eye. “Well, I did play spy for over a month just to get into that basement. What’s a desert and an ocean or two?”

The mischievous gleam in his eyes was shuttered by the weight of your words. It seemed that once Morpheus got past the initial surprise of seeing you there, the same realization dawned on him that concerned Lucienne.

“You traveled through the outer lands of The Dreaming,” he stated, brows furrowed in unease. “You left the confines of your dream and found yourself here?”

The general trepidation from everyone surrounding your ability to leave your dream world disturbed you. You saw it as a gift, but it seemed to be one that you were not meant to have. You let out a sigh.

“I created a path,” you told him. “It took me through the desert and through an ocean… and then I ended up on that dock out there.” You tilted your chin toward the windows. “The path ended at the gates, and when I touched them, they opened. Then I came here.”

Morpheus was close now, taking in every word you that escaped your lips with rapt attention. His powerful stare was not angry, but perplexed. His eyes were swimming with anxious confusion.

“How is this possible?” he whispered to himself. His pale hand rose, ever so slowly, to ghost the line of your jaw. The touch was barely there, so very brief, but it left tingling chills in its wake. He examined your every feature, searching for the answer. “For you are not a vortex.”

For a moment, you’d forgotten how to speak, mind still reeling from the fact that he had just touched you, and that it felt so indescribable. His fingers had barely brushed an inch of skin, but that starlight sparkling in your spine had overtaken every nerve ending.

“Vortex?” you asked when you found your voice. Your eyebrows came together. “What’s a vortex?”

To your dismay, Dream stepped away from you. He turned toward the table where you were previously sitting with Lucienne and Mervyn, delicate fingers flipping through the many volumes that were stacked over its surface. His hands settled on a red hardback, lifting it so that you could read the gold lettering on the cover.

“Rose Walker,” he replied, face impassive.

At your obvious confusion, Dream stepped back and motioned with a graceful hand toward the archway where Lucienne and Mervyn had disappeared moments before.

“Where are we going?” you asked, walking in the direction he indicated.

Morpheus was tall at your side, right hand ghosting the small of your back, featherlight. The stars in your backbone twinkled at the touch.

His voice was euphonious when he bent to your ear.

“Follow me.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 6

“Dreams are the seedlings of realities.”

-James Allen

The Lord of Dreams walked leisurely beside you through the stone halls of his castle, hand now withdrawn and resting at his side. You ignored the tiny prickle of disappointment in your bones at the loss of his touch. He was watching you, eyes churning with his thoughts—none of which you could read.

“So… I’m not a vortex, then? Whatever that is?” you asked quietly, looking up at him. “Is that a good thing?”

“That’s a wonderful thing,” he replied. He looked away from you, ahead. His gait slowed but was still very graceful. “A vortex is a thing of immense power. They can pose a great threat to both The Dreaming and the waking world alike.”

You audibly sighed in relief. “Oh. Well, thank God. The last thing I want to do is be a danger to anyone.”

Morpheus’s icy blue gaze was brushing over you again, filled with curiosity. His eyes roamed your face, as if your features were a puzzle to be solved. You looked away from him, begging the blush that was starting to heat the back of your ears to go away. You could feel his stare.

“The fact remains,” he said after a beat, voice quiet but serious, “that you may not be a vortex, but you are able to traverse this realm in a way that no one but a vortex, or myself, should.”

You gulped down the lump of discomfort in your throat.

“Lucienne told me that I was a lucid dreamer… one of the first she’s seen in ages. Could that have something to do with it?”

Dream shook his head once.

“Even the most talented of lucid dreamers are not capable of entering the heart of The Dreaming uninvited,” he stated.

That word, “uninvited”, sent a pang through your chest. You knew that you weren’t supposed to be here, but something about his phrasing made you feel very self-conscious, almost embarrassed.

“I—I didn’t mean to intrude,” you told him quickly, your nervous gaze casting to the shining stone floor. Your chest constricted with your next words. “If you want, I can leave—”

A pale hand shot away from his side and closed around your wrist. The sudden action almost made you jump, that delectable murmur of something indescribable skirting across your skin instantaneously. Your wide eyes rose to his penetrating ones.

“Uninvited, but not unwelcome,” Dream spoke earnestly, his words carrying such weight. The softness in his expression was hidden, but you could detect it in the rise of his brows, in the subtle parting of his lips.

Your eyes darted down to his fingers closed around your wrist, and as soon as they did, he released his grip and his hand snapped back to his side. Morpheus’s fingers twitched before he slipped the offending hand into the pocket of his long, black coat. His expression slid into something stoic, a wall going up faster than the bricks flying into place on the outside of his palace.

The sudden tension thickening the air made your throat sticky with nerves.

The two of you continued your slow walk, his hands in his coat pockets and yours twisting in front of you. The stiffness in the atmosphere scratched underneath your skin, a pest.

“So,” you offered suddenly, desperate to break the abrupt silence, “Lucienne said that you were on a quest to find your tools?”

Dream’s face remained impassive, but you didn’t miss the almost-imperceptible sigh of relief that escaped his nose. You gathered that he was glad for the change of subject.

“Yes,” he answered, chin rising with thinly-veiled pride, “my sand, my helm, and my ruby.”

A realization stitched together in your brain. “They were taken from you, weren’t they? By Roderick Burgess?”

At the mention of the Demon King’s name, Morpheus visibly hardened. His full lips pressed into a thin and unhappy line. He nodded, but barely.

 “I’d heard about a few things,” you began cautiously, eyes now glued to his impassive profile, watching for any indication that you should stop talking. “That the Burgesses’ lives started going to shit when some of his favorite relics went missing.”

Dream stayed expressionless beside you. You took that as a sign to keep going.

“But they were never his, they were yours? Huh. Serves that asshole right.”

At that, the Dream King’s stony façade slipped, but only for the briefest of moments. The corner of his mouth twitched upward before it settled back into a brood.

“As deserving of misfortune as Roderick Burgess may have been, I would have much preferred my tools be waiting for me when I escaped,” Morpheus replied, his voice stained with annoyance. He quieted for a moment, icy blue eyes settling onto your face. They were swirling again with some well-hidden feeling that you couldn’t decipher. “When you released me,” he corrected himself, soft tone tinted with thankfulness.

“Did you find them all?” you asked.

“Indeed,” he answered, his shoulders straightening with pride. You smiled at him brightly.

“Good. I’m glad,” you said sincerely, meeting his guarded gaze with a kind one. You were truly happy to see that he was doing well after he’d disappeared in a flurry of blinding light and whipping wind. “I’ll be honest… I was worried about you.”

Morpheus was moved by your concern, even if he concealed it well.

“You needn’t,” he stated simply.

He seemed perplexed by your unease, as if a being such as himself was not worth this emotion on your part—like he was too powerful for your unease over his welfare to be warranted.

You thought your feelings were justifiable, however. He’d been captured and held against his will for 100 years. Dream wasn’t untouchable.

Suddenly, the dark hallway opened into a stunning, cathedral-like throne room. The stone arches stretched above you, massive yet intricate, stemming from carved marble statues of creatures that both inspired and frightened you. Everything was dark, shining stone, gargantuan and intimidating. Your eyes traveled upward on a nearby column, to the statue of a griffin on its top, to the arch sprouting from its back that disappeared into a stunning star-filled night sky. You craned your neck as far as you could without losing your balance, turning in a slow circle to fully appreciate the multicolored galaxy that twinkled and twirled where the ceiling should be.

You didn’t bother to hide your awed gasp or to close your slack jaw.

“Dream…” you breathed, barely above a whisper, your eyes raking every inch of the milky constellations, “did you – did you make this?”

When he didn’t reply, you tore your eyes from the universe above your head and looked for him. He had taken a few steps back from you, standing in front of the winding stone staircase with the most peculiar look in his eyes. He was watching you take it all in.

At your imploring look, he dropped his chin in a nod, eyes beginning to twinkle. “I did.”

You let out an admiring breath and grinned, placing your hands over your heart as you looked toward the sky again. You turned in another circle, trying to appreciate every last detail, but your eyes were always finding a new cloud filled with colors or a shooting star that flashed by where it hadn’t been before.

“I could just look at this for hours,” you murmured, almost to yourself. “This has to be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

You felt his presence beside you, but you didn’t tear your eyes from the ceiling this time. You could feel the prickle of Dream’s stare on your cheek. After a moment, the sensation ceased. He tilted his head back to observe the night sky too, shoulder now barely brushing against yours. You chanced a glance up at him. The strong line of his jaw was cast in sharp relief against the twinkling blue light of the heavens above. His profile seemed to be carved from the same dark marble that wove throughout the castle.

“It is a wonder,” Morpheus began, voice as warm and smooth as velvet, “to see my world through new eyes. To fully appreciate the most miniscule of details that escaped my notice long ago.”

The corners of your lips upturned bashfully at his gratitude for your perspective.

“Miniscule?” you repeated quietly, almost afraid that if you spoke too loudly the stars would hear you and scamper away. A disbelieving chuckle escaped your throat. “If this is just the tip of the iceberg, I can’t begin to imagine the rest.”

Dream’s reaction to you was beginning to seep through the stony mask he’d formed after grabbing your wrist. He was still staring up at the galaxy-filled ceiling, but his lashes fluttered almost-imperceptibly at your tone. Your voice was filled with so much sincerity and genuine care. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple noticeably dipping.

His chin dropped ever so slightly, his gaze dropping with it. Those incredible eyes shifted to you again and you hastily snapped yours back to the breathtaking ceiling, hoping with every fiber of your being that Morpheus hadn’t caught you staring. Then, as if on cue, a fire began to creep up your neck and stain your cheeks. Your hands fisted at your sides, frustrated at your body’s inability to fucking chill. You were an adult, damn it.

You were suddenly hyperaware of everything: of the air thick with tension, of your thundering heart, of the warm pressure of his coat-clad arm against your naked one, of his endless eyes caressing the side of your heated face, of that intoxicating vibration in the center of your bones that was pulsating at his proximity.

You felt like you were going insane.

“Lord Morpheus, are you ready to review the cens—? Oh.”

Lucienne strode into the throne room with a raven flying close behind her, a large leather ledger in her arms. She was all business and ready to work; that is, until she looked up from her book. The two of you jumped apart at her arrival as if scalded, your face the color of a pink rose and Morpheus looking uncharacteristically off-kilter.

To your shock, the raven spoke.

“And who is this?” he asked smugly, head cocking to fix you with a beady eye.

“My deepest apologies, my lord,” Lucienne stammered, clearing her throat. “We did not mean to interrupt—”

“No, Lucienne,” Dream stated, regal coolness sliding back into place in the blink of an eye, “you are not interrupting any matter of importance.”

Lucienne cautiously stepped further into the vast room, the bird hopping behind her. Her eyes peered at you and her king over the edge of her round spectacles. Her probing gaze did nothing to douse the flush that betrayed you.

“I repeat my question,” the raven declared, flying forward to land directly in front of you. “Who are you, milady?”

You stifled a grin at his nosy tone. “I’m Y/N.”

The black bird’s feathers ruffled, then he shook it off, like it was some involuntary reaction that he wasn’t used to yet.

“Ohhh, you’re Y/N!” the raven realized, awe evident in his voice. His head tilted to the side again, as if to get a better look at you. “You’re the knight in shining armor that came to the boss’s rescue!”

You laughed uncomfortably. “I don’t know if I’d say it like that…”

The bird hopped closer to Morpheus, who was now looking annoyed.

“She’s pretty for a knight,” the raven whispered conspiratorially, turning his head to the side and blinking at Dream in what was clearly meant to be a wink.

Morpheus’s jaw ticked.

“Thanks?” you chuckled.

“Ugh, where are my manners?” the bird scolded himself, fluttering to land in front of you again. “The name’s Matthew.”

You grinned at him now, deciding that you very much liked this raven. He was a sassy one.

“It’s nice to meet you, Matthew.”

“Now that introductions are finished, let us continue on, shall we?” Lucienne cut in, throwing an irritated but amused glance in Matthew’s direction. The raven was unbothered.

The librarian sighed and regarded you with a knowing look that made you squirm. With a bracing of her shoulders and a quick blink, she stood to her full height and was once again formal. Her eyes returned to the dream king.

“I have completed the census you requested, Lord Morpheus,” she stated proudly.

Dream’s eyes glinted in approval. “Good. And?”

“I have accounted for 11,062 of them.”

“Wow,” Matthew said, regarding Lucienne with admiration. “Someone’s been busy.”

 “Yes. Well…” she shrugged with a smile, flattered. Lucienne handed the large ledger to Morpheus, who began to thumb through it gingerly. “There are a handful of new entities.”

“That is to be expected,” Morpheus said lightly, turning a page with his pale fingers. You wanted to peer around him to see a bit of Lucienne’s handiwork, but you didn’t want to insert yourself into matters that didn’t pertain to you. You stayed a few steps away, playing with your hands.

Lucienne blinked, taking a large breath, steeling herself for something.

“But… three of the Major Arcana are gone.”

Dream’s icy blue eyes shot up from the ledger, fixing his librarian with a commanding and authoritative gaze. It amazed you, and almost frightened you, the ability he had to radiate power from just his eyes alone.

“Name them.”

Lucienne obeyed.

“The first is Gault,” she explained. Morpheus’s head turned away from the three of you, toward the winding staircase and his throne. Your eyes followed his and settled onto three long and beautiful stained-glass windows. You stared, enthralled, as the leftmost window began to morph and rearrange its glass pieces. They spun into the image of a woman with dark skin and blank, pupil-less eyes. “A Nightmare who, I must say, I never trusted.”

“She is a shape-changer,” Dream stated, his gaze returning to Lucienne with an undercurrent of trepidation. “It is not in her nature to be trustworthy.” His brows furrowed in concern. “Who else?”

Lucienne was hiding her discomfort well, but you could still sense it.

“The Corinthian.”

Morpheus’s eyes cast to his windows again. You watched as the stained-glass in the middle began to swirl and change as well, glass shards sliding together to reveal the image of a forbidding man in a hat and suit, eyes hidden by circular black sunglasses. Something in your gut churned, disquieted at the sight.

“I assumed as much,” the King of Dreams replied, voice low with shrouded anger. “Still feeding on the dreamers he was meant to serve.”

“Yes,” the librarian nodded.

Morpheus was still now, rapt with alarmed attention. “The last?”

Lucienne’s brows pulled together, clearly disturbed the most by the words she was about to speak.

“The last is Fiddler’s Green.”

“Fiddler’s Green?” Dream repeated, stunned. Lucienne hummed in acknowledgement.

All of your heads turned toward the remaining stained-glass window, watching as it altered itself into the picturesque image of green trees and mountains with a crystal river cutting through its valley. This confused you. Why was a place, not a person, revealed in the glass?

“That is passing strange,” Morpheus stated, perplexed. His eyes fell to the floor in troubled thought before rising to Lucienne. “He is, after all, vavasor of his own dominion and always so reliable.”

“I know,” Lucienne agreed.

An uncomfortable silence weighed on the air. Dream swallowed, voice wrought with guilt.

“This is my fault. Had I been here, fulfilling my function—”

Your heart clenched painfully in your chest at his words. He had been held against his will. How could he possibly take the blame for this?

“That’s not true,” you spoke suddenly, the thought pouring out before you could stop it.

Lucienne nodded vigorously in agreement with you.

“It was not your fault, my lord.”

“No?” he countered, his guilt turning into grieved acceptance. “Then whose?”

Lucienne stared at her sensible shoes, avoiding his intense gaze. His head turned to you, waiting for a retort, but you knew that nothing you could say would make him lift the burden of fault from himself.

“I’m afraid there is yet more news,” the head librarian began, tone measured and cautious. “Gossip, really, but…”

“Go on,” Morpheus implored.

“There are rumors among the dream folk… of a vortex. Perhaps you might wish to investigate.”

Your ears perked up at this. Morpheus’s eyes slid in your direction, then back to Lucienne. He closed the heavy ledger with a discernable thud.

“The rumors are quite true,” he responded, tone much blither than you would have predicted. Lucienne obviously hadn’t been expecting this reaction either, her doubtful brows raising in surprise. He spoke his next words like a sonnet. “A true annulet. The first of this era.”

He was intrigued by this. If what he told you about vortexes were true, how could he be so calm? Lucienne voiced your thoughts before you could.

“Then you must hunt for it, sir! It must be controlled,” she insisted passionately, disturbed by his lack of apprehension.

Morpheus turned away from Lucienne, Matthew, and you, taking elegant steps toward the center of the immense room. His head tipped back thoughtfully as he took in the glowing sight of the nearest galaxy that spun above your heads. Your eyes followed his to see the ceiling beginning to alter, stars and light rippling like water to reveal the outline of a young woman’s sleeping face.

“The vortex is a she, Lucienne. Not an “it”,” he stated matter-of-factly. You didn’t know how, but every word he spoke was lined with such weight, such wisdom, always. “And the Endless are forbidden from taking action against any mortal who is not an active threat.”

Your mind spun at his statement. They once considered you a threat to The Dreaming, didn’t they? You weren’t entirely sure they had decided that you weren’t one.

“Yes, but should the threat become active?” Lucienne insisted.

“Then, perhaps one of our problems may prove a solution to the other three,” the King of Dreams replied, a slight smirk pulling at the corner of his lips. “She is a vortex, after all. Sooner or later, she will draw the stray dreams to her.”

Lucienne wasn’t convinced.

“Is that not risky, Lord?” she questioned. “She could destroy The Dreaming. And the waking world in the process.”

All of your gazes rose again to the sleeping woman’s face.

“I’m watching her,” Morpheus asserted.

“Yes, but only when she sleeps. Perhaps one of us should surveil her in the waking world.”

You swallowed. This woman, this vortex, sounded dangerous. Should you volunteer to watch her? You were the only one in the room that spent the majority of their life in the waking world, after all.

“I think it best I not leave The Dreaming unattended for now,” Morpheus said. You understood his reluctance to leave his realm so soon after its recent return to normalcy.

“I could go,” Matthew volunteered. He looked back and forth between Lucienne and his master hopefully. Dream thought on this for a moment.

“Very well,” he acquiesced, seemingly satisfied. “Lucienne will tell you what to look for, Matthew.” Morpheus’s gaze searched the twinkling beams of light that shaped the slumbering woman’s face. “And what you see, I too will see.”

Suddenly, the woman’s eyes opened, awakened, and her abrupt gaze startled you. As quickly as her face had appeared, it sunk away into the night sky until nothing remained but the unassuming swaths of starlight and swirling color.

 “She woke up,” Matthew observed, wings giving a quick flutter of excitement at his new mission.

“I could help,” you proposed, turning away from the beautiful sky to lock gazes with the lead librarian and the dream king. Matthew cawed at your offer. You couldn’t tell if he was enthused by the notion or if he resented the idea of needing assistance.

“I’m not sure if that’s the best idea,” Lucienne answered hesitantly, watching you over the top of her glasses.

“I’m the only one here who spends most of my time in the waking world, right?” you asked. “I might as well be of some use while I’m there.” You shrugged, then fixed Morpheus with a hopeful look. “Let me help.”

“It isn’t that we don’t appreciate your enthusiasm,” Lucienne told you gently, then turned to her Lordship. “But, sire, we still don’t know the extent of Y/N’s abilities within The Dreaming and what they could mean for the realm. Would it be wise for her to be exposed to this vortex? What if it only makes things worse?”

“Lucienne makes a valid point,” Morpheus agreed, remaining unmoved by your hopeful gaze. However, his voice softened. “While your desire to assist is admirable, the welfare of The Dreaming must come before all else.”

You visibly deflated.

“I mean… I understand,” you sighed, crossing your arms. “But surely I can be of some assistance, in some way? Even if it means not being around the vortex—Rose—when I’m awake. This seems like a big deal, and the last thing I want to do is sit around, doing nothing, while everyone is working to prevent some kind of disaster.”

Lucienne’s lips curved into a small smile, her eyes twinkling with appreciation.

Morpheus took a measured step toward you with his expressive eyes reflecting some form of sentiment. As always, whatever meaning twirled inside those endless orbs escaped you.

“If exposure to Rose Walker impacts you negatively, in any way—and in turn, The Dreaming—I would have no choice but to take action,” he expounded, each word coated in a careful timbre. Dream’s dark brows pulled together, his expression morphing into something quite pained. “For any harm to befall you, to bring harm to you… it is the last thing I wish.”

Something fluttered in your chest at the emotion in his words, at the unfiltered force of his poignant stare. Then, the heaviness of his confession settled onto your shoulders in a suffocating jolt. Morpheus had just told you, in no uncertain terms, that if you became a threat to The Dreaming, he would have to kill you along with the vortex. The idea of that terrified you beyond explanation, but the very clear agony in his eyes at the thought of having to carry out such a thing gave you a tiny, strange sense of comfort.

It wasn’t just that he was protecting The Dreaming, he was protecting you.

“Don’t worry, ma’am,” Matthew cawed, hopping toward you with his dark eyes doing their best to relay comfort. “I got this covered. No need to put you in any danger.”

You smiled at the raven. “I’ve got nothing but faith in you, Matthew.”

“Perhaps… you could assist me in the library?” Lucienne offered suddenly. “In addition to this business surrounding the vortex and the missing Arcana, we still need to assess your abilities and discover their source.” Her eyes flickered to Morpheus with thinly-veiled concern. “The more proactive we are, the more certain I am that we can prevent any… well, threat… that you could potentially pose to the realm.”

Dream gave a decisive nod almost immediately. He was tall by your side; compelling and rippling with silent authority.

“Yes,” the king agreed, voice quiet but commanding. His eyes implored for you to heed him. “Y/N, accompany Lucienne to the library. Assist her with anything she requests of you. Allaying the possibility of your capabilities becoming a risk—it is of the utmost importance.”

You told yourself that this was important to him because the safety of his realm was paramount, that there was no other reason—but that little voice in the back of your head was spurred on by that delightful humming in your cells. He cares about you… it murmured, sickeningly sweet. You pushed it down and locked it away.

“Keeping dreams alive and well… that’s what’s most important,” you eventually said, looking to the sparkling heavens of the throne room with awestruck affection. “If that’s what I can do to keep this place safe, I’ll do it. No questions asked.”

Your words seemed to touch something for Morpheus. For maybe the first time since you’d met Dream of the Endless, his closed lips upturned into a true smile. The sight was a striking one, and the rarity of such an occurrence dawned on you at the stunned look on Lucienne’s face. Matthew fluttered to your side in a silent seal of approval.

As Dream had requested, you left the throne room by Lucienne’s side to return to the library and begin your research. Morpheus’s watchful eyes followed your retreating form until you were out of sight.

Matthew glided over your heads, leading the way. You didn’t miss his smug remark when he soared past your ear.

“I didn’t know he could smile.”

Chapter 7 is coming soon!