Weston put a hand over hers to stop her. “He’s a dangerous brute, Vivian. He tried to kill you.”
“He tried to kill a dragon,” she said, her voice level. “Any man could make such a mistake.”
“And threatened the woman who replaced the dragon. Don’t you forget it.”
Vivian looked up into Zee’s eyes, guarded and watchful, as though she were a stranger, an enemy. She knew full well how lethal Zee could be. If he had turned against her, if he thought there was reason to kill her, he would do that if she freed him. And she could not afford to die—there was too much riding on her success. She must find the Gates, the Key, stop the sorceress.
There was no room for love or mercy in this equation.
“Give me the knife, Weston,” she said, never once breaking the gaze that bound her and the dragon slayer together.
“Vivian, it’s dragonstone.”
“I’m aware of what it is. Give it to me.” At the touch of stone against her hand she curled her fingers around the carven bone hilt, feeling the dragonstone respond to her blood. For the first time, emotion stirred in Zee’s eyes. Stricken, she recognized it as hope. With a long, shuddering breath he closed his eyes and leaned his head back, baring his neck, his breast, asking for a death.
Vivian’s breath came ragged and harsh as she shifted her position for a better angle. It was essential that she not slip or make a mistake. The blade was honed to a killing edge, and it sliced through the rope as if it were butter.
Zee’s eyes flew open. He sucked in a breath as though he were drowning. She was near enough for a kiss, to reach up and press her lips against his, but he might as well have been on the other side of one of the forever-locked doors.
“Why?” he asked her, and his mask had melted now, his face, his eyes, nothing but pain.
In all the worlds there were no words for this; she laid the back of her hand against his scarred cheek, and he trembled at her touch. “Please,” he said. “Don’t. I can’t bear it.”
One long moment they remained thus, Vivian knowing that her touch caused more pain to him than any of the wounds that marked him.
“Weston, give him his sword,” she said.
“Vivian, surely—”
“If he’s going to kill us, he can do it without a sword. It belongs to him.”
“No,” Zee said. He moved away from her, putting distance between them. “I swore an oath to protect you. I broke it. If you ask, I will go with you, but I will not carry a blade.”
Vivian closed her eyes. In his voice she could hear all of the places where he was broken, and knew it was beyond her ability to heal him.
Thirty-three
For three long days they rested.
Weston built fires and went on short forays seeking water and food. A rabbit one night, split between the three of them. Some sort of creature that looked too much like a giant squirrel the next.
The time lay heavy on Vivian’s shoulders. She was not strong enough to travel; she knew this but chafed at her own restrictions. By the end of the third day, as the sun completed its arc across the sky and hung like a ball of flame just over the horizon, she could no longer endure the screaming of her nerves and the need to do something.
Despair gnawed at her courage. They would never catch up with the enemy. She would use the Key, if she hadn’t already, and whatever evil was going to be unleashed would be unstoppable; but still Vivian would have to fight it. She would spend the rest of her life—if she survived this adventure—pursuing one hopeless quest or another.
Zee was yet another heartbreak, and the proximity to him was tearing her apart. He had shared his adventures in clipped, military tones—a soldier reporting necessary information back to the unit. He talked about waking up among the dead warriors, his encounter at the well with the dragon, the hermit, what he had learned from Jared and from Isobel in Surmise. Other than that, he remained silent and closed. He rebuffed her attempts to check his arm and rebandage it, saying only, “I’m fine, let it be.”
“I can’t take another minute,” she said, finally, feeling like she was going to start tearing off her skin with her own fingernails if they didn’t do something. “It’s time. Let’s get moving.”
Weston looked up from the fire he was building. “It would be wise to wait until morning.” But his face had sharpened into eagerness. Zee was already on his feet.
“I don’t think so,” Vivian said. “We need to move now. I feel it. Morning will be too late.”
“Where?” Weston asked, his hands stilled in the act of striking flint to tinder.
“How do we get to the Black Gates? Any ideas? And if you don’t know, maybe we can find Surmise. My mother might know. We can’t just sit here.”
The two men exchanged a look that shut her out.
“What is it? Tell me. I’m not ten years old.”
After a long moment Weston shrugged and turned back to his fire.
“Isobel drew the map for me,” Zee said, sounding as though the words were being dragged out of him.
“And?”
“Through the cave. The only way lies through the Cave of Dreams.”
“We can’t go in there,” Weston said.
She looked from one to the other, confused. Zee’s face pale and set. Weston’s frightened. She had reason to know he was no coward.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
Weston avoided her eyes, blowing onto his pile of shavings and waking a tiny flame. It edged its way upward, growing brighter and stronger as it fed.
“Weston! Talk to me.”
He looked up then. “Have you thought about what happens to the dreamspheres that die?”
“Some sort of imbalance in Dreamworld, I’d expect. Is this really important now?”
“Deadly.”
The tone of his voice caught her attention. “Dead dreamspheres. I guess—if you were in the dream when it died, it would be bad.”
“To say the least. That’s the good news.”
Vivian followed his gaze to the mouth of the cave, felt the hairs on the back of her own neck rise with a sense of something lurking in the dark.
“Only the shape of the dream dies. It reverts back to raw dream material.”
She still didn’t understand, but Zee did.
“So that’s what I saw, then,” he said. “Somehow the stuff reflected what I have in my head.”
“Sort of. It’s more like—it reads the energy signature of what comes into contact with it. Not what’s in your head, so much as the deepest fear or desire or love—”
“Or hate.”
“What happened in the cave?” Vivian knelt down by the old Dreamshifter and put her hand on his shoulder. “What did you see?”
“It’s not just seeing, you have to understand. It manifests. It can kill you.”
“So how did you get out, then?”
“I knocked Zee out. You were unconscious. It couldn’t read either of you, so it was just me. And . . .” He swallowed hard. “I don’t want to talk about it. But if we go in there, what are we going to manifest? Either one of you care to tell me what is going to come up?”
All of them were silent. Vivian knew full well that she didn’t want to face her own demons, and she suspected that Zee had already seen something in the cave and knew what his was going to be.
“A dragon might be immune to that sort of magic.” Weston fed twigs into the hungry little flames. “Able to pass through the cave without triggering the dream matter.”
Vivian shook her head. “I can’t. It takes energy to shift. There’s nothing there.”
“I’m sorry. I just can’t think of another way.”
She rubbed her face with both hands and explored, tentatively, the place at her core where the dragon heat had been. Cold, empty. “I don’t know, Weston. Maybe after I eat something. I’m so tired—”