The Book of Dreams Forgotten: (A Broken Creatures Novel, Book 2) Read online

  “Then perhaps it would thrill you to know, as I told your sister, I have been pondering the same distraught truths as you and have decided that, come my next return, I will create a race in your and Ophelia’s image. A race the two of you might lead and occupy—”

  Jera lurched from her seat, backing away as she struggled to tell if the male had lost his wits entirely. “We do not need more creatures like us. We do not want them.”

  The Maker frowned at her outburst, eyes stunned like a scolded child. “You will not be so alone—”

  “What brand of fool are you?!” Inside, her chest echoed in the place of her missing heart, her anger crashing against her walls. “Is it so hard to see, to comprehend? I do not long for others. I never have. All of these seasons past, there has only ever been one in which I’ve wanted at my side.”

  “Jera, I am right here—”

  “And why not closer?!” she erupted.

  He vanished from his seat and appeared inches from her with such suddency, she stumbled back only to find the wall against her.

  “A-and why not closer?” she whispered again, and when he leaned his head down, lips nearing her own, she was thankful she was without a heart, lest it rupture on the spot.

  But when his hand lifted, stroking her cheek once, it did not save her from trembling. “Hmm~?” he said in a singsong voice, an airy little sound that she felt all around.

  “Why her?” she barely managed. “Why do you choose my sister over me when we look the same?”

  Warm fingers traveled lower, whispering over the hollow of her throat. His tongue, she watched, enraptured, as it snaked out and wet lips she knew without a doubt would be just as she imagined them.

  Closer he drew. Closer.

  Then, “Because you are disgusting, Jera.”

  Of all the darkness and black skies she had witnessed these lasting nights, the black streak to blank out her thoughts was the darkest she’d experienced yet.

  Her breaths came to a halt, her blood chilling to icy shards, cutting the veins they perused.

  “You seek happiness, I know, but happiness is a fleeting, demure little thing, dear one. A concept preserved for those who are deserving—and your soul does not fall among them.”

  Her throat, closed perhaps eternally, struggled to swallow as she stared up into those eyes of brilliant brown.

  “When I found you and Ophelia, how I wanted to forgive what you’d done. We were but children ourselves, after all. How I tried, and how I failed. Out of fear, I brought the two of you to this world, believing it would be you who brought it harm, not my beloved.”

  Why, she wanted desperately to ask.

  He read the question in her eyes and chuckled softly. “Is that truly a question, dear one? Why? Have you forgotten the state I discovered the two of you in? Evidence surrounding you, the young demon born of fire. No more than a fragile five summers and you burned them all, Jera. Because that is what creatures like you do.”

  No. No.

  She fought back the terrible memories of that night, where she’d found her parents sleeping in the village tent. How easy it’d been to take their life. Their screams, she still revisited them just to remind her of what she’d done.

  “You and I, Jera? We are one in the same. So miserable and broken, we crave those who are fixed, those who give us but a taste of happiness—even if we are destined to break them all the same. Ophelia may have destroyed all life here by accident, but you . . . you stole the lives of your kin intentionally.”

  He stepped back, his wings flaring. A male who cherished life in every form. A male who wished to heal all things. And her, a female who’d slaughtered her entire race . . .

  “Then you see it?” he murmured. “You see why it is I can never crave one so impure.”

  This time when he vanished, he did not return, leaving her to gasp and grasp the words said to her. Until her fire returned to her palms and the rage in her chest where her heart should have been, it poisoned all of her.

  Beckoned her from the dining hall, storming towards her chamber. However, it was not her chamber in which she entered, but that of her sister.

  Would the little darling burn as easily as their mother, their father? Would she scream louder than the village had or perish just as quickly?

  Her hands warmed, desperate to prove the Maker right, to show onto herself that she was impure and that she did corrupt all that was good.

  But then she heard Ophelia’s cries.

  Bundled beneath a plethora of white furs, with a room so big and empty, Ophelia was but the sliver of an entity on the bed. This fragility, was this all Jera had allowed the Maker to remove her heart for? To make this live on?

  “Why are you crying?” she demanded.

  Ophelia jumped, then struggled to turn over and look to her, grey eyes no different from hers, yet . . . faded. “Jera, I didn’t hear you come in.” Weak. Her voice reminded her of decayed bones, threatening to crumble beneath the slightest brush.

  “How could you through your senseless tears?”

  Her sister looked away then, curling farther into the furs. “Forgive me if I disturbed you.”

  You’ve disturbed me for many seasons now, she wanted to quip. Instead, she found herself demanding a second time, “Tell me why you cry.” When it should have been her doing so.

  There were moments of hiccups and silence, objections and defiance, but when it was Ophelia realized she was not leaving, her sister mumbled, “That night, I wish I could have protected you like you protected me.”

  Jera’s molars ground against one another. “Protected?” she grated.

  “I . . . for many seasons I knew what Mother and Father had been doing to you, but I’d been too afraid to do anything against them—even when it was they turned their attention on me. You knew, did you not? You knew what they did and only then did you take action. While me . . .” The tears fell harder, the noises she made seeming to open up the sky’s rain. “I could not protect you from any of them. And the creatures of this world, I could not protect them from me.”

  She stared down at Ophelia.

  What must it be like to have no control of when you could use your gift? To speak with someone one moment only to mistakenly kill them the next?

  “I know why you hate me,” her sister said. “I could not protect you then and even now I use your heart, one I do not deserve. One that may be futile should I kill again—when I kill again. Because I cannot contain it, the terrible power.”

  “The Maker said this heart would be different.”

  She shook her head. “It will not. It feels wrong, like perhaps I’ve cheated death one too many times and soon, all of the bad inside of me will explode once and for all.”

  Bad?

  The word stunted her, brought her to the edge of the bed. This close, it would take but one proper torch to end her sister in her weakened state. To take the Maker’s happiness away from him forever.

  So why was it she found herself crawling into the bed beside her? Why was it she found her arms draping around her sister’s body as she pressed her head to her back and said with earnest truth, “Terrible deeds are but products of the world itself. What you did you could not help and for that, you are not bad, Lia.”

  No, Jera was the truly awful one here. An entire race . . .

  Quieting the inferno of hatred blaring in her chest, she pulled her sister closer and vowed, “Should ever all of your bad explode, I will be here to keep you together.”

  Because Ophelia was the only good thing left in her life, she realized, and it would take a million worlds before she allowed the last piece of purity she owned to rust.

  Call her selfish.

  For that was what she was.

  What more could one expect from such an impure thing like herself?

  Ch. 23

  December 24th

  Christmas Eve

  I woke with a fire in my chest, a burning in my palms, and what more . . .

  There
was no fog in my head, only a vivid and discombobulating remembrance. The dreams, the context, flowing like a tapestry through my mind. As if some invisible seal had been broken. And the information—it was suffocating, devastating.

  Was it true? Any of it?

  My hands trembled as I replayed the Maker’s words, emotions that weren’t mine crammed deep in my throat. That man . . . was that how she saw me?

  Worse, was that how she saw herself? Impure? Undeserving?

  All this time I’d been going about this all wrong. I’d been trying to force Jera and I to conform to a standard I’d determined, defined and declared what was the “right” way when, all along, these standards were the very thing that’d pushed her away.

  It was like Natalie said, love wasn’t expressed the same between everyone. But for some people, love wasn’t expressed at all—especially when convinced that to do so was to harm the other. Was that where Jera’s reserve originated all along? The Maker had said she destroyed all in which she loved because that was what she did. And she’d believed him.

  When she’d thought my memories would be wiped by Niv, she’d revealed a candid expression of the truth, that she irrefutably cared for me. Demanded that when my memories left, I had better come back to her.

  That burning in my palms, I was sure half of it stemmed from some invisible residue from the pixie’s blood, but the other half, the half that licked a blazing fire to a constricting space in my chest, extended from the night before, when Jera’s hand had slipped into mine. That one lucid moment where she’d thought I was too inebriated to remember the strength in which she’d held my hand, the force in which she’d regarded me, as if sending a silent promise to never let me fall into darkness.

  Because that was what she’d been trying to do all along.

  Protect me from the deep end, the trenches where morality was lost. The trenches where she dwelled dailly.

  I’d screwed up.

  Crap, I’d screw up big time, looking at this all wrong.

  There was only one thing I could do to try and fix this, to start over for good this time.

  I swung my feet over the edge of the bed and rose. It was still night time, the alarm clock flicking the numbers 1:54 AM back at me. Only place that would be open on Christmas Eve was the drugstore around the corner with their overpriced everything.

  So be it.

  I grabbed my trench and car keys, heading out the back of the coffee shop.

  *****

  By the time I got back, it was 3 o’clock on the dot and snowing furiously. I dusted the snow from my shoulders before hanging up the coat and getting to work.

  It was 5 by the time I finished and headed upstairs to knock softly on the twins’ door.

  When no response came, I cracked it open slowly. The room was dark save for the low glow of the alarm clock. They slept in the position they always did, Jera’s arms wrapped around Lia from behind as though should her heart and body give out again, her embrace alone would keep her sister together—the way Lia had done for her all those years ago.

  I paused and just for a moment, I slipped into Lia’s dark energy. The stranger, his words, they still haunted me. But just then, I sensed nothing amiss in the faint pulses of her ribbons aside from an increasing weakness.

  That dream, the Maker had said the only way to help her would be through implanting Jera’s own beating heart. Something I would never do, which meant hopefully when Jera and I went into the Shatters, there would be a more prominent solution somewhere. One the Maker had overlooked.

  I crossed over to the bed and shook Jera gently.

  “Preying on sleeping girls, are you?”

  I blinked. She hadn’t even been asleep. “Have you been awake all this time?”

  “Have you been a creeper all this time?” she returned drably.

  “Hilarious. Come here, I need your help with something.”

  “Something that can’t wait until tomorrow? Beauty sleep, Peter. Clearly you know nothing of it.”

  “Just come with me for a second.”

  She must have heard the hard press of my words, because with a sigh, she sidled from Lia and came to her feet. Her black night clothes blended her with the night, her face an ethereal glow. I had to look away from her eyes, knowing how easy it was to get enraptured in their matte pastes, like polished moonlight one moment, glittering granite the next.

  “What do you need help with?” she muttered.

  I nodded her into the hall where we descended the steps quietly, but before she could round the corner to the parlor, I fell back behind her, placing my hands over her eyes.

  “Wh-what are you doing?” she asked in honest surprise, no heat flaring from around her. A good sign.

  If I was going to do this, I’d promised myself I would do it the right way. The way I was sure plenty of people wouldn’t have advocated, but shunned.

  “At 4 AM, every morning, you sneak into the kitchen and steal tubes of icing, thinking I don’t notice,” I murmured.

  She crossed her arms defensively. “You can’t prove that.”

  “When prepping the pastry compartment, you always eat five cinnamon buns and mark them as defective on the form.”

  “B-because they are!”

  I chuckled, urging her forward, my nerves relaxing when she complied. “The Christmas tree has two candy canes left when I’d swear there were nearly a hundred.”

  “Danny and his mutt,” she said coolly.

  I lowered my head slightly, nose brushing the crown of her curls, the faint scent of chocolate chestnuts doing something terrible to my mind. Then, at her ear, “I found the wrappers under your pillow.”

  She tensed and I laughed, dropping my hands from her eyes.

  Her mouth fell open the slightest, her eyes going wide, confusion momentarily stealing away her agitation, and that expression alone made it worth it.

  Before us, I’d cleared away all of the tables, leaving just the one in the center of the parlor. A black tablecloth was draped over it, decorated with fall leaves at their tips (the only one the drugstore had left on Christmas Eve). There was a single green candle lit, a single rose, and a single mountain of chocolate twist donuts stacked in the shape of a Christmas tree (I hoped). Red, blue and green tiny candy canes surrounded the platter

  The best thing about Jera not being from my world was that she wouldn’t know what a cliche this all was. What more, I didn’t think she cared about it one way or another; she hadn’t looked away from the chocolate donut christmas tree since I uncovered her eyes.

  “What is this?” she managed.

  “The first of many Christmases. I’m not sure what’s going to happen when we cross through the gateway, but whatever terrible things we face, I’d rather we do so without us hating one another. And . . .” I led her to the table and pulled out her chair. “I wanted your first Christmas to be special.”

  Just in case it’s our last, I didn’t add.

  The silent stun never wavered, even as she tentatively took a seat. “Is this what you humans do for Christmas, eat a ton of sweets?”

  I smiled. “No, not typically. Those weren’t the only reasons I brought you down here. Like I said, I needed your help.” Crossing over to the jukebox, I inserted two of Dad’s old dimes I’d found.

  Alright, Zapp, don’t fail me now.

  As the drums thrummed a heavy beat through the speakers, I turned to Jera then and froze at the sight of her inky locks caught in the candlelight, obsidian horns consuming the effulgence. Those storm gray eyes staring back at me . . . An angel of death in her own right.

  My nerve trembled.

  ‘Hey lady, let me tell you why I can’t live my life without you . . .’

  I allowed the lyrics to seep into me, fortify my resolve as I joined her at the table. Deep breath, slow exhale. I relaxed my shoulders and watched her unwaveringly as I said, “You’re not worthless. The day you entered my life was the best thing that ever happened to me. The first time I kissed yo
u was when I knew I could never lose you.” If slathering my prose in cliches and cheesy—but very true—sentiments was what it took, I was taking no prisoners.

  “My mom and dad, they fell in love so easily,” I admitted. “Cared for one another like second nature. Before, when you said in your own way that you cared for me, some part of me must have thought that’d be us. But then you and Lia both pushed me away. And while I don’t know why Lia is, I know why you are, and I’m telling you now—you don’t have to. You don’t have to protect me.”

  Her mouth was working for a moment, thoughts spinning in her gaze, until finally she said, “You’re not as strong and trained as most—”

  I shook my head. “I meant you don’t have to protect me from you.”

  She fell silent.

  ‘I’m going to make you understand . . .’

  “That’s what you’re doing, right? Your world, your darkness, you’re trying to keep me away from it. I’m saying now, you don’t have to.”

  ‘I want to be your man.’

  “I want to be a part of it. Before, you trained me to use my ability without holding back, but the moment you started to care about me, you held back. You and Lia both. Never told me I could do something like this,”

  With the fraction of the pixie’s dark energy I had remaining inside of me, I urged it towards my palm. Slowly, a tiny, crystalized trinket began to take form from void space. A pixie with vitric wings no different from Breone’s.

  I set it down between us.

  What did she see when she looked at me? Was it like Graves said, that I was inferior and undeserving of her?

  “You don’t understand, Peter,” she whispered, absentmindedly taking a candy cane. “The more you learn, the deeper you get roped into . . .”

  “You?” I supplied.

  She looked away. “You don’t know me, what I’ve done—what I can do.”