Dreamless Read online

  “To start my curse early, so you could be the one to break it,” Elena finished for him, the words flat to hide the bitterness behind them. “Kiss the poor cursed princess and everyone will be thrilled enough to forget what made her lose consciousness in the first place.” She paused as his face turned an even more crimson. “Of course, it never occurred to you what would happen if your kiss didn’t work, did it? You wouldn’t be the hero. You’d be nothing more than the bastard who trapped the princess in a century of sleep months before she had to be, just because you’d decided to be clever.” A quick spell was enough to make the spindle transport away as he watched. “Unless, of course, I decided to take care of you first.”

  Nigel couldn’t say a word, just staring at her like his voice had been stolen. Looking disgusted now, Alan shoved the prince back out onto the main street. Once he was safely gone, Elena pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes and reminded herself to breathe. “If you don’t want to kill him,” she said quietly. “I’m sure Braeth would be willing to do it. We could say it was an early death-day present for him.”

  “He’s not worth it,” Alan smoothed a gentle hand against her hair. “Besides, I need to get you home. I have to explain to several supposedly skilled guardsmen why they need to start looking for work in the food service industry.”

  That last part was a little too edged to have been directed at her, and she lowered her hands to see three guardsmen standing at the entrance to the alley looking far more embarrassed than even Nigel had managed. Alan jerked his head back in the direction of the castle, and the three disappeared as quickly as if he’d barked an actual order.

  Seeing them flee, Elena was surprised to find a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “It’s not really their fault, you know.” She glanced over at Alan. “The fool was invisible, remember. You can’t expect all the guards who work for us to be as frighteningly talented as you are.”

  Her guard was still frowning in the direction his men had escaped, brow lowered as if he was already yelling at them in his head. “I can damn well expect them to figure out when you’re being followed.” He turned back to her, genuine worry in his eyes. “Until this leg finishes healing, you won’t be protected enough.”

  She knew what he was really saying. “I don’t need a different guard,” she said firmly, trying to pretend that her chest didn’t clutch in panic at the thought. Alan understood so much without either of them ever needing to speak about it, but to trust someone else to be that close? There would never be a time she could relax. “Nigel’s horrible, but mostly because of his incompetence. After this he might even have the good sense to continue his ridiculous ‘quest’ somewhere far away from here.” He’d called it that in the one grand announcement he’d made, before anyone realized what a danger he was, and she cursed whoever his father was for inflicting him on the rest of the world without even any body guards to stop him.

  His hand on her shoulder made it clear he’d heard the panic in her voice and understood the reason for it. “You remember the other supposed ‘suitors’ who’ve tried to attack you as well as I do. Nigel isn’t even the worst of them, and there’s nothing to say they won’t come back.”

  Elena made herself take a deep breath as she felt her options slip away from her. “I know, but—”

  The world shut off.

  When she opened her eyes again she was on the ground, staring up at Alan’s terrified face. He was cradling her in his arms, checking for a pulse, and for one disoriented second she wondered how he’d managed to catch her with that broken leg of his. She hadn’t fainted—you swooned first, when that happened. You weren’t just snuffed out like a candle that someone else was done with.

  Elena felt her body go ice cold. “How long was I . . .” Her throat closed up, unable to finish the word. The curse wasn’t supposed to work like this—the spell was designed to put her to sleep for a century, not mere minutes—but it had felt exactly like every nightmare she’d ever had about her non-existent future.

  She forced the thought from her mind as Alan helped her sit up. “Twenty seconds. Maybe thirty.” His voice hadn’t quite steadied all the way yet. “You stopped speaking, and your eyes rolled up in the back of your head. Then you dropped straight to the ground.”

  She shook her head, more to deny reality than anything he’d said, then made herself stand so she could help him up. He didn’t accept the offer, watching her face the entire time as he got to his feet on his own. “We need to tell your mother.”

  “No.” Elena focused on her breathing, forcing it into a slow, steady rhythm. “We can’t even be sure that was the curse.” Alan’s eyes narrowed, and she held up her hands in supplication. “Not yet, then. Let me—let me at least find out more about what’s happening.”

  He put his hand back on her shoulder. “It’s not supposed to work like that, is it?”

  “No.” She covered his hand with her own, giving it a squeeze as a silent thank you. “Another special surprise from my aunt, I would guess.”

  Alan swore softly. “I wish Nigel had been the worst thing to happen this afternoon.”

  Elena sighed. “Me, too.”

  Chapter 2

  Phone Home

  At the sight of the crate full of smuggled pixie rum slung over Cameron Merrick’s shoulder, Captain Parker made a face. “Deever again? Already?”

  “Yep. Matt’s processing him now.” Cam set the crate down on the table, working out the kinks in his neck as he grinned at his superior officer. The leather armor had helped protect his shoulder, but there was only so much it could do when the crate was as heavy as both of his younger siblings combined. “He asked if your back was feeling any better.”

  “Oh he did, did he?” The captain leaned back in his chair, glaring at the crate as if it had disobeyed a direct order. He’d tried to pick up last week’s crate to prove a point. It hadn’t worked out well. “And it’s just barely under the limit that would let us throw him in the prison. Again.” He was getting that pinched look that meant a headache was on its way. “If he didn’t keep getting caught every time he tried to cross the border, I’d think the man was a blasted genius.”

  “Hey, no one ever said the life of a border guard was all danger and excitement.” Grabbing the necessary paperwork—if he didn’t fill it out for the alcohol, the captain would make him copy over all fifteen pages of Deever’s arrest record—he dropped down into an open chair. “There’s also the comic relief.”

  Captain Parker pinned him with a glare. It wasn’t nearly as terrifying as the one Cam’s father could manage, but he had long ago decided it would be wisest to not point that out. “It’s you kids who get the excitement and the comic relief. All I get is the blasted paperwork.”

  “At least you don’t have to suffer through it all alone.” Cam held up the form, his grey-blue eyes artificially innocent. “And I’ll let you take one of my patrols tomorrow, just out of the goodness of my heart.”

  The captain’s eyes were still narrowed, but there was amusement in them now. “You say that now, kid, but you’ll be sorry when I actually take you up on it.”

  “Hey.” Lee, another one of the guards assigned to the station, ducked his head in through the open doorway. “Mirror call for Cam. Says she’s his mom.”

  The Captain immediately perked up, then pretended he hadn’t. “Tell Marie ‘hi’ for me,” he said gruffly. “And if she asks when I’m going to pay her the twenty credit slips I owe her, tell her I’ll do it the second she gets her butt back out here and starts doing her job again.”

  “Yes, sir.” His mom had served with the border guard around the same time the Captain had been out on patrols, but after she’d met his dad, she quit to go adventuring with him. If even half the stories they’d told were true, they’d had some dangerously exciting years before settling down to raise a family.

  He’d loved the stories as a kid,
but he definitely didn’t want to have that conversation with the Captain. They never talked about it, but Cam was pretty sure the captain had never quite forgiven her for leaving. “I’ll use those exact words.”

  Cam stopped by the station’s main mirror, transferring the call to his private mirror before ducking into the bunks to grab it. He took a second to smooth out his messy hair before pressing the glass. When the mist cleared, it revealed a stunning woman in her early fifties who could still arm-wrestle his dad into submission. “I’ll be home for dinner this weekend, Mom, I swear it. You know I’d never risk your wrath.”

  Marie Merrick showed off exactly where her son had gotten both his sun-blond hair and lethal grin. “That’s because you’re a wise boy who doesn’t start fights he can’t win.” She took a deep breath, her expression far more serious than Cam liked to see. “And I’m a wise mother who knows which parent her son is more likely to listen to. So I’ll cut to the chase—please take some leave and come home. Your father needs you.”

  Cam expected annoyance, his instinctive reaction to pretty much anything to do with his father since he’d turned sixteen. He was surprised, then, that the first thing that hit him was fear. “Is Dad okay?” He couldn’t think of a reason his father might actually need him—they argued about eighteen hours out of every twenty-four, and that was only because they spent the rest sleeping. But if he was dying, he’d want the entire family with him. “Is he sick?”

  “No, no. Other than the leg, he’s completely fine.” She leaned a little closer to the mirror, everything from her voice to her posture meant to reassure. “If it was something like that, I promise I would have told you right away.”

  Cam leaned his head back against the wall, closing his eyes at the sudden wash of relief that filled him. Now that he knew nothing was wrong, he could go right back to being annoyed. “Then are you sure it’s me Dad wants? Laurel called me a few days ago—her and Mason’s mercenary outfit is still only a few days away from here. I’m sure he would have asked you to call one of them if he’d known that.”

  Marie narrowed her eyes at her second-oldest son. “Your father was perfectly willing to make the call. I suggested that I be the one to do it, because I knew the conversation would devolve into an argument and I’d have to take the mirror anyway. And we both already knew where your brother and sister were stationed—they may be too far away to come home for dinner, but they’re no more interested in risking my wrath than you are.” She sighed, giving him her “What am I going to do with you?” face. “If you won’t do it, he plans on asking your sister. But only if you say no.”

  Cam rubbed a hand over his stubbled chin. He wasn’t quite sure he believed his mother but was too smart to actually say that out loud. “Okay, but what does he need me for? Because if this is some weird backwards way to get Robbie off his magic kick, I can just tell him no from here. The kid wants to be a witch, and if he keeps working as hard at it as he is now we all know he’ll be the best one in the kingdom.”

  She gave him her motherly glare again, then her expression gentled. “It’s about Elena.”

  Cam cursed. Everyone knew about Elena, the only child of Queen Illiana and the great tragedy of their tiny kingdom. What most people didn’t know was that she was a silent, disapproving slip of a girl his parents had semi-adopted ever since the King had died just after her twelfth birthday. He’d occasionally had to spend time with her during family events, the last of which had thankfully been almost two years ago, and he could definitely say he had no interest in repeating the experience. “You can’t be serious.”

  The sudden sadness in her eyes had him bracing for the news. “Your father thinks Elena’s curse has started early.”

  Cam blew out a breath. That was about the one thing he couldn’t argue against. “He thinks?” He kept his tone carefully serious, not wanting her to think he was making light of the situation. “I was always under the impression that the curse would be pretty obvious once it kicked in.”

  “Robbie thinks all of the spells that have been thrown at it over the years might have degraded the pre-established initiation trigger Elena’s aunt set up.”

  Cam thought about trying to translate that himself, then decided he needed to reserve his brainpower. “In words I can understand, please?”

  “She collapsed, Cam. It wasn’t for very long, but Alan said there was no warning. She just . . .” The hesitation said more than the words did. “She just dropped. Like someone had yanked all the life out of her.”

  He could feel the walls start to close in on him. “And he’s absolutely, one hundred percent sure she didn’t just faint.”

  “Yes. Your father has had more than enough experience with fainting women. You remember your great-aunt, don’t you?”

  He did, at least well enough to effectively kill the hope that his dad was wrong somehow. Cameron scrubbed a hand down his face, torn between wanting to comfort his mother by promising he’d come help and running away from all this so fast he left a trail of singed ground behind him. His parents had been the ones to sign up for this particular tragedy, not him, but it looked like it was going to catch up to him anyway. “What exactly does Dad think I can do? This is magic we’re talking about. Unless something shows up I can stab, I’m not sure how much help I’ll be.”

  “With his leg broken, he doesn’t feel he can protect Elena as well as he needs to. It wasn’t as much of an issue when all he had to worry about was idiot members of the nobility, but now that she might become incapacitated at a moment’s notice—”

  He just stared at her, eyes going wide as he realized what she was getting at. “He wants me as backup? I know he thinks the castle guard are all idiots, but—”

  She shook her head, cutting him off. “No. He wants you to take over his duties until his leg heals.”

  It took real effort to keep his jaw from dropping open. “Me?” He tried to find a single part of the idea that made any sense, but he couldn’t come up with anything. “Are you sure you heard him right?”

  His mother rolled her eyes. “This is why I knew I had to be the one to make the call. You and your father inspire each other to say the stupidest things.” She shook her head. “And I’m not entirely sure what happened, but even mentioning the rest of the castle guard inspired his ‘Commander Death Scowl’ and made him go almost mute for the rest of the evening. I decided it wasn’t worth it to ask for details.”

  There had been a few years there where he’d actually counted inspiring the “Commander Death Scowl” as one of his favorite hobbies, but he could see why his mother wouldn’t feel the same way. “And he really thinks having me there will help the situation.”

  As impossible as the idea seemed, it left a weird, hopeful spark in his chest. No matter how much he tried to deny it, he wasn’t immune to the desire to make his father proud of him. The idea that Dad had asked for his help specifically . . .

  Her expression was bland enough that he knew she was hiding amusement. She had him, and she knew it. “Yes. He does.”

  “And Dad’s sure he doesn’t want to ask Laurel?”

  “Absolutely.”

  He sighed, rubbing a hand along his jaw. This was a really, really terrible idea. “Fine. I’ll talk to the captain.”

  ~

  Days later, Cameron stood outside the castle’s main gate and decided that coming was probably even more of a mistake than he’d originally thought. The building had been practically carved out of the mountainside, as much inside the dirt and rock as on top of it, and one of the previous kings had decided that meant the hallways should be as ludicrously twisted as your average mountain passageway. He’d heard his dad joke that the royal family punished criminals by sending them downstairs to try and find the kitchens in the middle of the night.

  He hadn’t been inside in over a year, and he’d never had cause to spend any real time there. Even if he didn’t get comp
letely lost in his first fifteen minutes—and wouldn’t that make dear old dad proud—Elena could probably give him the slip whenever she wanted. She knew the territory; he didn’t. He’d been working the border long enough to know who that gave the advantage to.

  “You here to see your dad?”

  Cam blinked, refocusing his attention on the gate guard who had spoken. “You can’t seriously tell me you recognize me.”

  The older man grinned. “I’ve seen the picture collection your mom keeps on her mirror. Only person I’ve ever met who has more than my wife.”

  Cam groaned, suddenly aware that the princess had probably seen his baby pictures. The only way any of this could get worse was if he’d dated her briefly and there was a messy breakup to worry about. “Yeah, I am. Any idea where he might be?”

  “Princess has been holed up in the library for the last few days. Can’t imagine the commander’s too far away.” He hesitated, then leaned forward slightly. “They’re both in kind of a mood. Be careful.”

  Cam forced a smile. “I will.” He looked back over at the castle. “Now, can you give me really detailed directions to the library?”

  ~

  He only made one wrong turn, opening the door to find a cramped, paper-filled office rather than the books he’d been expecting. When he tried to shut the door as quietly as he’d opened it, the pleasantly round-faced man at the desk lifted his head from his paperwork. “Lost?”

  “Yes. I’m looking for my dad, Commander Alan Merrick. I was told he might be in the library, but I’d like to be sure before I plunge back into the void.”

  The man smiled. It was only then that Cam noticed the pointed ears that were visible against what now seemed like a surprisingly short haircut. He didn’t look at all like any of the other elves Cam had met—they tended toward long hair and formal clothing, while this man looked more like a rumpled accountant.