Selene

62 | Dreams, Part I

Kai couldn't remember if he'd ever had a dream before that felt so real, he felt like he was being strangled even when he woke.

In the dream, he was in the garden, in the middle of night, the greenery all around him too lush for fall. It was too bright for the nighttime, too, with the moon bobbing in the sky far above. He couldn't tell whether it was threatening him or not. At first, he could squint and make out some kind of face in its surface, deep-set eyes and a crater nose and a wide, smiling mouth. But the longer he looked, the brighter the moon got, and the more the details of its surface were drowned out.

He remembered his old dreams as he stood there, back when he was developing feelings for Selene. He remembered how panicked he felt as he imagined her hands on his neck, her skin on his skin, her hair on his cheek, her lips on his lips. The most vivid of all the dreams took place right here in the garden, in the shining, too-bright moonlight, Selene shimmering beside him. She had looked too beautiful to be real. His face and ears felt hot at the thought of it now, and he gazed at his feet. The wind was cold against his skin. Why should he be so embarrassed, if it's just a dream? Why should he care what Selene thinks of him, or anyone else? He rubbed his face with the heels of his hands, sat down on the stone bench at the edge of the garden. Isn't it natural? Why should he feel bad about having feelings for someone? Why should he still feel bad, after all this time? Why did it grate at his soul?

He knew the answer. Kai felt so lucid, he was having trouble believing this dream wasn't real. He was keenly aware of every chill in his body, and the cold air only made him think of everything in more clarifying grit and more heart-rending pain. Selene leading him around, the marriage alliance, pretending to be his friend, him kissing her, her telling him everything, her being disgusted, repelled— him somehow not— it overwhelmed him. And Selene coming back, when Kai finally thought he might be able to leave her behind him. Selene avoiding him. And him being able to tell she was in such inescapable hurt and conflict, and there was nothing he could do about it.

The moon glared. Kai shut his eyes and covered them with his palms. What could he do about it? He was trying so hard to think. It took every ounce of emperor he had, and it had already eaten up the prince he used to be. The agony of inaction was nearly eating him up. It felt like it did months before, when he felt like a tool for laying around when letumosis antidotes couldn't be distributed fast enough, but this time it ripped at him more, and he couldn't understand why.

He wished more than anything that he could find some kind of separation between who he needed to be and who his head seemed to think he was. He was not some melty, simpering teenager. He was an adult. He was emperor. He felt the duty and responsibility of his job etched into every bone in his body and somehow, it wasn't enough to convince him to stay away from Selene, to not get involved with whatever plot was hatching up there on Luna. It was easier when he had the marriage alliance to convince him that having these deep, complicated feelings for Selene would actually be beneficial in the long run, but then all the pretenses came down. They  were now both exactly as they really were, and it felt too exposed for Kai. He wanted everything to go back to the way it was.

There was a rustle of bushes and a howl of the wind, footsteps behind Kai. He peeled his hands from his eyes and glanced over his shoulder. Selene was there, just as she used to appear in his dreams, perfection itself, shimmering dress and skin and hair, gleaming steel hand. It felt disingenuous. It didn't feel like her. The sight of her sent an arrow through his chest, made him have trouble breathing. She was so untouchable it made him want to cry.

Selene walked slowly, approaching his shoulder. He felt her knees tap the back of the bench behind him. He slowly turned away, back to the moon. He closed his eyes. He didn't even know if he could hear her breathing, and his own chest felt constricted, like he was about to choke up the dry sobs he felt like he was holding back all the time.

And then there was a sudden shift in the air. The wind howled again, harsher this time, whipping Kai's cheeks and hands with a terrible fervour. Selene had one knee on the cold stone bench beside him, and she grabbed him and shook him, startling him. He whipped his head back over to look at her, surprised, and nearly jumped back from the shock.

She had completely transformed while he looked away, no longer that vision of beauty he'd seen just a few moments before. Instead, she appeared before him now as she had the other day, in the hospital wing, barreling down the hall with bare feet and untamed hair. She'd morphed into her hospital gown and crazy eyes, and she looked so angry, so mad that it contorted her face. She looked like a person. Maybe she looked like a monster. As he stared, she sneered, dug her fingers into his upper arms, wrapped them around his shoulders. Her grip was unbearably tight.

"Why won't you look at me?" She screamed in his face. She was leaning so close, he could feel the heat of her breath. Her hair falling into his face didn't feel warm as it brushed against him this time; it was searing. It felt as though it was branding him, carving itself into his skin. She shook him, violently, and Kai felt his insides jerk around. He tried to look away from her intense glare and she howled in rage, dropped her hands from his shoulders and punched him across the face.

Kai keeled over from the shock, shouting out in pain. She had hit him with her metal hand. The pain shooting though him was so intense that he couldn't believe he was dreaming. He held one hand to his probably broken cheekbone, cradling it, and pinched his arm with the other hand. He thought he'd try the old adage, or try and wake himself up, but he felt the pain of the pinch too and felt tears dot his eyes.

Selene grabbed him again, this time by the throat, with both hands wrapping themselves into his flesh, her fingers trying to bury themselves into his skin.

"Every time I try to look at you, you look away! You're ignoring me! You're ignoring all that I do!" she yelled, her grip tightening. He clawed at her arms. He glared into her furious, unyielding eyes and for a moment, he felt such an intense hatred and anger that he became completely consumed and overwhelmed by the feeling, ignoring even the world slipping and falling away beneath him. It descended into an rapid blackness and then the darkness of his room as he woke with a start, jerking and kicking his legs as though the world really was slipping out from under him, with the pressure and pain of Selene's grip still lingering unpleasantly on his throat.

Kai sat up, with much effort, and gazed into the gauzy darkness of his chambers. There was nothing but a faint light with no source in here, and an overwhelming sense of loneliness. He sunk into himself. He wanted to put the dream behind him immediately, back out of what he was sure meant nothing at all, but under closer examination... if he really thought about it...

He thought about Selene, violence, hatred. They were all so complicated, mixed and stirred up inside him. He didn't hate her. He never thought he did. She confessed to being responsible for millions of deaths and he did not feel hatred. Perhaps he had felt, briefly, things close to it. Resembling it. Distant cousins of hate stirring up unrest in his head. But it was always overshadowed by an uncertainty that loomed much greater, almost a separate emotion itself for all it occupied him. Every step of the way, Kai wanted to see the best in Selene. He forced himself to, over and over again. That much was painfully clear in his tired, deluded, cloudy head. Clearer than when he was completely awake and clearer than when she was right in front of him.

Kai felt goosebumps dot his arms and he rubbed them away harshly, staring at the covers draped over his lap. For a moment, he felt like dying, with the phantom pain of Selene's punch on his cheek and her hands around his throat. He felt such a deep, resounding misery that he didn't know what to do. Fall back asleep? Stay awake? Would he ever make sense of these feelings he had?

He was in love with her. He still was, and he'd known it for a while. But he thought about Selene in her hospital bed, determined to not meet his eyes and not let him close, and Selene avoiding him in the halls. The hatred she felt for herself that fateful night in the gardens, and her distaste and disgust at Kai. Kai wondered if the reason he was still agonising every day about her was because he was holding out some little hope that his feelings could actually come to fruition. But it wasn't possible. It wasn't possible after all that she'd told him, it wasn't possible with the marriage alliance wrecked, and it wasn't possible because he hadn't faced the facts— she did not feel the same.

He sighed and rubbed his eyes, collapsed back into his pillows. Maybe he'd just have to live this way, he mused to himself bitterly. And maybe he'd have to embrace that tiny feeling he'd felt back then and learn to hate Selene, if he was ever going to put this behind him. But that wasn't what he wanted. It never would be. He stared at the ceiling a bit more, and then swung his legs over the edge of his bed. He needed air.