The Fragile Tower - Book 1 of the No.1 magical fantasy series

The Fragile Tower Chapter 24 - The Kind Illusion

A nightmare, she thought, as a page of the book came back to her.

Then a blinding light made her flinch back and cover her eyes. There was a rushing, crackling sound with it, and when Grace looked again, the Nightmare was gone, turned into a drifting shower of ashes.

"There are more of them," she heard Ruidic say. "I can hear them."

He stooped over to look at Grace where she lay, larger and more intimidating as he crouched than she'd seen him, but his stormy gaze seemed more exhilarated than angry now. "I'm not going to let them hurt your brother, Grace. I promise you." He stood, and turned, and then asked, over his shoulder, "Are you going to the Queen?"

Afi nodded, and wiped his blade on his trousers. Grace saw trails of gleaming grey blood where it had travelled, eerie in the half light, and thought for an odd moment that these creatures were well-designed. They were unsettling even when they were dead.

"Go quickly," Ruidic said. "And if you can keep from harming Ori..."

He left the sentence unfinished, and was gone before Grace could ask him why he thought they might have to.

He took the light with him, leaving Grace and Afi in an almost total darkness. The only illumination came from that grey, slightly glowing blood on Afi's clothes.

She looked around for the door to the room where the boys were kept, wondering if Benjamin was in this same darkness and whether he could tell when he was in the trance. And only then did she realise that they had never been in the corridor that led to it. They were in a narrower, curving hallway that she thought must run past the library.

She wanted to see him, so much that it was a physical pain in her stomach all over again. She knew that she had to drag herself to her feet, and go to face the Queen and her strange child, but with the memory of Benjamin lying there, she suddenly knew that she couldn't. She had been fooling herself from the start.

She saw, dimly, that Afi was leaning down to offer her hand, but she lowered her head onto her knees, the tears that hadn't really stopped when she saw that little figure on the floor pouring onto her trousers.

"I can't do it, Afi," she said, struggling to talk through the crying, but desperate for him to understand. "I could never do it. I can't protect him and I can't save everyone. I don't even know what I'm doing here."

The words cut off, stifled by the swelling in her throat and her chest. She heard the scuff of Afi's boots on the floor as he crouched down next to her, and then she felt his arms around her and his head pressed against hers.

"You can, Grace," he told her, and she flinched from the intensity of his voice, mistaking it for anger at first. "You always could, and you will."

"But when I saw him..." she said, and couldn't say any more.

"You realised that you couldn't help him?" Afi asked her, his voice a rumbling murmur that buzzed against her ear. "But you are helping him. It was all an illusion, and it's meant to make you feel this way. That's what Nightmares are created to do. But they can only harm your mind if you let them."

She felt him sit back a little, and then there was a pressure under her jaw as he gently pressed her head upwards to look at him. Perhaps if it hadn't been so dark, she might have resisted him. She knew that her face was tear-stained and red. But it was difficult to feel the same sense of shame here, in the dim light, with him.

And then she remembered how he had stopped her, and she whispered, "How did you know? I - I didn't even stop to think. I just saw Benjamin and the pain of it... but you stopped me. How did you know it wasn't true?"