"Grace!"
She heard Afi's urgent shout, but she ignored it. She was already drawing lines of fire in the air, and the look of shock on Ruidic's face was the only thing that could have delighted her then.
But before she could complete the symbol, she felt her legs fly out from under her. She struck the floor heavily, and her head hit the mosaic patterns hard enough to make her dizzy.
She could feel someone holding her down and fumbling for the wand. She kicked out at them, and levered herself off the floor so that she threw their weight half off her. She heard a sharp breath as they struck the hard floor in turn, but the hand that was round her wrist didn't falter.
"Wait!" he said, and she realised that it was Afi, stopping her from moving and from killing Ruidic when it was all she wanted. She couldn't imagine ever wanting anything again in her life.
"Stop it!" she said, punching at him with her free hand and flinging herself from side to side, trying to break his grip. How could he be so strong? And why couldn't he just let her do it?
She started to cry, with frustration and pain.
"Get off me! Get off me, Afi! I'm going to kill him!"
But she couldn't move, and she knew that Ruidic would kill them both, too, while she fought with him.
"Just wait!" he said, fiercely. She felt a tug on her shoulder as he pulled at the sewing-bag, and then a pressure against her neck.
"Look, Grace! Look!"
Afi released her wrist to pull her head around, painfully. For a moment her only thought was the wand, but as she brought her will to draw those shapes, her eyes took in what was in front of her.
Ruidic was looking at her with a slight smile. There was nothing beneath his feet, and the light was no longer green, but a warm yellow. It came from a glowing globe in his hand.
"It was an illusion," Afi said into her ear. She felt his breath against her cheek, and could hear that he was breathing hard with the effort of holding her down. "An illusion, Grace, caused by nightmares."
She put her hand to her neck, and realised what the pressure she had felt was. He had taken the true-seer and put it to her skin. He was holding it there. And then she remembered the book, and what it had said about the awful creatures called Nightmares that cold mages conjured.
They enter your mind, and show you visions of the most terrifying things you can imagine: of loved ones lost, of dreams destroyed; of your own death, or an eternity of powerlessness. And your fear becomes their power over you.
"I couldn't have killed him, Grace," Ruidic told her, a note of disappointment in his voice belying the self-confident smile. "I couldn't have killed any of them, no matter what she ordered me to do."
Grace felt the tension go out of all her muscles as relief flooded through her.
He's all right, she thought. He's all right.
Afi slowly released her head, leaving the true-seer against her neck but taking his weight off her. As he stood, his eyes went back to the floor where Benjamin had lain, and there was a twist to his mouth that made him look years and years older.
And then something flew out of the darkness behind him, and Grace shouted, "Afi!"
He spun more quickly than she had ever seen anyone move. His empty hand flashed, and then shone silver as he slid a blade from his sleeve and brought it around in a curve.
The white-shrouded figure that had flown towards him screeched, reeling backwards. Grace saw its face, e was
a pale, veined horror of a face with blank grey eyes and lank, curling black hair hanging over it.
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?"
In the dimness, she saw the movement of his mouth as he smiled at her. "Because you said 'Benjamin.' It was Edin I saw lying there, and if you hadn't said his name, I would have been every bit as convinced as you were." His grin turned a little wicked. "But I probably would have done a better job of killing Ruidic."
Grace tried to smile, but the hopelessness was still there, mocking her.
"What happens if we fail?" she asked him. "What happens if I fail? I don't even know what I'm going to say to her, and if she turns and fights..."
He lifted his hand, and pushed some of her hair back off her face. The touch of his hand on her skin was warm and living, but it still made her shiver.
"You won't fail." He gently tucked the hair behind her ear, as he had done out on the street days ago. There was still that desperate shortness of time pressing at them, but he didn't draw away. "You're the strongest person I've ever known, Grace. Stronger than the Queen, stronger than my mother, and stronger than I am."
And then he leaned down and kissed her, his mouth the warmest thing she had ever felt. The heat of it ran through her, and she sighed as the hopelessness vanished away like vapour. There was no room for it here, with her arms going around him and his chest pressed against hers, the pounding of his heart as clear to her as her own.
She had never known herself to want anything as much as she wanted him, to touch him and hold him and be held in return, but in the end it was Grace who drew away. She wound her fingers through his, and looked down at them.
"Not disappointed I'm not Merrily, then?" she asked, almost joking, but almost meaning it.
He laughed, such a soft, carefree sound, that it made her heart speed up all over again.
"The only thing she had which you haven't is a key," he told her, and leaned down to kiss her again, briefly.
Grace looked up at his blue eyes, just visible in the darkness, and hope that she would have the chance to see them like this again. With a tearing feeling of regret, she untwined her fingers from his and stood.
She took the true-seer and bent to tie it around her ankle again, hoping she could communicate enough of what she saw to Afi, who would see whatever illusion the Queen chose to show them and not what was really happening.
Afi retrieved the wand where it had fallen from her fingers, and gave it to her with a tiny bow.
"Take me to your leader," Grace said, and saw the puzzled frown he gave her. Just for a moment regretted that they came from different worlds.
She wanted to hold on to his hand as they walked to the intention wind, knowing that despite the belief he had poured into her, she might have only moments to enjoy it. No matter what Afi had said, Grace knew that the Queen was the more powerful. But the new Grace that had sprung into being when she had stepped out of her house before midnight knew that she had to resist, and to let any thoughts go except the ones which would keep her alive.
So she walked next to him through the dimness, the glow of the Nightmare's blood the only illumination, and felt his proximity like the heat of a fire against her skin.
She watched as his hand went to his ear again, a little way on, and caught the faintest gleam of a smile.
"Dedora and the girls have arrived with the Captain, and they're pushing the invading forces back with surprising skill."
Grace nodded, and for a moment felt a draw towards that room which held Benjamin, and which they were leaving under Ruidic's protection. Did they have to help the Queen, if the girls were winning out? Could they not break the link?
But she heard the howling pick up again, and saw Afi's hand go to his ear once again. And this time, he didn't say a word, which was all the knowledge of the battle she needed. It sent chills crawling up and down her back to think of Aniela and Kelly and Lilly and the others overwhelmed. Had she sent them to their deaths?
The glow of the intention wind and the disc that anchored it gradually grew to compete with that tiny light, and they rounded a final corner and saw it ahead. They both stepped close to it, and then paused, as if by consent.
"So we just have to remember to think nice thoughts about the Queen?" she asked him, aware that she was still whispering in the darkness but unable to bring herself to speak any more loudly.
"That's right," he told her. "Think about going to help free her from Ori, and we'll be just fine."
Grace nodded, deciding not to point out that the definition of "fine" didn't necessarily include arriving at the rooms of a woman who might very well turn the full force of her power, and the boys' power, on them. She stepped onto the disc with him, trying to remember the ache she had felt when she had seen the Queen in the snow, her little boy still and unmoving.
It took no time at all to arrive in the garden again, though now it was a gloomier, more threatening place. The huge, dirty black clouds above with their sickly tinge of yellow were all but surrounding the crystal dome of the tower, and as if that weren't enough, they were hurling snow at it, too, in sheets and waves and buffeting clouds, so that there was almost no light from without.
Instead, the place was lit by little lamps amidst the trees, and occasional scatters of what looked to Grace like fairy lights until she saw them moving and realised they were some more of Ruidic's strange and beautiful insects.
"Where?" Afi asked her, a breathy murmur close to her ear that reminded her immediately of that kiss. She shoved the thought away, and looked around, her ears alert for laughter again. But the garden was quiet, the song of some of Ruidic's birds and the clattering of water over stones the only sounds.
She began to make her way through the trees, walking towards where she had first met the Queen and her child. The place seemed so different now, in the darkness, but she found the clearing in the end, only to see that it stood empty.
She hesitated, beginning to grow uneasy, when she heard a quiet voice.
Afi turned to look through the undergrowth, and began to walk. Grace followed him, trusting that his ears were sharper when he had lived for years as a hunter.
He led her through an archway made of interwoven trees covered with purple flowers, and then past a small pool. They moved past a stand of slender, silvery trees, and then they saw her.
Grace stopped behind Afi, and then took a quiet and careful step so that she could see properly.
The Queen sat in a swinging-chair, rocking gently backwards and forwards. The chair was cushioned with vines covered in flowers, and seemed almost as if it had grown naturally out of the trees.
At first, Grace couldn't understand what the Queen was doing. As she rocked, gently, one of her hands moved up and down, and she was singing softly. Squinting, Grace could see a cluster of lights in the air between her hands, and wondered if this were some strange and magical instrument.
And then the song finished, and the Queen leaned forwards and kissed the air in front of her. She said, "You see, my little one? The song told you. There is no reason to be afraid."
And with a hollow, aching feeling in her chest, Grace understood at last.