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cuckoo-on-a-string · 6 months

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Hello, Mr. Monster (Seven. Sacred)

Summary: Eros and Psyche inspired Soulmate!AU, Morpheus x female OC/reader

Master list

Chapter warnings: emotional distress, anxiety, recall of threat of assault/brainwashing, explicit smut A/N: My treat! Happy Halloween! Only about half this beast is edited, but I gave myself permission to break the no-fic-til-first-draft-is-finished rule if I could complete it by Halloween, soooo... ENJOY! Happy to talk inspo music/plot/scream in harmony in comments and asks.

Chapter 6: Sacred

She wasn’t wearing shoes.

She didn’t entirely realize until she left the palace. The grand castle released her easily, giving her a side door to slip through as she tried escaping herself, and she hesitated when soft dirt replaced smooth stone. The fae’s work stripped a lifetime of callouses. A week ago, she could walk across gravel barefoot. Now… She could go back, admit defeat and finish dressing properly. But she couldn’t deal with any more of Gwen’s concern, and the urge to run boiled from her stomach up the back of her throat. Maybe it would burst out as a scream. Maybe she’d just vomit on her own toes.

No going back.

Something would catch her if she turned around, and she wouldn’t stop until the sensation drained away in sweat, blood, and tears.

Maybe she’d trip and earn herself some new scars.

She didn’t actually run, but she walked quickly, like she had any idea where she was going and had a schedule to keep.

The sunshine welcomed her, wrapping warm as her shawl around her shoulders, but she kept her eyes on the path, looking for loose stones to dodge or signs of other travelers. But she found no footprints. Heard no breaking twigs ahead or behind. No voices carried on the faint breeze. The world felt a little too perfect, as if it froze when she left her room, holding its breath as it waited for her to pass by. Too still. Like it might startle her if the clouds skidded along like normal clouds usually did. The blue overhead felt careful. Intentional.

The path led her to the edge of a river – or a lake – maybe a vast moat around the palace. She couldn’t see a way across, and she hesitated on the bank, toes curling into the grass as fingernails folded into palms. She wasn’t ready to stop. She needed to keep going. This wasn’t where she sat and cried. She had to burn out the panic, and she desperately needed a way across the water so she could escape into the green hills beyond.

Chewing on her lip, tasting blood, she squinted at the flecks of sunlight glinting on the water’s surface and tried to guess how deep it was. Impossible to guess. But it looked placid enough. Her was still wet, after all. A little more water wouldn’t hurt her.

She stepped from the bank, expecting a cold plunge, but she found sand barely an inch below the surface. Looking again, she could just make out a submerged path ready to help her ford the river, and she tried very hard not to question if it was there before she stepped on it. More than a little afraid it would disappear halfway through, she sprinted across the open water, splashing her clean clothes and making a terrible racket in the pristine stillness. Although the water wasn’t perfectly still, her steps left great ripples that carried the secret of her flight to both shores and beyond. Round whispers revealing her route, rolling off like a bell’s peel to tell the invisible something where she’d fled.

Her beautiful skin crawled, and she didn’t stop until she’d hidden herself in the green shadows beyond the far bank. Pine needles cushioned her steps, and she slowed to catch her breath, still moving forward, but only barely as the wood’s sap and moss filled her senses.

Her heart beat so fast it hummed, and the old ache stirred sharp and deep behind her ribs.

She was missing something. She needed something. She’d been hurt in ways her simple human magic couldn’t mend, but if she pulled the shawl even tighter, everything would be fine. The soft knit would hold her together like a bandage. Or a net. That shouldn’t comfort her, but it did, and she had too many battles to choose this one.

Being caught was alright so long as she was the one to trap herself.

She kept going, and her heart stewed in memories she’d hoped to leave on the floor of the bath. Things grew out of her helpless fears. Weedy jolts of terror that came back no matter how much she reasoned them away. Doubt spread like mold over every good thing. Confusion soared tall as a tree, and even the Dreaming’s determined sunlight couldn’t pierce its canopy.

She didn’t understand why Morpheus lied. And because she didn’t know that, the question her safety and future hinged on, she couldn’t banish every creeping dread that fed on its shadow. Everything she thought she knew felt fragile, and she wasn’t willing to test her assumptions’ strength. She’d thought he respected her. She’d thought her dreams could be a haven with him. She’d thought her life had changed for the better. For once.

But the fae took her for him.

Whatever she thought she knew, they clearly knew something else.

She walked on. Searching her thoughts. Wandering a strange land. Not at all ready to ask for answers.

The woods thinned into scrubby trees and thickets, fading from emerald to a yellowed olive green. Low stone walls rose and fell along the sides of the path she chose at random, bordering little fields full of pumpkins and graveyards bristling with angled headstones. Signs of structure beyond wilderness, a long-inhabited corner of a rural land, far removed from the gleaming palace with its lavender bath and magical bed.

But it was still so quiet.

Where were all the people? Dreams, nightmares, stories. The Dreaming may be vast, but it had nearly countless residents. Fin and Gwen spoke of whole villages, towns, homes full of strange, beautiful, and awful creatures crafted or invited into the Dreaming by its king. The silence rang false, and her heart snagged on a terrible idea.

The air in her lungs hardened.

She’d never left the unseelies’ court. She only walked through a vision boiled from poppy juice and desperate hopes. Maybe she still wore her wedding dress. Or maybe this was the truth of Love in Idleness. She could love her monster because she imagined he was better than he was. Her mind had broken and she found herself roving freely, left to convalesce on her own terms while in reality…

She’d come to a stone bridge fording a creek, and she practically fell back against the wall, sliding down, dropping her head to her knees.

Fucking fuck.

She’d walked so far, but the fear still had a literal chokehold.

Breathing. That mattered most. Whatever else was wrong couldn’t be fixed until she could breathe. She couldn’t even keep walking without air. Old lessons battled with her diaphragm as she tried to scold herself calm. Her old breathing exercises helped take the edge off the crushing sense of suffocation, but her nervous system hummed with tension, and she sat locked in place.

She couldn’t stop thinking about the dress, feeling phantom spider silk clinging to her skin, watching the threads stretch and tear with so little effort. Of all the things to focus on, maybe it was easiest. The only change she could easily escape. But also a reminder of the monster the fae believed her soulmate to be. Someone who would callously, willingly…

Her stomach rolled, and she lurched onto her knees. A little stomach bile came on the second, wrenching heave, but nothing followed. Not even water.

Fuck.

How long had it been since she ate? Time was so slippery in the fae realms, and gods knew how long she slept in the Dreaming. Her head pulsed as her stomach finally agreed it was overreacting, and she fell back to sit against the wall of the bridge, panting with her eyes closed against every little pain and discomfort knocking on her thoughts. They each wanted to let her know her body had been abused, and all their good intentions just made the message play on repeat, forcing her to not only face but feel everything that happened.

Sorely used.

An archaic turn of phrase, for sure, but fuck if it didn’t fit.

Her ears rang. A sure sign there was just too much happening inside. Even if she didn’t die at the hands of the fae, a rogue nightmare, or some demon Constantine hooked her into finding, her blood pressure would send her to an early grave. For sure.

Her head hurt. Her belly hurt. Her heart hurt. Now that she wasn’t walking, her feet ached, too.

It seemed like a good time to cry, but she hurt too much to do that, either.

So she sat with the pain instead.

Crossing her arms over her knees, she buried her face and tried to block out this world, her monster’s world, and create her own. Simple and dark and safe. The borders only extended to her fingers and toes. It ended where the air touched her skin. Her goal was to drown out the ringing in her ears with the cycle of her breath, and if she forgot anything else existed, maybe that would be possible.

She buried herself so well in her arms and the chorus of her panic that she didn’t notice the little creature approach until it touched her. Tiny claws pricked her ankle. It felt like a cat, a determined kitten scaling her leg to perch on her knee, and she opened her eyes sluggishly, pulling out of the sticky morass of her own head to find a ruby-eyed gargoyle peering into her face. It chirred, potato-shaped head tilting in wordless question.

Golden with little wings that looked entirely insufficient to keep its pudgy baby body airborne, it lurked happily in the grey area where things so ugly they could only be cute flourished.

“I should probably warn you,” she murmured, “that I’m really shit company right now.”

The little creature warbled, like it understood and disagreed. Its claws pinched the fabric over her knee as its wings pumped, lifting him an inch into the air.

Well.

That would show her for making snap judgements.

The little darling really could fly.

It tugged, trilling louder, and she got the idea it wanted her to come along.

“I don’t have wings.” She felt like she ought to apologize, explain her shortcomings the way she’d reason with a small child. “And I don’t feel so good right now. I’ll stay here. You don’t have to.”

Dissatisfied with her decision, her little companion dropped back to her knee, croaking a long, demanding wail.

“Goldie!”

The voice carried through the fog, rattling over the stones, and her little friend perked and turned to call back. Following the direction of his attention, she realized two whole Tudor mansions stood on the opposite side of the bridge. If she’d stumbled any further, she would’ve run into someone’s front door.

She desperately needed to get out of her own head before she walked face-first into an immoveable object and broke her nose.

“Goldie?”

The creature flexed its claws, essentially making biscuits on her knee.

“I think someone’s calling you,” she suggested. The name and color couldn’t be a coincidence. Not in the Dreaming. Everything made a slanted kind of sense here, if it made any sense at all.

The tiny monster, Goldie apparently, settled belly-down, folding its wings and all in a show of blatant refusal. It wouldn’t give up the new friend. Toy. Guest. Whatever the hell she was to it.

“Goldie.” The voice was nearer. Footsteps crunched on loose stones, and a pleasantly round man, with a pleasantly full beard and a pleasantly wide-eyed face, came along from the direction of the two houses, looking the wrong way. “You’re still awfully small to be wandering off, even if you can fly so well. Now, where did you – ” He turned, saw Goldie sitting on Aisling’s knee, and blinked his wide eyes even wider. She stared back.

He remembered his manners first, rushing to welcome her. “Oh! Hello. I didn’t know we had company.”

He approached with a smile, but he hesitated when he realized her position. She must look at least half as horrible as she felt, after all, and she hadn’t moved from her folded spot against the wall.

“Are you alright?” He grasped for solutions, for answers. “Did Goldie scare you?”

Exhausted as she was by her own terrors, she couldn’t help snorting.

“No.” Hell. Her voice practically creaked. She swallowed, trying to get her dry, aching throat in working order, but she only made the ache worse. Coughing, she spluttered, “He didn’t scare me.”

“But you’re not alright.” Those big eyes flooded with growing concern, and she wondered if it was because he genuinely gave a damn or because of some nebulous rule about guests and hospitality and all that shit.

“I’m not,” she confessed. “But I will be. Eventually. I always am.”

“Well, how about some tea while you wait?” He extended a hand, and Goldie fluttered up to his shoulder, clearing the way for her to rise. Now that the cretin had backup, it seemed confident she’d follow.

And since she had no other plan, she did.

“I’m Abel.” His warm, worker’s callouses rasped along her palm and around her fingers as he helped her to her feet. “It’s been a while since we had a proper dreamer here, I’m afraid. Are you lost?”

Very.

“I don’t know. And I’m a dreamer, but I’m not dreaming.”

He didn’t keep hold of her hand as he led her towards one of the two houses – presumably his – but he hovered. He had a good face for that, and he kept near, like he thought she might fall, which was fair considering how he found her.

“Then how are you here?”

A mirror. Knives, and spiders, and that damned dress.

“It’s a long story.”

“Maybe over tea, then.”

“Maybe.” Probably not, though. She couldn’t stomach that tale in her head yet. She couldn’t hold it in her mouth long enough to taste.

The courtyard between the two houses boasted a half-forgotten kind of charm. It grew in moss over crumbling busts and fogged over the windows with just a little too much dust. Cozy neglect. Cottagecore with fewer fairylights and more fog.

Abel held the door for her, and she found a sitting room as wonderfully cluttered as the landscape outside. Books stacked in towers supported forgotten cups, and old table cloths, rugs, and scarves littered every surface. She sat at the little table where her host gestured and admired the collection of his personal history as he busied himself with the stove.

“I should really tell my brother we have a guest,” he fussed. “He’ll be terribly angry if doesn’t have a chance to meet you, I’m sure, Miss…” His hand flew to his mouth, and he murmured his apology through the gaps between his fingers. “’M so sorry. I never asked your name.”

“It’s fine. I don’t mind. I’m – ”

“Let me get Cain. One introduction! Much easier. I’ll be right back.” He rushed out again, and Goldie fluttered to sit on the table, resting between her limp hands and blinking up like he wasn’t responsible for anything ever, at all, in the very least.

She ran a finger over his bumpy little head and sighed. “Aren’t you just proud of yourself?”

Goldie crooned confirmation, and she rubbed her nail along the loose threads in the tablecloth. A hundred tea stains bloomed over and across each other, but she didn’t see any crumbs from dinners past. The candle in the brass stick at the center of the table had dripped down to anchor the whole contraption in place, and she could only just see a faded red paisley pattern beneath it all.

If she were to read Abel’s cards, this would be the place. It had his rhythm: habit and footsteps and care. A place to plan the morning and end an evening.

The door’s ominously friendly groan announced the brothers’ return, and she looked over her shoulder to meet much less open eyes in a much less open face, shielded by spectacles and a mouth prepared to sneer.

But he blinked like his brother as Abel rushed to attend the kettle again, and he marched in with open curiosity.

“Well, you are a puzzle.” He made a little bow. “I’m Cain. You’ve met the dunderhead and Goldie.”

Abel set a steaming pot and three cups around the table, practically shaking with excitement. They really must not get company often. “And now she’s going to introduce herself, and we’ll all have tea while she waits to feel alright.”

Cain’s eye’s narrowed, and Aisling jolted to defuse the poisonous tension.

“I’m Aisling Hunt.”

Abel clapped, and the tension fizzled away as she tried to catch up with whatever connection he’d made. “Fine Gent’s Aisling? The witch from the Waking?”

“You know Fin?” She accepted her cup of tea, hoping for more about her friend. How did they know each other? Did they know where her friend was lurking? Were they at all like him?

Cain nodded, ignoring the cup and saucer his brother set at his elbow. “Better sort of nightmare. Reliable. Sharp. And if you’re really that Aisling, then I suppose we know why you’re in the Dreaming.”

She shuddered, an involuntary reaction she only just saved her tea from disaster by plonking it back on the table. Gossip traveled quickly in all realms, apparently, and while Fin was a considerate asshole most days, the fae hadn’t been subtle in their… gifting. She could ask how much her hosts knew, but then she’d have to listen to it. And she didn’t want to. Cain’s eye pierced her with a knowing glance, but Abel stood there in wide-eyed befuddlement, so she left them to their own assumptions and tried again with her drink.

Under any other situation, the tea would be very nice. Well-steeped, but not bitter, with a nutty note that made her think of toasted barely milk tea. In the moment, it was better than anything she’d ever tasted. Her senses sprang back from the fog of despair and remembered how nice it was to quench her thirst, how the steam opened up her sinuses, and she could smell the dried rosemary over Abel’s kitchen window. One sip was not enough. Tipping her head back, she drained it in one go and immediately decided manners were for losers, desperately holding out her cup for a refill.

Holy hell was she thirsty.

Abel quickly poured more, and Cain’s side-eye grew razor sharp.

Aisling drank another cup. And then a third. But when she lifted a fourth to her lips, a familiar hand settled on her wrist.

“That’s a great way to make yourself sick again.”

Fin.

He hovered at her shoulder, calm and constant as anything, charming as ever. Just looking up at his smirk – always welcoming her into a joke whether she understood it or not – felt like setting foot on solid land after a long boat ride. It surprised her by how steady it was, and she remembered what confidence had always felt like when they went on their adventures, dragged along by his leads and her intuition.

She hadn’t even heard him come in.

Under his guidance, she settled the cup in its saucer, and she winced an apologetic smile for her hosts.

“Sorry.”

Cain scoffed. “For what? Drinking tea? Pah.” He eyed Fin with a considerably less charitable look, hoisting the teapot in a clear invitation for yet another refill when required. “You’re a guest, and a thirsty one.”

“I’m not surprised.” Fin pulled out a chair for himself, settling a wicker hamper on the table. “You sprinted from the castle like a bat out of hell, and you slept for ages before that.”

Abel gawked like her wandering was some great accomplishment. “You’ve wandered a long way from the Heart of the Dreaming. This is the border of Nightmare.”

Although she determinedly didn’t sip the tea, she kept her heads around the cup, letting the fading heat sink into her palms and remind her she was alive. And awake.

Nightmare. That made sense. She’d never entirely trusted dreams. They felt so sweet in her sleep, but they always stung when she woke up. She found nightmares more reliable. But distance was nothing in the Dreaming. Even she knew that. If the realm’s lord and master hadn’t chosen to let her have her head and run, she wouldn’t have reached the river.

Busying himself with the basket, Fin muttered, “This one never did like to keep to one place. Here.”

He pulled out a lump of cheese and a crusty roll, setting them on a plate he magically fished from the delicate chaos of Abel’s living space.

She looked at the food distrustfully, not sure if her belly rumbled in welcome or rebellion yet. But Fin was on a mission, and he fished out a dish of strawberries next, bright as gems and so ripe she could smell them. Plucking one from the top of the pile, he sliced it into three neat pieces, offering her one on the flat of his blade with an expectant expression. He’d done the work. She shouldn’t waste it.

“The tea will settle better with a bit of food,” he advised.

Cain and Abel kept their own counsel, either riddling out what they were seeing or collecting fresh fuel for the gossip engine, she couldn’t say.

She accepted the strawberry.

It tasted like summer. Ice cream in the shade, and the riot of growing things in their prime. Sunshine and sticky hands with her bare feet in a creek.

Food really wasn’t supposed to taste like that. It took her breath away, and she hesitated, balanced on the edge of Fin’s knife between enjoying the little gift and careening back into her overwhelmed panic. Everything was a step further than she expected, or a little too perfect, or grand in ways that made her feel so, so small…

Goldie, sitting by her elbow, trilled. She looked into his ruddy eyes and held out her hand in a silent demand for another bit of strawberry, even though she hadn’t finished chewing.

Fin tipped the next slice into her waiting palm, and she offered it to the baby… whatever. Goldie seized it with a delighted gurgle and crammed it in its mouth. The sliver of berry filled much more of his mouth than Aisling’s, and his cheeks ballooned with the treat.

“What do you say, Goldie?” Abel asked.

His – pet? Child? – offered a gulp, a belch, and a croak, which was enough to satisfy Abel.

Fin shoved the third slice of berry directly in her face.

And she nearly choked. Nearly laughed. It startled her, but she put her hand to her mouth and kept everything in – chewing and swallowing emotion and food. They saying went that laughter was the best medicine, and while she was a firm proponent of the wonders of antibiotics, her inner sky cleared just the tiniest bit. The cracks were still there. Her world was still more than a little broken. But the fog of war began to lift, and she could see some of what was left. What was alright. What might be alright with a little more time.

Moss would grow on the ruins, and rain would fill the holes into ponds for frogs and water lilies.

What couldn’t be repaired could be made new.

And if she ever cleared all the clouds from that inner sky, maybe she’d find another watercolor sunset waiting for her.

Fin, watching her very carefully, cut another strawberry, and she ate it all with more confidence than the first two mouthfuls. He sliced open a roll and spread soft cheese on the two halves, giving them to her one at a time. When she reached for her tea to wash the bread down, he didn’t protest.

His posture softened until he slouched in his seat, shoulders back against the wood and one ankle propped across his knee. The little wrinkles that forecast a frown smoothed back to the edge of a smirk. All his anxiety appeared in the hollow shapes left behind as it melted.

She was sorry to have worried him, but watching him relaxed helped her more than all the tea and food in the Dreaming could. He’d decided she was safe, and in this wonky wonderland, she trusted his judgement. Fin may not betray his maker for her, but he would never be ease if he wasn’t sure all was – or would be – well.

Rapid tapping interrupted the scene a few minutes after she refused more food from Fin. Sated, pleasantly full, and breathing easily, she didn’t jump at the sound, but her heart jumped when she saw the raven on the other side of Abel’s window. She’d bet anything it was…

“Matthew.” Fin nodded to the bird but didn’t move to let him in. Instead, he turned to Aisling and asked, “Feel up for a walk?”

“Back? That’s…” The best idea. The worst idea. She thought of the castle and the entity who ruled it. He needed to be stitched back into her story. She had too many frayed ends left in the wake of the latest tear, and she couldn’t begin any real work until she saw the pattern. All her questions and accusations coiled into a lump in her throat. “A long way.”

“Oh, I doubt it.” Since his question hadn’t really been one at all, he stood up, put the basket on his arm, and pulled out her chair.

It was time to go.

Cain and Abel stood, too, and Goldie bobbed up to Abel’s shoulder, sighing like a tired toddler.

“Thank you.” She hesitated in the doorway and wondered what the rules were in the Dreaming. Did she owe them something? Did they expect a token, or a boon, or some specific words? Should she start planning a thank you card? Was there a ritual, or – no. She was overthinking it. “It was… You helped. A lot. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome!” Abel beamed. Goldie warbled in agreement.

“Of course, she’s welcome,” Cain snapped, finding some unknowable annoyance in his brother’s manners. He looked back to his departing guests and nodded, slowly, almost like he was bowing. “Fine Gent. Lady.”

“Oh, I’m not-”

Fin looped his free arm through hers and tugged her off balance, moving through the door. Her confusion of thought was lost in the chaos of stumbling sideways to keep up.

“Thank you, Cain,” Fin said.

The door closed. The sounds, smells, and sensations of the outdoors crashed over her fragile senses like a wave, and she was very glad for Fin’s arm. She was… better. But still not well. The ground stayed firm under her feet, but the back of her mind whispered it would melt into quicksand at any second.

Fluttering wings and a familiar croak warned her just before Matthew came flapping in her face. “You’re awake! You’re alive! Thought you were gone forever when you didn’t come back to your van, and the boss-”

“Will explain his thoughts himself,” Fin interjected. He gave the bird a look, a suggestion or a reminder. Once upon a time he threw those her way in the Waking. When she was young and overeager to test her limits. When she ought to know better.

Matthew landed in a chaos of black feathers and clattering talons, hopping alongside as Fin led the way across the bridge. Back to forests, fields, and strange moats. Back to the Heart of the Dreaming. Whatever that meant for her. There was no rush, but Fin clearly had a direction in mind, and while he was willing to go slow, ambling rather than marching, he was on a mission.

She didn’t like the heavy feeling that realization left in her gut, full of the food he’d so carefully and considerately brought. It wasn’t that he didn’t care, but there was a new authority overshadowing their old dynamic, and she just didn’t like it.

Chastised, Matthew actually held his tongue for a few minutes. But every few steps, she caught him peeping up with sharp swings of the beak to glance at her, like he was waiting for a signal to talk again. He looked so awkward, fumbling along at their pace. And earnest.

And none of this was his fault. It wasn’t Fin’s. It wasn’t the raven’s. It… probably wasn’t their master’s, either.

She offered a wan, tired kind of smile that she hoped would ease the tension. He snapped it up.

The raven cleared his throat. “You look nice?”

And she always would. No matter how sick, or exhausted, or miserable, or – The phantom tingle of the fae’s thick salve gleaming with unicorn horn rolled down her arms, and she shuddered.

“Don’t.”

Matthew immediately dropped his head. “Sorry.”

Well shit.

“It’s fine. Just – yeah.”

And with that eloquent excuse of a non-apology, the three fell into a deeper silence.

The trees swallowed the two houses and the bridge that led to them. The path unspooled ahead, under darker boughs, and after a corner or two, the edge of the forest thinned. Too quickly. A slowly as she’d run. Impossible and sensical, because what else could it have ever been.

As the castle came into view, she fought against the dream-fall sensation demanding she wake up. She knew she couldn’t, because she was already, but that didn’t stop of her mind from spinning with the alien logic of this world. She was still looking for an escape, even if she didn’t feel the need to run for one.

A bridge – which she knew for sure wasn’t there before – connected the edge of the forest to the castle’s island. A low, discreet construction entirely unlike the arching causeway she could spy towards the front gates. The Dreaming hadn’t made it a challenge to leave, but it made returning even easier.

It invited her to come home.

Fin huffed, and she caught a smirk twisting his lips before he schooled it into a more dignified expression.

“You’re expected, it seems.”

Her hand spasmed on his arm, and he patted it almost condescendingly.

“Of course,” she murmured, demanding her stomach settle and her feet move.

Fin stayed with her across the bridge, through the garden, to the door that let her out. She felt like a stray dog being returned by a neighbor after a jaunt around the neighborhood, and it took conscious effort not to let her hackles rise. Inside, the castle was as quiet as it had been before, and she wondered again if people were being kept away from her on purpose, and if so, for whose benefit.

They stopped in the first crossroads between hallways. “This is where we leave you.”

“What?” Panic fluttered like butterflies through her gut. Fin settled (most of) them with another one of his looks – teasing, mocking her just enough to assure her this wasn’t anything like she feared. It made her feel stupid. It gave her courage. “I mean – fine. Okay. Why?”

“Why do you think?” Fin pointed to the left. “If you head that way, you’ll find yourself back in the room you woke in. Gwen and Jeff will take care of you.” He pointed to the right. “If you go that way, you’ll find him. If you’re ready to talk.”

He delicately peeled her fingers off his arm, stepped back, and performed a tidy bow. Duty performed, he left her with a wink and walked back the way they’d come in, a way that now offered many more doors and turns than she remembered.

“Good seeing you, Aisling. I’ll see you around?” Matthew didn’t wait for an answer. He launched into the air and flapped after Fin. A last caw caught and echoed through the branching halls, fading until she stood alone with her decision.

The still air pulsed with her thoughts, and her bare soles stuck to the polished floor, rooting her in a whirlpool of feelings she couldn’t face long enough to name. A crossroads. Her crossroads. Another gift from the entity she’d always feared would take away her choice. Was it respect or apology?

He’d lied to her, and even if he wasn’t responsible for… everything else, how could she trust he’d finished with masks? Kindness made for a clever veil, and he’d already surprised her with the face behind one helm.

But he hadn’t destroyed her. Hadn’t let others strip her will when it could’ve suited his purposes.

Romances between gods and mortals rarely ended well, and he was beyond a god. How could she ever hope to understand that? There was no world in which she could be his equal, where he could stoop low enough to grasp her human fears. Holding hands across a chasm like that always ended in a fall. Hadn’t she been enough of a fool already?

She remembered her first dream with him. He was more honest with her then than he’d been since, and the first thing he wanted to show her was the place where he held her the way she’d always held him. For that night at least, everything made sense. Maybe not the pain, but the agonies she’d suffered almost seemed worth it.

She didn’t know what to think. If she never faced their tangled wyrd, the potential bond she’d tasted so briefly, she’d never know how to feel, either. Maybe all this would kill her, but she couldn’t live without knowing.

So, she turned right.

Maybe it was her imagination, but the coolly lit hall seemed a little brighter as she made her way from the crossroads, looking for Morpheus.

She didn’t have to go far. The hall stretched straight ahead. No side passages to distract her. No doors to tempt her curiosity. Dream of the Endless wasn’t hiding, and as he reached out to guide her steps, he shaped the world to his intent.

The hall ended, rounding a little bend and opening into a high-ceilinged room that couldn’t decide what it wanted to be. A gallery. A meeting place. Something old and new and hollow. One wall bristled with shapes emerging from grey-veined marble. Windows stretched from floor to roof, bathing the sculptures of vines, trees, rolling waves, and writhing figures with soft light at odds with the relief’s high drama. There was no furniture. Only space waiting to be filled. And a lone figure. Waiting for her.

No obstacles. No games or tests.

It could all be so, so simple.

Morpheus wore his regal grace with the same ease as his long black coat. But it failed to shroud his melancholy, and his longing wafted through the room in perfumed spirals of burning incense. She breathed it in; it stung her eyes and plucked on the frayed tatters in her chest. Sympathetic pain bloomed, and she rubbed along her sternum automatically, blinking back tears so she could trade them for words.

He broke the silence first. “I welcome you to the Dreaming, Aisling Hunt.”

Without his helm, his voice sounded so different. Incredibly. Even more beautiful, like looking up into a night sky with stars that looked back, but less like a force of the cosmos, more a man who traded in the dust that made worlds. He regarded her, and her intuition thrummed, trying to answer in ways her human body physically couldn’t.

He paused, lips parted on a thought, and the formal weight evaporated, replaced with aching strain that curled his shoulders towards her, even across the room, like a plant bending towards the sun. Strange. Unsettling. She didn’t feel like something bright in his world, but at least he wasn’t hiding behind his grotesque helm again.

“I am, despite everything, glad to have you here.”

Oh.

It shocked her back into her body. Into feet just a little cold and still bare on the floor. Into flesh she was afraid to look at in case she started crying again. The hope and horror bridged, and the most urgent question grew like a weed up her throat.

Well. If he was going to bring it up, then…

“I need to know something.” She rubbed her chest, hoping to pry loose a scrap of courage. None lingered in her heart, but a few tatters could’ve gotten caught in her ribs, and even a slip would do her. “Before this – I need to ask you something. I think I already know, but I need –” She knew how quickly words and oaths could twist under desire’s pressure, and even if she’d committed to playing the fool, even clowns had their limits, and she wouldn’t dance into another lying mirror. “You said you wouldn’t steal me away to hide in shadows, but you could send others to take me, and this place is very bright.”

His shoulders drew back, and his chin lifted. He’d offered her formal welcome and she asked for formal confirmation that he hadn’t betrayed her. She wasn’t ready to burn for him as his sun. She had to know he wouldn’t snuff her out first.

“I did not ask for you to be taken. I did not ask for you to be changed against your will. I did not ask other hands to commit such sins in my name, nor will I in future.” Angling his face down again, he offered her a glimpse at the wrath hidden there. He had not forgotten her suffering. It would not go unpunished. And just as quickly as he revealed his rage, he buried it again, stowing the knives and earthquakes for the villains who’d driven her to ask for proof in the first place. He watched her absorb what he’d said, and his voice turned feather soft. “You are my most cherished guest, and though I ask that you stay until word has spread and it is safe for you to walk the Waking world, you are no prisoner.”

Blinking, she took a deep breath. It rattled all the way down to her fingers, and she shook out her hands to banish the trembling.

“Thank you.” He gave, and he gave, and he gave. Time, space, reassurance. Her gaze roved the complicated mass of imagery covering the wall, looking for a theme. A hint. Frozen sailors reached for the land, tying sails against a wind determined to keep them at sea. Trees bloomed. Flowers fell. Fruit swelled, and snakes crept through their own shed skins as seeds burst from fallen, rotting apples. Time, loss, and rebirth without aim.

“What do you want, Morpheus?”

Had she ever actually asked him? She desperately wanted the truth. The whole thing.

“You were right.” Her own truth. An olive branch. An invitation and a plea. “Others shaped my view of you. So, now’s your chance. Tell me, so I can it from your own mouth. What do you want?”

In this moment, she was judge, jury, and executioner. No one would decide who or what she loved, and she would know the entity whose name she carried before she gave him anything else.

The air turned sharp. It cut the light like a prism, glittering in her monster’s eyes, a focus so sharp it broke sunbeams into their constituent parts. For all the black he wore, he practically glowed, a king in all ways, an open heart in more. Only here. In private. For her.

His eyebrows lifted, pinched. “I want you.” His voice was a song, weaving everything that could be beautiful between them into the simplest terms. “I want to be near you. I want to comfort you.” He approached, drawing his words out with cautious steps, hands hanging stiff at his sides. He halted, just far enough for her to feel safe, even when he spoke again, letting his lust drip into his tone, scenting his song with night-blooming jasmine. “I want to love you and make love to you.”

That was… honest. Heat rushed over her face, and she dropped eye contact like it was the source of the fire.

Fuck.

It was, actually.

When she first saw him, locked away in the cage beneath Fawney Rig, she thought his beauty was a warning, a good reason to look away and avoid him. Beautiful things were almost always cruel, but now… Well, things were different, weren’t they?

“I want you to know me.” He glanced out the window, and she instinctively did the same, looking over distant mountains and glittering bridges. World beyond worlds. “The Dreaming is a part of me. Simply by walking it, I feel you’re exploring me.”

They looked at each other again, just a little closer than before, and the hope in her monster’s eyes made him almost boyish. He was older than her planet, probably. But even an Endless must be reborn sometimes, in some ways, like the snake winding through the rotting fruit.

So, she’d met him when the water splashed over her toes. She let him comfort her when she drank the tea and ate the food of the Dreaming. Even if she hadn’t held his hand or looked in his eyes, and he was reaching for her in all but body now.

Fine.

Alright then.

She wouldn’t be anxious over a project she’d already begun.

“May I touch you?”

His smile bloomed soft and sweet. “Yes.”

Having the permission she needed from his strange eyes, his lips, the face she still didn’t know, she looked at his hands. She drew the tips of her fingers along his knuckles, a whispered touch asking for an answer, and he lifted the hand for her inspection, turning it over so she could see the creases of his palms. Invitation and vulnerability. Her touch wandered the lines, trying to read the silky flesh like a book. Palmistry had never been her forte, though, and she only found her own memories in his life and love lines.

“I know these better than your face,” she admitted. They felt safer, something secure to hold when his galaxy eyes threatened to sweep her away.

She found her courage in inches, lifting her eyes to his shoulders. His neck, his skin pale and untouchable as a reflection of the moon. Would she find the same strength in the rest of him as she did in his hands? The same possessive tenderness? The same call that felt like a puzzle coming together when she stroked his fingers, demanding and comforting as a deep breath after a dive?

Gingerly, like one or both of them was made of glass, she pressed an index finger to either side of his jaw. The barest caress drew along the edge of his face, not just feeling him, but listening to the hushed drag of skin on skin, until her two hands met, fingertip to fingertip, over the point of his chin. A sigh gusted down her wrists, along her elbows, and a rebel army of goosebumps sprang to life at his summons.

Without entirely meaning to, she looked up and met his eyes, and once she found them, they snared her.

It was entirely unfair for anyone to have actual stars in their eyes, and she read her doom in them as easily as she read her cards.

“I’d like to kiss you.”

His eyes flicked to her lips, and he shifted closer, keeping his hands to his side despite the way his want curled out to close the distance like a physical force. Well. It was his world. Perhaps it was. It found her heart and tugged.

Her own gaze dropped to his mouth, waiting to read his answer. “May I?”

“Yes.” His voice rumbled so low and strong she felt it like thunder. No hesitation.

She wondered if she’d have to rise onto her toes to reach him, but he swept down to meet her, giving rather than waiting for her to cautiously claim what she’d asked for. Her eyes fluttered shut at the first caress. A soft touch expressing and savoring everything she’d allow. There was no demand, but as she pressed into the kiss, chasing the delicate friction, he answered in kind.

Little sparks carried through her blood. Through her mind. Urging something to life. Drops of sunshine calling up flowers in springtime. He tasted like traces of smoke from a campfire on a cold night. Vellum and lignin. The last breath before a jump.

When she broke away to breathe, she peered into his face, and she felt the trembling rush of standing in a high place. In the Dreaming, were the butterflies in her stomach real, too?

His hands hovered, framing her face with restrained yearning.

“May I touch you?” Gravel thickened his voice until it nearly broke, and he searched her expression with bared desperation. “May I hold you so I may feel you are well? May I love you, my little hero?”

She settled her hands over his, kissed his palm, and guided his fingers to her cheek, closing the gap he’d left for her to decide in. “You may touch me.”

He accepted her permission with open wonder, taking a full moment to rest where she’d led him, moving just enough to stroke the line of her cheekbone with his thumb. When he freed himself of the spell she’d so innocently cast, he let his touch wander – sweeping over her brow, tracing her nose, cradling her jaw. But when he came to her mouth, he lost his focus. He replaced hand with lips, jolting back after the briefest, most chaste contact when he realized he hadn’t asked permission.

She grabbed the lapels of his long coat, shaking the fear from his expression. “You can kiss me. Please. You don’t need to ask. Not tonight.”

The worried frown he’d grown melted. A smirk washed up his face, dark with promise. But he didn’t tease her. He claimed another, proper kiss instead. Free to touch her, he angled her face with careful pressure, showing her how best to deepen the pleasure of lips, and teeth, and tongues, until she was equally breathless and reluctant to breathe.

Resting forehead-to-forehead as she recovered – as she gathered air to take the plunge again – he asked, “May I hold you?”

“Yes.” Her turn to answer quickly, for an ache to strain her voice.

Long limbs twined around her, drawing her close with a hand on her back and another on his him as her monster once again set to work trying to consume her. She did finally rise onto her toes, begging for more with eager hands slipping up his shoulders to comb into his hair. He gave her too much to feel, and she couldn’t give each piece its due. His lips gliding over hers. The secure warmth of his arms. Smooth skin and soft hair. The pressure of his chest against hers.

She knew pains like this. Sensations too overwhelming and complicated to make sense of. But she’d never felt pleasure the same way, and it swept her away faster than a riptide. She’d given the sea permission to drown her, though, so it was alright. More than alright. Wonderful.

He wasn’t as cool as he’d been when she first touched him. The rosy heat didn’t blush over his skin, but it pressed out to meet her, as if he was taking inspiration from the pulse and flush of mortality. Her blood warmed her because it must. He only warmed from a desire to be near.

“And may I love you?” A kiss to her cheek. “May I?” Another just below her ear. Withdrawing to lift her gathered hands to his lips, holding her gaze, he brushed a third kiss over her knuckles. “May I?”

Almost too disoriented to answer, she nodded, running her palms over his clothed chest. “Yes. Please, Morpheus – ”

His name on her lips tore through the last of his self-control. Finally. Finally given permission. Finally near enough to touch, and taste, and take. He crushed her closer with tender, rabid affection, kisses wandering to her cheek, down her neck, and back to her lips to share her sighs.

Maybe she wasn’t the sun, but how she burned for him.

Lovely as it was, she wanted his coat off. With their lips tangled together, she struggled to ask, but she pushed at it, and he wordlessly agreed, helping her peel it away from his shoulders to drop, abandoned, somewhere behind him. Her monster’s greatest frustration with the act was the time he spent with his hands otherwise occupied, and he grabbed her back to him like they’d been separated for years, not seconds.

His hand slipped beneath the soft shirt he so thoughtfully provided when she woke, and she whimpered into his mouth, caught off guard by how good this new wave of sensation felt. Fragments of control washed away with each graze of a knuckle or press of his palm along her back, pulled away as sand in the surf.

When she released her hold on his shoulders, he left her break the kiss, his eyes somehow even darker as he watched her reach for the hem of the garment. He helped her – carefully, reverently – guiding her arms and head out of the fabric. His lips parted as he looked her over, and he reached for the bottom of his own shirt. She mirrored his performance, helping him with the simplest chore of escaping his clothes, and when he emerged from the black shirt’s depths, he reappeared with a smile. A little amused. Deeply fond.

More kisses. Cautious hands mapping new spaces. Enjoying each other slowly so the heat could grow. Shared breaths, every shudder and shift pressed into the other’s flesh. Wrapped up in each other entirely. There wasn’t room for fear or doubt; they stood much too close.

Even when Dream pulled back again, something as fiendish as it was loving in his expression, she couldn’t remember there was a room or a world beyond him.

He spread his palm wide over the center of her chest, covering the flesh between him and his mark, and he pressed down. Gravity bent to his will, an intractable urge. She fell to his desire and found herself sprawled flat on something comfortable that wasn’t a bed. But he left her no time to wonder, following her with a rain of kisses that left her dizzy. As his hands crept down, he hovered, watching for her to revoke her permission, or even the slightest hint of discomfort. But by the time he’d reached the rest of her clothes, her hands fluttered around his, trying to slip multiple layers off in one go. She wanted her pants gone as much as she’d wanted rid of his coat, and he chuckled as she kicked them off the last inch.

Once she’d escaped the last fabric keeping her from his touch, she drew him back for a kiss, this one so soft it spoke his thanks. His care.

Although he rested between her legs, he didn’t rush. He attended her breasts, plucking yelps and giggles from hidden ticklish spots, rising back to her lips again and again as she grew hotter and more desperate under his hands. They might’ve spent a hundred years hovering on the threshold, finding each other in grazes and kneading grips.

At last, he roved lower, and even as he brushed his lips over hers, his thumb rolled over her bud. Slowly, tortuously almost, he fluttered over the nub, refusing to explore further until she whimpered and writhed. He traced down her folds and groaned. She could feel how wet he’d made her, and the mortification would’ve swamped her if she couldn’t feel how excited it left him. The bulge pressing against her hip left no doubt.

His fingers sank inside, curling to pull something out of her. She gave him a moan, a fluttering thing, unsure on new wings, and he hovered with his mouth hanging open in awe, like he could catch it. Keep it. Cage it in his ribs to keep. Before, when he’d pleasured her in the dream, he had plenty to say, even when his mouth was on her. That was worship. This was communion. A true meeting, a joining without words.

He worked her open diligently. And all the while, he held her gaze, feasting on it.

Every nerve sang for him, and he coaxed her to the very edge before she grabbed his wrist. He froze, looking for pain in her expression, and she kissed the worried line between his eyebrows.

“I want you.”

She didn’t need to explain. With a look so vulnerable he almost looked hurt, he said, “You have me.”

When he pulled back this time, he took her with him, and she sat astride his lap as he worked a mark into her neck, giving her time to change her mind. His pants had magically disappeared. She wasn’t at all surprised, though she’d wanted to help take them off herself. Next time, maybe.

Next time? There would be a next time. And another next time. And all the next times she wanted.

Elated by her revelation, she all but yanked his face from her neck so she could kiss him properly. He laughed, and it tasted like elderflower cordial, rich and sweet enough to make her drunk with one sip. She ground down on his length, and his hands spasmed on her waist.

“I’m ready,” she assured him with an eager peck. “I want this.”

He shifted, arranging himself to brush her entrance, but he didn’t press. Even here, he waited for her. She sank to meet him, her grip on his shoulders seizing as she stretched. His hold moved to her back, her neck, cradling her near instead of exerting any kind of control. And she was glad. She needed it as her eyes all but rolled back into her skull.

As light kisses rained over her face, she fought to relax, to take him entirely. She only opened her eyes once she had him. Once he had her. And once she saw him, she wondered how she could ever turn away again.

It was the way he looked at her. Fathomless patience meeting desperation. All of it honed by time. He’d craved her company before she was born, and he’d wrestled back his yearning until it cut into his soul to keep from scaring her away.

He wanted to be seen, and held, and cared for, too.

A thousand adoring words bubbled up her throat, but it wasn’t the right time, so she peppered them soundlessly down his neck and along his collarbones instead.

And she moved.

The drag was almost too much. The pressure brought stars to her own eyes, and although she refused to close them, sometimes she thought they’d fluttered shut, because the push and pull of their lovemaking really was blinding. He stroked up to meet each roll of her hips, crooning as she kissed and petted and squeezed him.

They were the turn of stars, the draw of ancient voids too vast for names, and all the voiceless songs strung between worlds.

She forgot the pain in her chest. She forgot she’d ever done anything but burn for her monster. Her Morpheus.

If she wasn’t the sun, she must’ve swallowed one.

The inferno melted her from the inside out, and she all but fell apart, wrapped around him, and cheek-to-cheek, he groaned in her ear. She panted, open-mouthed, fighting for air and sense as he kept his slow, deliberate pace. He hadn’t even begun to have his fill yet, and he held her all the tighter as her quaking limbs refused to play.

When feeling eventually returned to her legs, she pulled them around his waist, anchoring herself and refusing to release him as adamantly as he clung to her. The otherworldly sensations lingered, but she remembered herself a little more, found the cognizance to appreciate who held her, who she’d accepted. Who stoked the flame, sheathed inside.

Even as he worked her up to another orgasm, a painfully soft part of her heart burst open, and affection flooded her system. It bled open and free, forcing tears to her eyes.

She was safe, and he was hers, and she –

She really had to tell him somehow. She couldn’t bear to say it, though.

She’d be worthy of his face. She’d break him out of a thousand cages. If only he’d keep her so close and secure and warm.

This time when she trembled to pieces, there was no putting her back together, and her monster graciously followed her release. He kissed her as he came, holding her still so they could feel every shudder of the end. And when he’d finished, as their breathing steadied, he tumbled with her back into something soft, never once letting her slip from his arms.

#fic: hello mr. monster #morpheus x reader #sandman x reader #morpheus x oc #dream of the endless x reader

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humanpurposes · 8 months

Text

Sweet Dream

The Sandman AU

Her father means to summon and capture Death, but ends up with the wrong sibling. She becomes fascinated with their prisoner // Main Masterlist

Dream!Aemond x unnamed female character

Warnings: 18+, spells n shit, mild gore, death, lowkey Lima syndrome, smut

Words: 8000

A/n: For my fellow Morpheus and Aemond lovers. Also available to read on AO3.

Roderick Burgess had always been a terrifying man. In grief he has only become more irritable and less predictable.

The telegram came in the early days of July. She delivered the news to Roderick herself, while he was in his study. Her father did not like to be disturbed and he might have beaten her to remind her of the fact, until those fateful words slipped from her mouth. “Randall’s dead.” Shot down by a German machine gun at the Somme. In the end he had been one of thousands, his body buried in a neat line of tombstones somewhere in France, his name engraved on a plaque in the church at Wych Cross, ultimately unremarkable and indistinguishable from the other men and boys who had lost their lives.

But it was not so for Roderick. He let out a sudden groan and clutched his chest as though his pain was tangible and terrible. He shed no tears– of course he didn’t, but he gritted his teeth, crying out in fury as he dashed his hands over his desk, sending papers, books, fountain pens and empty whisky glasses tumbling to the floor.

She stood frozen, waiting for his hand to descend on her for being the one to tell him, but it didn’t.

When they held a memorial service for him, Roderick handed her a piece of paper, to read before the crowd of faces she didn’t recognise.

“Randall was our family’s happiness. He was the bravest, the wisest, and kindest older brother I could possibly dream of having.” Her hands and voice trembled as she read because she knew it was all a lie. In truth, Randall was like their father. They had the same short temper, the same stubbornness and the same cruelty.

But Randall being dead meant she could reinvent him.

Lately, she dreams of happier memories and looks back on them fondly, knowing they can never be contradicted or disproved.

While her father has dreamt of Death ever since.

It’s a brisk afternoon in October when a man in a suit, bow tie and bowler hat arrives at Fawny Rig. He clutches a leather briefcase in front of him and introduces himself as Dr John Hathaway, a curator from the Royal Museum, travelled all the way from London to this quiet corner of East Sussex. She leads him through the panelled halls of the manor, to her father’s study.

Roderick barges in behind them, in a shirt and waistcoat, already smelling faintly of whisky and waving his cane in her general direction. “Tea for our guest,” he orders.

She has the pot ready and strains the dark, reddish liquid into two delicate china cups while her father and Dr Hathaway settle on opposing leather sofas in the centre of the room.

“I take it you have reconsidered?” Roderick says.

“After our meeting at the museum… I know what I said, but–” Dr Hathaway takes an unsure breath. “I received a telegram this morning. My son, Edmund, his destroyer was sunk last week off Jutland.”

It’s a loss Roderick can share, even if he doesn’t really understand how other than a few quick words of condolence. “I lost my son, Randall last year. He was my greatest joy.”

She pauses as she reaches for the sugar bowl. She has never been under the illusion that her own existence has given her father any joy, but then what sort of person would she have to be to earn his respect? She places the sugar on a tray, along with the small jug of milk and the cups, and brings them to the small table between the sofas. The pair don’t spare her a word of thanks or even a brief glance.

Dr Hathaway’s hand lingers on the clasp of his case. “If I give you this, could you truly do it? Could you really–”

“Capture the angel of Death?” Roderick says. “I believe I could.”

She shudders unexpectedly. The old groundskeeper used to say a sudden chill meant someone was walking over your grave.

Dr Hathaway clicks open the clasp and takes out an aged, leather bound book. It has no title on the cover, just gold markings in square, geometric patterns.

“The Magdalene Grimoire,” her father mutters, his eyes wide in an ominous sort of wonder. “With the spells recorded in the book, we will see our sons returned to us.”

The next night is a full moon. She stands by the door with Sykes, welcoming men and women dressed in midnight blue robes to the manor and directing them towards the door that leads to the cellar. They’re all part of Roderick’s ‘Order of Ancient Mysteries’ which as far as she can tell is a cult of fanatics who still believe in witchcraft. They come to Fawny Rig once a month, to listen to her father read from so-called ‘spell books’ as though he is a preacher.

The fanatics pull hoods over their heads and descend the narrow stone steps into the cellar with lit candles grasped in their hands. Roderick leads the way, the book Dr Hathaway gave him tucked under his arm.

She shoots Sykes a concerned frown but he just shrugs. He’s paid to organise the household and guard Burgess’ collection of relics, not to ask questions. Questions are a dangerous game with Roderick.

She trails after them and shuts the iron lock on the door behind her.

The cellar is more like a crypt, an expansive room sprawling under the house, held up by pillars and arches. In the low candlelight she makes out a set of markings on the floor in the heart of the room and this is where the Order of Ancient Mysteries gathers.

The shapes and symbols are unfamiliar to her, painted onto the flagstones, twisting and curling over each other to form a circle. Roderick stands at the very edge of it by a brass lectern.

She watches, half hidden behind a pillar as they stand around the circle and Roderick opens the book, his desired page already marked and studied in the hours since it has been in his possession.

“Tonight,” her father says to his congregation, “we will achieve what no one before us has attempted. We will summon and imprison Death.”

His eyes meet hers through the shadowy space, heavy and sunken with age, grief and months worth of sleepless nights. They glisten slightly too.

He holds his hands out and looks down at the markings on the floor. “Here, in the darkness.”

The others echo his words, softly and melodically at first. Here in the darkness. Here in the darkness.

And so the ritual begins.

“I give you a coin made from a stone,” Roderick says, presenting the object to the ceiling as though the eyes of God are looking down from the heavens, through the house and the earth, and drops it to the floor, inside the circle of markings.

“I give you a knife from under the hills.” He holds up a thin blade and lifts his other arm so the sleeve of his robe drops to his elbow. “I give you the blood from out of my vein.”

She winces but does not look away as he draws the knife along the skin of his forearm, until dark droplets begin to fall and stain the markings.

“I give you a song I stole from the dirt and I give you a feather,” he says, raising a white feather that almost seems to glow through the gloom, “pulled from an angel’s wing.”

And all the while the voices persist. Here in the darkness. Here in the darkness.

He drops the feather and it drifts gently down, landing in the very heart of the circle.

The room is still and she holds her breath.

The feather starts to move. It twists in a circle and floats up, lurching and turning as though it’s being blown about by a breeze she cannot feel or hear.

The voices raise to an urgent chant. Here in the darkness. Here in the darkness.

She clenches her fingertips against the stone of the pillar. She tries to meet her father’s eye again but he is fixated on the feather flying above their heads.

He calls over the chanting, “I summon you with poison,” and the moment he does the feather flickers like the striking of a match. “I summon you with pain! I open the way! I open the gates! I summon you in the name of the old Lords, we summon you together! Come!”

A noise, like a cracking whip splits her ears. The feather bursts into white and golden flames like the flash of a camera. The heat of it rushes over her face and burns her eyes.

And from the flames a body falls to the floor.

It thuds as it hits the ground, silencing the voices save for a few gasps and murmurs. She feels the flagstones rumble under her feet, sees the edges of a black cloak spilling across the floor and a head of long silver hair trailing from its head.

This isn’t an illusion. Roderick Burgess has brought forth a tangible entity, plucked from God-knows-where, lying motionless on the floor. For a moment she wonders if he is dead, until she sees a slight movement in his chest, but even then she fears she could be imagining it.

She takes a few unsure steps to where Roderick stands and the man– he is a man as far as she can tell– is further revealed to her. She can see his face now, his pale skin, the angles of his jaw and cheeks, the curve of his lips, but beyond that she finds herself unable to look away from the jewel that sits where his left eye should be. It is a bright, deep shade of blue and dotted with silver specs, like the vast expanse of twilight when the stars are out but the sky is not quite black. The eye is framed by twisted, red flesh and a scar, slicing from his brow to his cheek. It takes her a moment to realise his other eye, closer to the ground, is closed.

The only other parts of him she can see are the tips of his fingers, clasped around a small pouch.

“Is this… Death?” she utters.

“That remains to be seen,” Roderick says. He points to the pouch. “Get that for me.”

She stares back at her father. How he can speak so flippantly when a man has been conjured, seemingly from thin air, is beyond her. But he glares back, his dark expression only more formidable with his aged frown.

So she steps forward and begins to lower herself beside the man.

“Careful, girl!” Roderick barks, “don’t break the binding circle.”

She stops and looks down, where her skirt is inches from brushing over the markings on the floor. She shuffles back and, with trembling fingers, reaches for the pouch. It’s not hard to take, the man hardly resists, twitching his fingers to keep it in his grasp. It feels wrong, stealing from someone too weak to hold onto what is his.

She looks into the jewel-like eye. Can he see through it? Perhaps it has something to do with the scar? Did he place it there himself, or was he simply made this way?

Someone snatches the pouch from her. She looks up at her father as he undoes the strings and peers inside. “Sand,” he mutters, and stows it away inside his robes.

“And the jewel,” he says to her.

She means to protest, but finds she cannot.

She avoids the markings as she leans forwards. She presses her fingertips beside the man’s eye. His skin is cold and firm.

She swallows her guilt and the nauseous feeling in her throat, nudging her fingertips into the socket. It takes her a few attempts, but she pries the jewel free, wincing when she feels it come loose. If he feels any pain he hardly shows it. His brow furrows but his other eye remains closed, and he makes no sound.

She stands and offers the jewel to her father.

Roderick holds it to the light of one of the candles, giving a curious hum before he pockets that too.

“Move,” he mutters to her, pushing her out of his way as he stands over the man. He tugs on the black cloak and it falls into fragments that fade away, like dust on a breeze. The man’s body is bare, pale skin running over details of muscle and bone. He shivers and twitches like he has a fever, but still he does not speak, or even let out a breath.

“We’ll let our guest recover,” Roderick says, “and then we shall make our demands.

They leave him there for days. He does not move, or ask for food or water.

She doesn’t dream in the nights since they captured their ‘guest’. In fact she hardly sleeps at all. Each morning she wakes, already exhausted, having felt like she’s only closed her eyes for a few brief moments.

Then come the stories in the newspapers. They call it ‘the sleeping sickness’. People all over the country, and in fact the world, have been plagued, either to not sleep at all or never wake up.

On a cold, drizzly morning, a stranger appears at the door to the manor.

She listens and watches from the top of the stairs, crouching by the bannister to stay out of sight as a man with choppy silver hair and pale skin strides into the entrance hall, with Roderick following closely behind.

“Do I know you?” her father asks, furiously.

“No.” The stranger’s voice is low and almost seductive. “But I know all about you, Roderick Burgess, and the being trapped in your basement.”

“You mean to intimidate me?”

She sees a flash of a grin and a pair of pale purple eyes through the wooden balusters.

“I am here to help you,” the stranger says. “There are benefits to keeping one of the Targaryens in your confinement.”

“Targaryens?” her father echoes.

“Did you think Death was the only one of her kind? Death has family. Destiny, Despair, Desire…”

“And who have I got?”

“Dream,” the stranger says with a smile that bares his teeth.

A shiver runs over her shoulders. She keeps her jaw tight to stop herself from reacting to it.

Roderick scoffs. “What good is a God who governs dreams?”

The stranger's voice darkens. “There was a saying in the ancient times of humanity, that said the Targaryens are closer to Gods than men. But they are not Gods. They are more than Gods. They are Endless.”

He tells Roderick of Dream’s vestments, the pouch of sand and his sapphire, both of which he says Roderick may manipulate for his own influences. He says the binding circle will not be enough to contain their prisoner, that they must construct a sphere of glass within the circle.

Most crucially of all, he says no one must be allowed to fall asleep in Dream’s presence.

“Why are you helping me?” Roderick finally asks.

The stranger runs his tongue over his teeth and smiles to himself. “Little family dispute, I shan’t bore you with the details. But for your sake, and for mine, he must not escape.”

He offers his hand to Roderick, who returns the gesture after a moment of hesitation.

Before he heads for the door, the stranger’s eyes trail up to where she hides. Her heart leaps with a sense of dread, like she’s seen something she wasn’t meant to.

She doesn’t trust him, not by the look or sound of him, but her father does. He follows the stranger’s instructions, ordering the construction of the glass sphere, to be welded around their prisoner as it is made. Finally, he arranges a rota of guards to keep watch over him, under strict orders to never fall asleep, lest their prisoner escape into their dreams.

The details of his face are etched into her memory, even after months, the angle of his jaw, the curve of his upper lip, the silver falling over his shoulders. If she could dream, she is sure she would dream of him. Instead she holds onto the flashes of images that appear before her waking eyes, the pale skin of his bare body against the floor, the stars in his sapphire eye, now kept locked away in her father’s study.

She knows Roderick has tried to bargain with him, and each time he returns from the cellar more furious than when he entered it. “He will not speak a word!” his voice bellows through the quiet halls of the manor. “He will not even look at me!”

When she dares to ask questions, Roderick glares at her and tightens the grip on his cane.

The stranger with silver hair was right about something, wealth and admiration have come to Roderick Burgess in droves since he acquired the Lord of Dreams. It’s something about the sapphire, or the sand, something she doesn’t understand, but their family comes across good fortunes, which is almost entirely spent on lavish parties to entertain Roderick’s ever expanding crowd of admirers.

She wakes with the sunrise, from a void and dreamless sleep. The manor is littered with empty bottles, full ashtrays, plates of half-eaten food, odd shoes and playing cards. Her father must still be asleep, which is odd. He is usually an early riser, even after a night of drinking.

A rumbling in her stomach has her heading through the entrance hall towards the kitchen, but she stops when she sees two men waiting by the door to the cellar– two of the guards her father has hired to watch the prisoner, dressed in smart suits with service revolvers just poking out of their jackets. They look restless, peering their heads round corners, shifting their weight on their legs, not wanting to step too far from the door.

“We can’t just leave,” one mutters to the other.

“I’m not staying down there with that… thing one second longer than I have to–”

“Good morning,” she calls.

They look at her in unison, and frown.

“Have you seen Noel and Mauirce?” one of the men asks. “They’re nearly half an hour late.”

The rotation of the guards. They take eight hour shifts in pairs.

Her eyes glance to the cellar door, opened only a fraction. “I could watch him until they get here,” she says, “if you want to leave.”

It doesn’t take them long to agree.

They leave through the front door. When she hears it shut, she finally lets herself reach for the handle to the cellar door. The handle is cold, untouched for hours at a time, and a little stiff. She pushes on it slowly, carefully, making as little noise as possible.

With the cellar door closed, she shuts out the light and warmth of the morning. A silent, icy draft drifts through the narrow stairway. She follows it down, all the way to the dull, eerie light of the main chamber.

The sight takes her breath away, the glass sphere, suspended above the ground, still within the circle of markings that keep his power contained.

He sits in the centre, still bare, his knees tucked into his chest and his hair falling around his face like a veil.

As far she knows, no food or water ever passes the threshold to the cellar, and the cage is never opened. How does he breathe? How does he eat? How does he not wither away? He just sits there, stoic, his face frozen in time like a statue, like the image of a god cut from marble, to be preserved and admired.

A man like that cannot be real, and yet there he is.

“Hello,” she says.

He does not react to her voice or the sound of her footsteps as she walks further into the chamber.

If he can even hear her. She wonders how thick the glass is, if sound can permeate it, or does he just hear the sound of his own breath echoed back to him, endlessly.

She comes to lean against one of the pillars, tracing her fingertips down the cold, rough surface of the stone.

“Are you really the Lord of dreams?” she says.

His gaze lifts and turns to her, just enough that she can see his chin, his nose, and a single violet eye. It is not like the stranger’s, it is far more vibrate, burning with with a silent fury that makes her heart flutter and her skin feel tight.

“I have not dreamt since that night.”

She knows it isn’t just her. It’s the sleeping sickness, the war, the cloud of darkness looming over the rest of the world.

“The groundskeeper has a son, he’s only ten years old. He’s been asleep for months now. He can’t even eat. If he doesn’t wake up, he’ll die.”

He does not react, but his eye follows her as she takes a single step away from the pillar, towards the sphere.

“This is my father’s– our doing, yes?”

Her eyes dip to his chest, to the movement of his lungs underneath skin and muscle, a steady rise and fall with a deep, patient breath.

“My father is a reasonable man, if you could give him something, anything, I am sure he would let you out.”

He tilts his head, until she can just see the point of his scar on his cheek and the edge of his empty eye socket.

He is simultaneously the most terrifying and most beautiful thing she has ever laid eyes upon. The low light only accentuates the harsh angles in his face, the ridges and lines in the muscles and tendons of his neck, torso, arms and legs.

She takes another step closer. “I would let you out, if I could,” she says quietly, like a secret.

He blinks softly, and when her eyes flicker to his lips she sees them curled into something almost like a smile, but not quite.

“Oh you would, would you?”

Her blood runs cold at the sound of her father’s voice. She whips her head around just in time to see Roderick marching towards her with his hand reaching out. His fist grips at her hair, and when she yelps in pain he hisses at her to be quiet. He drags her back up the steps, away from the cold cellar, to the warmth and the light, to the world without dreams.

She bathes before dinner, wincing as she runs her hands over the fresh bruises that mark her skin. Most of them are red, others are set deep and already turning a greyish purple.

Her father’s fury still rings in her ears. “Stupid girl! If he escapes he will slaughter us all!”

Leaning on her back is especially painful, it’s where her body took the brunt of his cane. She brings her knees into her chest, hunching over herself.

She hasn’t cried over her father’s cruelty in years, not since she was a small child. He’d always call her weak for it. Randall never cried when he was disciplined, because he knew, deep down, it was good for him. Perhaps she is simply not as strong as Randall was.

Her tears are hot and stinging in her eyes. She blinks and lets them fall onto her knees, to become the dew that lingers on her skin.

“Do you want to die, girl? Because it can be easily remedied!”

She doesn’t wear anything special, a white satin dress, with long, billowy sleeves, and applies some rouge to her cheeks, to make her seem more awake, more alive.

She reaches the bottom of the staircase as the clock in the entrance hall starts to chime. Five times. Marking the start of another shift rotation.

Two men appear from the hall that leads from the cellar, vaguely nodding as they pass her.

She can see into the dining room from the stairs, an enormous table set with silver cutlery and china plates, for just two of them.

The door to her father’s study is closed, obstructing the voices within. He’s arguing with someone.

Before she can stop herself, she’s walking towards the cellar. She tries the handle to find it unlocked. With one final look to the door to the study, she descends back into the darkness.

Two guards sit on wooden chairs by the entrance from the stairway, and immediately stand to attention as she walks into the chamber.

“Miss,” one of them calls, “you cannot be here.”

And she seems to have caught his attention too. He looks up from where he sits in the sphere, his forearm resting on his knee. His hair is pushed from his face, and his violet eye is wide, curious.

“This is my father’s house, I will go where I please,” she says, shakily, continuing until she comes face to face with the glass.

He stares at her, somewhat furious, but in a way she knows it is not meant for her.

The men behind her are muttering to each other, she doesn’t hear their words, but she hears their panic.

“It isn’t right for him to keep you here,” she says. “It isn’t right for him to think he can play with mortality. And I am as bad as he is for letting this happen.”

The tendons of his hand flex as he clenches his fist, his fingers restless as he stares at her, intently.

“If I let you out,” she whispers, “would you harm me?”

His face softens as his eye moves over her face.

He’s studying her, she realises. She imagines him noting the curves of her cheeks and chin, the shape of her mouth, perhaps the faint teartracks and the dark circles under her eyes.

What does he make of her, the daughter of his captor, the one who pried the sapphire from his eye? Roderick could be right, he might slaughter her the moment he is free from his cage.

“I would like to believe that you wouldn’t,” she says.

His expression gives nothing away.

Suddenly he shifts. His muscles tense as he comes to his feet and uncurls his spine to stand before her. Something about his movements are distinctly inhuman.

The guards behind her are shouting now, telling her to step away, calling for Mr Burgess. Their voices are inconsequential to her, muffled as though spoken behind a closed door. Her heart pounds in her ears. All she sees is him, the intense gaze of his eye, a wide palm reaching out and pressing against the glass.

She reaches up slowly, his eye growing wider with every inch she comes closer to touching the glass that separates them, but not quite meeting it.

His brow furrows as if to question her. Why are you hesitating? What are you afraid of?

She won’t be dragged upstairs again. She won’t be thrown to the floor with nowhere else to go. She will not suffer at the hands of Roderick Burgess any longer.

So she presses her hand to the glass.

Her skin is feverishly cold, her arms weightless. She can almost feel the shape of his palm through the glass, but not quite, like she is reaching for something she will never touch, clawing to the memory of a dream.

She can feel herself slipping into numbness, her eyes and her limbs becoming heavy. She presses her fingernails against the glass, silently pleading though she doesn’t know what for. An escape? An end? Anything.

His face is strangely gentle as he pouts his lips, hushing her, lulling her panic. She can feel her breathing and her heartbeat slowing, but it does not frighten her.

The glass shatters, her knees give way. She is awake enough to know she is falling, but too far gone to stop herself.

But she does not need to.

The world around her is silent– no, a gentle breeze drifts over her skin and whispers in her ear. Sunlight beams onto one side of her face and the other rests against bare skin. She feels a weight around her waist, something propping her body upright.

She tries to steady herself but the ground shifts beneath her. The arms around her only tighten their grip when she stumbles.

Finally she lets her eyes flutter open. They are in a desert, a vast expanse of dry sand, reaching as far as the eye can see.

Her head is moving with his breath, against his chest.

She tilts her gaze up, close enough that her lips barely brush over the base of his throat.

His eye is already fixed on her, holding her firmly in his arms, pulling her into him.

Wordlessly, he releases one arm from her waist, and reaches down, keeping his eye on her face. When he brings himself back up, she looks at his closed fist, where sand slips from between his fingers.

Her confusion must be visible on her face because he smiles softly at her, letting out a low “hmm” as he does.

She means to blink, but when she opens her eyes the world has changed again.

She lies face down against the ground of the cellar, dust and dirt pressing into her cheek, broken glass littering the floor around her.

She blinks again through the haze of sleep still clouding her vision. She makes out a figure in a long black coat with silver hair falling down his back. He stands over two bodies, lying lifeless on the ground, and stalks towards another.

Roderick is at the base of the stairs. He raises his cane and cries out as the prisoner reaches into his coat.

Her father’s voice fades into a spluttering, retching sound. Then he is silent. His body slumps to the floor with a gut-wrenching thud. When the stranger walks away, she sees her father sprawled out on the floor, blood spurting from his throat, seeping into his shirt, pooling on the floor around him.

She pushes herself up, leaning on her hands as her vision is blocked once again by a black coat. He stands over her, blood dripping from a knife he holds in his hand, his eye a brighter shade of violet than it was before.

He kneels beside her, taking her chin in his fingertips.

“Are you hurt?” he says. His voice is a hypnotic blend of soft and harsh, low and light, chilling in a way that sends a wave of warmth through her stomach.

She looks past his shoulder, where Roderick’s skin is turning from white to grey. “What did you do to my father?” she utters.

He jerks her head back to him. His expression is dark, lips upturned into a sneer.

Does he expect her to be grateful?

“My tools,” he says.

“You’re… what?”

“My tools. The sapphire and the pouch.”

The items that were stolen from him, that her father has now paid for with blood.

“Are you going to kill me too?” she says, digging her fingertips into the stone and the shards of glass beneath her.

He tilts his head and his lips twitch in a flicker of movement. His voice is barely above a whisper. “Tell me where they are. I will not harm you.”

Three men lay dead mere feet from them, and yet she finds herself wanting to trust him.

He offers her his arm as she stands, gripping at the thick, leather sleeve. Her palms are covered in small cuts from the glass, droplets of bright red blood pearling at the edges. He takes her wrists in his hands to have a look and tuts to himself.

“Quickly,” he says, moving towards the steps, leading her along with him, past the bodies of the guards, and the body of her father.

She brings him to the study, her hands shaking, bloody and outstretched before her. The door is wide open, a stack of papers thrown carelessly to the floor.

Roderick’s safe sits in a black cabinet in the corner of the room. She uses her fingertips to open it, wincing at the pieces of glass still stuck in her skin, but she swallows down the pain.

She guesses the combination on the first try. 1895– Randall’s birth year.

There, in the centre shelf, above the Grimoire, below a stack of banknotes, is the pouch of sand and the sapphire.

He reaches for the gem first. She turns away as he fixes it back into his socket, remembering the weight of it in her palm when she took it from him. She sees him reach forward again, but not for the pouch. He takes a hold of her wrists.

With no magic words or spells, he waves a hand over her palms. For a moment she sees a glow in his sapphire eye. The pain vanishes, so does the blood, the glass and the dirt.

She blinks a few effortless tears from her eyes. Tears for her father, tears of relief, she cannot place a cause.

Cold fingertips meet her skin once more, as the Lord of Dreams wipes her tears away, bringing her gaze to meet his.

He leans in closer, until his forehead meets hers. “Sleep,” he whispers.

She falls into him, to find herself wide awake, clinging onto him as she had done in the desert.

But they are somewhere else entirely. The sky above them is a pale yellow, like daybreak, painted with swirling grey clouds. The land here is… dead. Dead trees, barren mountains and hills, and in the distance, beyond a dried lake, is a castle of red brick, decrepit, falling into ruin.

“You see the damage that has been done to my realm?” he says. With her ear pressed against his chest, his voice is cavernous and she feels everything, the way his words drag through his throat. She feels his pain at being confined, the loss of his home and his creations.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“I do not forgive easily, that is why Roderick Burgess had to die. But you…” he pulls away from her so he might look at her properly, cupping the sides of her face and swiping his thumbs over her cheeks. “I do not need an apology from you. We are free of him now.”

“Is that what you think I wanted?”

He hums with tight lips. “I have seen your dreams, as I see the dreams of every mortal. I see them as clearly as you perceive the waking world. It just so happened that our dreams coincided.”

She had never dreamt of her father’s death and she had certainly never imagined that she might have played a part in it. But she cannot deny the weight now lifted from her shoulders. She will never have to earn his approval, she will never have to endure him again. She is free of him.

“Go now,” he says, “I am sure you have your own business to resolve.”

He releases his hold of her and brings his hands behind his back. As he walks towards the castle the world around her starts to fade. She can smell the musk of the manor, the lingering smoke of her father’s cigars, the distinct scent of a winter evening.

“Wait!” she calls.

The ends of his coat swish around his legs as he turns back to face her. “Yes?” he says, the corners of his mouth curling up into a small smile.

“I want to know your name.”

“I have had many names,” he says.

“And how would you have me know you?”

“Aemond,” he says.

She echoes his name, letting her mouth linger on the final syllable. “Will I see you again?”

He draws the tip of his tongue between his lips. “Perhaps,” he says.

When she wakes she is laid out on one of the leather sofas of her father’s study. She looks down at her hands, traces her fingertips down her face, now free of the dirt and dust.

She wonders if she might have dreamt all of it, the beautiful man in the sphere, the glass breaking, her father’s blood on the floor…

Her life is never the same after that. With her father dead, his estate passes to her. For the first time, her life is hers to do with as she pleases.

And yet she feels an absence, a hollow longing in her chest.

Her dreams come back to her since she set him free, and each night she dreams of him.

He only appears in brief moments, like lighting, bright and brilliant, but gone in a heartbeat, before she can truly see him. She sees the movement of a leather coat, flashes of silver, violet and sapphire blue. Sometimes she is met with darkness as a pair of lips ghosts over her neck with a contented sigh and a warm breath.

She cannot bear it.

As she lies in the empty manor house, she traces her fingers over her body, her lips, down her neck and her chest, underneath her cotton nightgown, to her navel and the pool of wanting wetness between her legs, trying to imagine they are his.

She pictures the way his hair fell around his face, the coldness of his skin, the curve of his lips. She imagines them parting in a small sigh, the sound of his breath, the way his chest hummed as she circles over her bundle of nerves. Pleasure sparks at first but it keeps slipping from her grasp.

She circles faster, harder, searching for a spot that will finally give her the release she craves.

She feels heat and a sheen of sweat settling on the surface of her skin, her breathing hitches, her hips twitch under her touches. The pleasure heightens, then fades.

With her eyes tightly shut, she spurs herself on with thoughts of him, breathlessly chanting his name into the empty space and cold air of her bedroom.

“Aemond… Aemond…”

Something changes.

The mattress shifts beneath her and a weight presses against her body, her legs, her stomach, her chest.

A hand clasps around hers, ceasing her movements, and bringing it to rest by her side.

She laments the loss of the friction against her bud, her pleasure pulled away from her, but in its place anticipation blooms within her.

When she opens her eyes he is above her, against her, hovering his face over hers so that all she sees are his eyes, one violet, one sapphire.

“You have my attention,” he says in a soft but unsettling voice.

A thrill ripples through her body.

She whispers his name on an exhale of breath, running her fingertips over his arms, tense and toned as his props himself over her.

But she is somewhat dazed, her senses numbed by fatigue and the echo of the pleasure she had been chasing.

“Is this real?” she utters.

Aemond leans further into her. She feels a weight between her hips and an unmistakable hardness prodding at her centre as he brings his lips to her neck, pressing a slow, teasing kiss against a sensitive spot of skin that has her body tensing and her fingers digging into his shoulders.

“Does if feel real?” he whispers against her skin.

How much has he truly seen of her dreams, her desires, she wonders? Perhaps she should feel some kind of shame, but she cannot, not when she is on the precipice of something bright, beautiful and damning. She can hardly stand being on the edge of it, having him so close but not close enough.

She wraps her arms around his neck as he teases her with his lips, crosses her legs around his hips, meeting his movements as he torturously grinds his hardening cock against her cunt, dripping with arousal, twitching and clenching around nothing at the anticipation.

“Needy little thing,” he mutters, dragging his nose along her neck as he comes to kiss the hollow of her throat.

His voice sends a shockwave through her body. Her hips buck against his, determined for relief as her fingers thread through the soft strands of his hair, and tug.

He lets out a quiet growl against her skin. A hand rests upon her thigh and trails up, bunching the hem of her nightgown to her waist and adjusting the other side.

He sits back, watching her with the same darkness and intensity as when he was trapped inside the cage, intrigued at the least, fascinated if she is presumptive.

The irony of being laid half bare before him and at his mercy does not escape her.

“I’ve heard you crying out for me, little mortal,” he says.

“You said you can see my dreams,” she says, “how?”

“Your dreams exist in my realm,” he says, “in The Dreaming. I see your dreams as I see the dreams of every other being. I feel them, as clearly as you perceive the waking world. But you…” he muses, settling his hands on either side of her waist. “You are incessant.”

She shivers and writhes under his touch, a pulsing heat settling within her.

She traces her hands over his, where they grip at her waist, along his smooth skin, the tendons and veins. His fingers are long and lithe. She knows they would feel so perfect, wrapped around her throat, stroking over her skin, pushing inside of her wet heat to coax her pleasure.

Aemond smiles to himself as though he can hear her thoughts.

He grips harder into her flesh and pulls his hips back, only to let his cock slide over her slick folds with teasingly gentle thrusts.

Every stroke pushes her closer and closer to the edge, but not enough to find release. She feels the frustrating want pulsing through her body, the coil getting tighter and tighter, her cunt clenching over nothing.

“Aemond…” she says with a breathless mewl, “please…”

“You really want it, don’t you?” Aemond growls, resting his forehead against hers. “Just feel how wet that empty little cunt is for me.”

Her eyes trail along the angles of his face, the line of his scar, the night sky in his eyes as he stares down at her, the gentle curve of his lips and how they settle into a soft expression.

Her gaze slips further down, over his throat, his collar, his pale, bare chest, the ridges of the muscles on his abdomen, the slight dip in his waist, the trail of silver hair to his cock, long, hard and flushed with need, transfixed by the way it moves against her.

She holds her breath each time he withdraws, stifling her whines into his mouth when he only keeps teasing her.

“I want it,” she groans, “I want you. I’ve wanted you since the moment I saw you.”

He lets out a contented hum as he leans down to kiss her. The movements of his mouth are slow and consuming, claiming her with lips, tongue and teeth, wetness and warmth.

She holds him close by the sides of his face. In his violet eye she sees his hunger, his rage, his lust. In his sapphire, she sees oblivion.

And finally, he eases himself into her.

He fucks her delicately, dragging his cock through her gently, slowly, deeply. His lips ghost over her skin, her temple, her cheek, back to her mouth with light kisses and strained but soft breaths.

With a few deft circles over her bud she feels herself come undone around him. Her climax burns through her and she holds him closer for purchase, digging her fingertips into his skin as her resolve melts and her legs tremble around his hips.

Aemond doesn’t stop. He holds her against the mattress with a determined grip, fucking her through her peak until her pleasure settles and simmers once more.

Being kissed by him, held by him, fucked by him feels light a dream, that weightless, numb feeling of being between consciousness and sleep coursing through her limbs. It feels good, it feels deep, it feels perfect.

She cannot be sure how many climaxes he draws from her, she just feels him, his heat, his hands and his skin as he repositions her legs, guides her onto her front, brings her up to her knees, pushes her back down again, until she is a blissful, mindless mess.

He meets his own end when he has her face down on the bed, her face turned to the side against the pillow, his mouth on the underside of her jaw as he pounds into her.

“You’re doing so well,” she hears him rasp, “you’ve been so good to me… fuck, I don’t think I’ll ever get enough of you.”

Her mind is beyond words and coherent thoughts. She utters the only thing she feels, the only thing she can think of, “Aemond… Aemond… Aemond…”

He stills his hips against her rear with a guttural moan, pressing his face against hers, squeezing her waist under his hands. He allows himself a few more shallow thrusts until he is spent. She feels his cock pulse within her, a warmth pooling, his spend dripping from her cunt once he has pulled away.

The weight dissipates from her back and for a moment she lies there, basking in the afterglow, feeling her chest rise and fall against the bed, the softness of her sheets under her fingertips.

She wakes to a gentle breeze running over her skin and slipping down her spine.

She allows her eyes to flutter open and recoils at the pale sunlight beaming through the spaces in the curtains.

She holds her breath.

She hears no sound or sign of life other than her own pulse.

She twists herself to sit up, noting that her bedsheets are neat and the hem of her nightgown is where it should be.

Is it possible that she dreamed it? She remembers it so vividly, but the mind has a way of playing tricks. Perhaps it was only a dream.

“Your dreams exist in my realm,” he had said. “I feel them, as clearly as you perceive the waking world.”

How do we determine what is real? she wonders as she pulls on a robe and goes to open the curtains. The morning floods her bedroom. It brings no warmth, but it brings light and life back into the room.

To dream is to live beyond ourselves, why should that be any less true than the world around me?

She seats herself before her vanity, reaching for the drawer for her hairbrush.

But something catches her eye, a glint of colour against mahogany wood, a small gem catching the sunlight.

She takes it between her thumb and index finger and brings it before her eyes; a sapphire, the size of a pearl, a deep and vibrant blue. Its edges are uneven and dull, uncut, as though plucked straight from the earth.

She turns it about between her fingers. It could be a trick of the light, but there is depth to it, a vastness within. The sapphire seems to capture the night sky, dotted with glimmering stars.

His was the same.

As the dazed state of sleep wears off, she feels the satisfied ache between her legs, the spots on her skin marked by him. She smiles to herself and holds the gem in her palm, this precious gift, this reminder, this promise from the Lord of Dreams.

Tags (comment to be added)

Sweet Dream taglist: @solisarium @sirenangelroyal @sabrinasstar @shygardengalaxy @aemondsfavouritebastard @wintrr13 @thedamewithabook @lexwolfhale @rainyforest777

General taglist: @randomdragonfires @jamespotterismydaddy @theoneeyedprince @tsujifreya @dreamsofoldvalyria

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