Chapter One
The first time it happened was shortly after Ava Montgomery's cancer relapsed. She was dreaming—at least she thought she was dreaming. There was no other explanation. The transition from being awake to sleeping and then to being where she ended up was not definite. There was no shift of awareness or signal that something was happening. First she was one place, and then she was another.
oOo
Ava froze in the middle of the hallway with the distinct feeling that she was somewhere she shouldn't be. Where she was or how she got there, she didn't know. She reached her hand out, and it touched stone, rough and cold under her fingertips. The ceiling rose high above her and the corridor was long, punctuated by pools of yellow light. Despite the light, the hall was dim and had the quiet stillness of the middle of the night.
She was dreaming; she had to be.
Hand still braced against the wall, as if the physical contact kept her rooted to reality, she turned around. Behind her, the hallway continued, empty and dim. It seemed the sort of the sort of corridor one would find in a castle, and it reminded her faintly of Hogwarts.
Paintings and tapestries lined the walls, and she pushed away from the wall to study them. In one, a man floated above a lake. Ava frowned, noting the wings spanning from the man's back. An angel? He held a sword in one hand and another object in his other, but Ava couldn't make it out in the dimness.
She moved on down the hall, glancing behind her as if she expected someone to suddenly appear. The creeping sense of her wrongness hadn't diminished, and it put Ava on edge.
A sword was the subject of the next painting, curving and angular symbols written in black around it. Ava craned her neck and tilted her head. She frowned. They weren't any language she recognized, but that didn't say much. The hallway ended at a junction of another and Ava turned right.
She had to be dreaming, but Ava didn't feel like she was dreaming. It wouldn't be the first time she had become self-aware during a dream. However, she always knew she was dreaming when it happened. Lucid dreams always had a certain feel to them, a haziness around the edges that felt fragile. This corridor, this place had a solidness to it that Ava had never experienced. It didn't make any sense, and she didn't know how she'd gotten there.
At the end of the hall was a staircase, one descending down and one going up. Movement on the floor below had Ava pressing herself against the wall. She closed her eyes as her heart rammed against her chest. Then, opening her eyes, she slowly looked down the stairs where there was a small woman in a nightdress. She was guided by a white light she held in her hand. Just as she was almost out of sight, she paused and turned. She took a few steps towards the stairs and looked up them. Ava shrank away, shoulders tense.
"Sophie?" Gathering her skirts in her other hand, she started up the steps. "It's late."
Ava turned and ran up the other staircase. Halfway up, her foot slipped and she landed heavily upon the steps, breaths gasping in her chest. She twisted around, horror-stricken as the woman approached.
The woman stopped, staring at Ava with surprise. "I dare say, you're not Sophie."
Grabbing for the banister beside her, Ava went to pull herself up when there was a sharp tug in her stomach. Her breath hitched for a split second.
oOo
Ava woke in her hospital room with such a sudden abruptness that she wondered if she'd fallen asleep at all. Her room was half-dark, lit only by the bright lights from the nursing station across the hall and the full moon shining out her window. Heart pounding with the surge of a dream that wasn't a dream, she laid in bed and stared at the ceiling for a long while until she fell back to sleep.
oOo
A month passed before it happened again, time enough for Ava to convince herself it was only a dream. This time, she appeared in the corner of a room where she stood startled for several moments for she wasn't alone in the room.
The room was large but warm and dimly lit by a few candles. Candles, not lamps, Ava realized, her attention darting from one side of the room to the other. Where ever she was, there was no modern electricity, no modern anything in the room. A fire crackled softly in the fireplace to Ava's right, and in front of her was a four poster bed. In the bed, a figure lay curled beneath blankets.
The figure groaned and turned over, kicking the blankets out of the way. It was a young man in the bed, and he mumbled, legs moving restlessly. Ava pressed herself into the corner, heart skipping in her chest. She stared at him, willing him to not wake and find her. But he did not wake.
She had to be dreaming again, but Ava had the same unsettled sense pooling in the pit of her belly. "I'm dreaming," she said aloud, "just dreaming."
The fabric of dream reality was thin and unstable, any sense of self-awareness disrupting the divide between sleep and awake. Ava repeated her mantra. If this was just a dream, it would break, and she would wake up. But she remained in the room, firmly rooted in this reality.
She was not dreaming, but if she wasn't dreaming, then where was she? And how did she get there? Panic began rising in her throat when footsteps outside the door interrupted Ava's private freakout. The door opened beside her, and Ava clamped a hand over her mouth to prevent her yelping as a young woman entered the room. The door, partially opened, only half-hid Ava. Quickly, she reached out and pulled the door the rest of the way open so it covered her in her hiding place.
The young woman turned, mouth open slightly, likely having sensed the movement of the door. Ava held her breath, but the woman dismissed whatever had drawn her attention and moved to the bedside. She paused there, gazing down at the young man. Ava watched as she reached down with one hand as if to touch his face but hesitated.
"I hate when you're ill like this," she said, leaning over his bed, her voice soft. "You must be well again. You must, for if you aren't, I will never forgive you." She glanced at the open door and straightened, smoothing her hands over her skirt.
Ava stared at the young woman's clothes. She wore a long dress, black with a white apron, and had her hair pinned up in an aged fashion that Ava had seen the characters on Downton Abbey wear. The young woman picked up a large basin on the bedside table and moved quickly out of the room, closing the door with a soft click. Ava's gaze remained on the closed door as her brain processed the fact that not only did she not know where she was, but that she didn't know when she was.
A few mumbled words from the young man in the bed had Ava turning her head. She moved slowly towards the bed, watching him as she made her steps as quiet as possible. A chair had been placed by his bedside, a book open on the seat. Ava picked it up and read the cover.
A Tale of Two Cities.
A red ribbon had been glued into the book's binding, meant to be used as a bookmark. Ava laid the ribbon on the current page and closed the book, setting it on the bedside table. She sat down in the chair and took a closer look at the young man, curiosity currently pushing out fear of discovery.
He was younger than she had first thought, body thin but lithely muscled. A fevered flush filled his face, sweat dampening his skin. Ava thought he had a nice face, but it was his hair that drew her eye. What she had initially thought was a blond so light it was nearly white, was actually silver. Ava frowned, discomfort rising in her abdomen, and she looked away from him.
Objects cluttered the bedside table. Alongside A Tale of Two Cities, an empty water glass sat beside an ornately carved box. Under the box were several pages of sheet music. Ava reached over and pulled the pages out from beneath the box. The music was handwritten, the music notes tiny and precise. Though Ava did not know how to read music, the very thought of music unearthed a sharp pang of longing.
Leaning forward, she rested her elbows on her knees and looked at the written music, wondering how it would sound. Unconsciously, she reached up to run her hand through her hair, a habit born from distress. But she stopped. Just as her cancer had taken her hair, it had also taken dance from her. Dance was everything that mattered in life; it was all she had ever wanted. She bit her lip as defiance rose in her, defiance against the one thing in her life that threatened to consume her.
Ava flexed her foot, her toes curling as if she were up on pointe, and then dropped her heel with a soft thud. She pushed the sheet music back beneath the box, face down, the thought of what she'd worked so hard for too painful for her to think about.
"Will?"
Her heart gave a startled thud in her chest, and she looked up. His eyes were open, clouded and glassy with fever, but the strangest shade of gray. Ava leaned forward and stared at them, trying to figure out why his eyes unsettled her. He reached out one hand.
"Will? You're here," he said, his fingers wrapping around Ava's. "I thought you had left."
His skin was hot with the heat of the fever burning within him, but his grip was firm and solid. Ava found herself paralyzed, however, as the sleeve of his nightshirt rode up to reveal a black mark on his pale skin. It was in the shape of an eye with the iris swirled. Ava reached out to touch it, and she pushed his shirt sleeve up, revealing more marks. Gooseflesh spread out across her back at their familiarity. She looked back at his face, at his silver hair and eyes, and then back down at his marked arm.
"But I'm glad you're here," he said, his grip tightening on Ava's hand.
She felt faint, untethered from reality. Instinctively, she clung to his hand as her heart raced. It wasn't possible. It just wasn't possible. Tearing her eyes away from him, she looked again around his room with a new understanding. Her eyes found, sitting on a chair by the window, a violin. Propped against a wardrobe was a cane topped with a jade dragon's head.
Ava looked back to the young man in the bed. He had closed his eyes, seemingly returning to sleep, but his grip on her hand hadn't lessened. She closed her eyes. It wasn't possible. However, there was no denying where she was, for there was no mistaking James Carstairs.
oOo
Author's Note - This is rather unorthodox of me, writing something that isn't Harry Potter fanfiction. I can't help my muse who has completely lost control. Updates will probably be slow considering I have a million other projects going. Also, this is a blanket disclaimer that I own nothing that you recognize as belonging to other people, C. Clare or otherwise. Hope you enjoy!