Tossing and turning, tossing and turning...

Too hot. It was too hot. She was far too hot. Suffocating... She couldn't breathe. She was suffocating. Where had all the air gone?

She sat up in bed. This wasn't her bed. She didn't belong in here. What was she doing here? Here, where she had no place. Here, where her name wasn't hers. Where nothing was hers.

Her eyes swept over the room. Not her room. She didn't have a room, not anymore. She didn't have anything anymore.

Hot. Too hot.

What was wrong? Usually she was too cold here in this strange country, icier than the one of her birth. Tonight, it was too hot. Far too hot. Burning. She was burning up. Too hot.

She crossed to the window, and opened the shutters, letting a rush of icy air cool her. He'll be coming soon. She leaned further out of the window, taking in the frigid air with huge gulps. And I won't be ready.

She laid a hand on her forehead. Far too hot. Her forehead was going to set her hand alight. She could go and wake somebody to fetch help. But what would be the point?

What would she say? What healer would rush to her aid, the Princess Kalasin who wasn't really Princess Kalasin? They didn't know. They didn't understand.

I'll have to just go back to bed, she decided eventually.

On the way, she glanced in the mirror. And stopped. She stared, blue eyes widening, incredulous, disbelieving. It's her.


A man sat in darkness, the only light glinting from two green puddles in front of him.

"Not failing me, are you, my pretty?" he enquired of what at first seemed to be empty air.

"I think you are," he continued, watching one of the puddles, which was formed from his own Gift. "I think you've lost faith. I think you're slipping."

He sighed, eyes flicking to the other green pool of fire. "And Kalasin of Conté. I could kill you right now," he informed the image of the sleeping girl. "Right now, dead in your dreams." The mage reached toward her, and then withdrew his hand. "But I won't. Not yet."

His teeth glinted in the dim light as his mouth curled in a cruel smile. "It wouldn't be painful enough."

He reached out a hand again, this time as if to caress the girl's head. "And I like painful." He let out a sigh. "I might have let you live, if you had helped me. But you didn't, did you? So you see," he carried on intently, crouching, and leaning over the pool, "I have to kill them all. I won't leave anybody alive. Not even you. And it's all your fault."

All my fault.

Kalasin of Conté shot up in bed, hair mussed, and eyes alight with fear.

Kill them all.

"Nobody left."


Dreams. Dreams have become so much like real life, that sometimes I hardly know how to tell the difference, which sounds insane, yet... it's true. I think I'm dreaming now. Which makes me wonder; am I dreaming that I'm dreaming, or dreaming that I'm awake?

Water flooded her, surrounded her. She was swallowed by it, drowning in it. Where did it all come from? She fought for air, she fought to breathe. It was so hard, when had everything become too hard?

She threw her covers off, and gulped lungfuls of air. Water still surrounded her, she could still feel its presence, but it was no longer choking her. She could breathe. She set one foot on the floor and then the other, wincing briefly at the coldness of the floor. A bruise might tell me if I'm dreaming, she thought idly. But I might just dream it away.

A sudden shudder shook her whole body. Earthquake, she thought instantly, fumbling for support. But why was it only her that was shaking? Nothing else was moving. Unless it was all moving, and she was standing still... Or was she moving with it? All her senses were blurring into one with the second judder.

She got to her feet, and suddenly the world was moving. She could see that, knew it as clearly as she knew her reflection in the mirror. It span, span, span around her. A wave of nausea swept her, as she shook again.

"Kalasin, wake up."


I was thrown into the real world as something that I hope to never catch the scent of again was thrust under my nose.

I wrinkled the offended body part and my eyes, which had begun to water at the putrid stench, fell on Lagne, who removed the source of the smell from under my nose.

"I apologise, my lady, but you wouldn't wake," he said, shrugging in answer to my narrowed gaze.

"Don't you have water in Galla?" I asked lightly, in much better humour than I felt, and vomited in the basin he passed me.

He smirked slightly and gestured at me. It was then that I realised that I had been drenched in icy water, which I suppose gave me an explanation for the drowning sensation.

"I get your point," I grumbled, pulling myself up into a sitting position. "I don't wake easily. At least, not since we began sharing dreams. I know that her sharing my nightmares is supposed to... scare her? No, unnerve, but I'm not supposed to have her dreams!" I looked up at the King of Galla again, trying to conceal my fear. "I don't know what's happening."

He must have seen the terror in my eyes; at my confession, he sat next to me, and put an arm around my shoulders. "He can't get you here," was my simple reply. It didn't comfort me for a second. He didn't know. He hadn't been trapped for years.

"Can't he?" I asked slowly, eyes considering the wall opposite. "I think he can." I shivered; that was not what I wanted to be thinking. But it was undeniably true. I felt like he could get me anywhere, sleeping or awake.

The man watching them from his cave let out a humourless laugh. "Yes, I think I can too."