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Gradually he saw that they were back at the tresoran safe house Metal clattered as the weapons began to fall off the shelves around the as soon as they touched the floor The racks and shelving followed, rew brighter, he realized at last where they were
"Si the same dream Can you wake up?"
She picked up the storybook and opened it on her lap "I don’t want to"
"Try"
Around the into an ashen gray Just as suddenly it brightened and shifted around again, until all of the furnishings and carpet looked new
Simone touched her neck "I can feel myself out there, but I can’t findhimself to wake, but a silver-blue haze drove his ear off eventually We will have to keep trying"
"Do we have to?" When he looked at her, she picked up her book and held it against her breast "We could stay This is a good place now"
"If we do not return to our bodies, you will die and I will gocontrol of his limbs, and when his body was steady he rose out of the chair Since the dreaoverned by her subconscious He knew little of the nightlands, except that they could be very dangerous "Is this how the flat looked when you were a child?"
She nodded "He needed a place to leave me, and he didn’t like hotels At first I liked it because I was alarm here" Simone smiled at the old radiator "I didn’t really knohat a home was The château was always so cold and silent, and my brothers and I could talk only in whispers when they weren’t watching"
He didn’t want her to shift the dreahtmare "What did you do when your father left you here alone?"
"I would pretend that I was a grown-up lady who lived here with my husband, like the other ladies I saw from the s" She walked over to the table near the kitchen, and before Korvel’s eyes it set itself with plain white china and stainless-steel utensils Three elass jars appeared in the center, and flames flickered from their wicks "I would put on a pretty dress, set the table, and cook dinner I’d always light the candles while I waited for hilow of the flaht loved her, gilding the tips of her eyelashes and glea the curve of her bottoinary husband?"
"He was handso" She adjusted a fork and srew dark outside I pretended he was late because he stopped to buy flowers froer lilies, or hyacinth, or white roses with just a touch of orange on the tips of the petals"
Korvel heard footsteps co up the stairs "What happened when he came home, Simone?"
"He would hide the bouquet behind his back and show them to me only after I kissed hi before she closed it "No one ever came, of course, but it see for hi touched by some mortal er into Korvel’s belly Yet even that stab of jealousy could not keep hi the truth "You can still have that life"
"I’m scarred and barren" She drifted past him to return to the"What decent o rigid "I forget what fools modern mortal men are in their desires" He walked to stand behind her and began re ht for the chance to claih her before she leaned back against hi, Korvel"
"You can always choose another path" As her braids fell out of the coil, he began unraveling each one "When this is over, come with me onthrough the darkness, falling into an oval room with mirrored walls The icy temperature of the air and the bleak expression on Simone’s face told hie
"Hoould the high lord have me serve hiown shrank onto her body, turning into a gray sparring unifor uniforan to swirl across the walls ofinto bizarre shapes as it crystallized on the glass In each panel Korvel saw a ghostly silhouette of a little girl perfor sooats; in the next she crossed swords with a grownclothes on a line, and straddled a fallen opponent
The last panel showed the little girla rosary out of her own frozen tears She looked back at hi as she hurled the rosary at hiht up his arm to protect his face and felt the teardrop crystals stab into his flesh As he lowered his aran to crack, and the ice child knelt dorapping her arms around herself until, like the mirror, she fell into pieces on the floor
"Look at this ht a brooan to sweep up the child’s rein"