Vlad looked interested. For a moment, and then he frowned again. “You can’t ever dream-walk when you want. And you can’t choose where you go. It’ll never work.”
“It might. I’ve been practicing.”
“You have? When?”
Val felt his face color. “At night. Just sometimes. When you’re asleep.”
Vlad’s frown twitched sideways, caught between pleased with the development, and sore for being left out, Val thought. “Can you do it?”
“I think so.” A few nights before, he’d gone to visit Constantine on purpose. He hadn’t been able to hold it long, but he’d set a destination and carried it out.
He wriggled down beneath the covers now, closing his eyes, willing his nerves to let go of his tightly clenched muscles. “If Mother comes, wake me up,” he said, and concentrated on his breathing. Vlad said something, but it was distant, and mumbled, and Val was already slipping away.
Dream-walking, he’d learned in his own self-directed experiments over the last few months, wasn’t a case of actually dreaming. Sometimes it happened when he was asleep, but falling asleep wasn’t the key. He had togo underinstead, willingly climb onto the plane where his thoughts, and image could traverse beyond the physical. So in that sense, it was really likecrossing overinstead. He still wasn’t sure how the mechanics of it worked. All he knew was that a stillness came over him, frightening at first, and then he had the sense of falling; a flash of light, and then he was rising, wind in his hair, and then he was…
Standing in the corner of his father’s study, and there was the low, rolling sound of a half-dozen wolves growling.
Val pressed back into the shadows and tried to make himself even smaller than he was.
Vlad Dracul’s study was a large, airy room, prone to draftiness in the winter, its ceilings high enough that the two fireplaces were necessary to keep it warm. Tonight, summer cool as fresh melon, and almost as sweet, the shutters were thrown wide, letting the breeze in to play with the candle flames, the velvet sky beyond embroidered with stars. A fire burned on one of the hearths, adding to the glow of the candles, and in the diffuse, warm light, Val could see that every wolf of the household was present, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, a wall between Father and the newcomer that Val couldn’t see yet. There was Cicero, and Caesar, their packmates Mihai, and Vasile. Fenrir, and his son, Vali. The wolf captain of the guard, Ioan. If the threat wasn’t clear in their growling – and it was – then it was in their posture: heads ducked, throats guarded, shoulders bunched and ready to pounce. Or to shift. They were all in human shape, now, but Val knew they would shift in a moment, ready to rend and tear with fangs and claws.
Father looked ready for bed, in a nightshirt and elaborate dressing gown; he’d tugged on boots, and pushed his hair back with his hands, though water droplets glimmered faintly at the dark ends. He’d just had a bath. His profile, clean and regal as ever, betrayed an expression Val had never seen on him before, the corners of his mouth turned down, the creases at the corners of his eyes more pronounced.
Father took a deep breath, chest lifting beneath the heavy brocade of the dressing gown. “It’s alright, boys,” he said, voice soothing. “Let him through.”
Cicero turned to regard him, brows knit together in clear question.
Father nodded, and then the wolves parted, like the Red Sea.
A man stepped forward, and Val remembered that Father was a twin.
Romulus, first king of Rome, looked alarmingly like his brother. But harsher, in Val’s estimation. Sharper, his angles more dramatic. He wore a long black cloak with the hood pushed back, and beneath it his clothes were dark and unremarkable.
Val shivered.
“Brother,” Romulus said, a smile twisting his mouth to a cruel angle. “It’s been a while.”
“Centuries, even,” Dracul said.
Romulus chuckled. A dry sound, like leaves rustling. Like a man with a mouth full of grave dirt. “Come now, don’t look at me like that. You said yourself it’s been centuries – let’s let bygones be bygones. All our bad blood is in the past now.” He held out both arms. “I’ve come to congratulate my little brother on all his accomplishments, and his new title. The Dragon. I like that.” He grinned, fangs flashing.
He made to step forward, but Caesar barred his path, growling low in his throat.
“Caesar,” Father said, softly. “It’s alright.”
Another chuckle. “Caesar, eh? You haven’t gotten too far from your roots, have you?”
Father laid a hand on Caesar’s shoulder and urged him to the side, careful, kind. His brows knit, his face a portrait of concern, he said, “It’s good to see you, Romulus.”
The twins studied one another a long, fraught moment.
Then Romulus inhaled, nostrils flaring, and turned toward the far corner of the room, the chair where Val noticed his mother was seated, Helga standing behind her. “Ah,” he said. “I see your beloved is here. Or. Well.” He tipped his head. “Ismell.”
Val bit back hard on the sound that rose in his throat, and watched his mother get slowly, gracefully to her feet, her head held aloft at a challenging angle.
“My lady,” Helga whispered, frightened, hands clenching into useless fists.
“My mate,” Father said. “Eira.”
