Madeleine sighed and turned away from the looking glass to prepare for bed. She refused to look back as she went about the business of changing into her nightclothes and letting down her hair. It was easy not to look. It was a pattern she had long since gotten used to.
* * *
The dream always started the same way—with heat.
It was the only thing Madeleine was aware of at first—the heat was so suffocating that it was hard to force her eyes open, much less breathe. When she did manage to open her eyes, she thought for a moment that they were still closed. She couldn’t see anything. If it hadn’t been for the smoke stinging them, she would have believed they had never opened at all.
The next thing she was aware of was the sound of screams.
She knew those screams, and knew at once that this was a dream—the same old nightmare. The screams were what always let her know.
She hadn’t understood when this moment had been real. She hadn’t known then what those screams had meant. It was only in the years that followed that she had come to understand—they meant pain and death and the loss of the most important people in the world. They meant that nothing would ever be the same again.
She had been horrified that night, but somehow the dream was even more horrific because now she knew what everything meant.
Madeleine didn’t try to wake herself up. She never did when she had this dream. She didn’twantto wake up.
Instead, she listened, feeling a scream building in her own throat because as horrible as it was, this was the only way she could hear them anymore. This was all she had left of her family.
She heard the high-pitched shrieks that belonged to her two sisters. Madeleine had always been their protector, and hearing those noises meant guilt in the pit of her stomach. She wanted to go to them, but she couldn’t—she couldn’t see anything through the smoke.
She heard a wail, a long way away, that belonged to her mother. Madeleine had never heard that sound before the night of the fire, but she had known at once that she would never forget it.
And then came a lower-pitched scream—still much higher than it should have been, in the ordinary course of things—that could only have belonged to her father.
In real life, that scream was what had spurred Madeleine to action. That scream was what had startled her badly enough to make her jump up and push her way through the smoke, coughing, and hacking. She had stumbled against something metal—that was when she had burned her face—but then she had reached the window and had jumped out without any thought whatsoever.
That was what had happened in real life.
In the dream, Madeleine never moved from her bed. It was as if, by remaining where she was, she might be able to save her family this time. It was a thought she never had while she was awake, but in dreams, she wondered whether her leaving the house might not have been what killed them.
* * *
Madeleine awoke with tears on her cheeks and a lump in her throat. For a moment, the stinging in her eyes felt exactly like the smoke, and she wasn’t sure she’d woken up at all.
Then she looked around and saw that she was in her room at Uncle Joseph’s house. It was a familiar place, and with a deep breath in, she reminded herself that the fire had taken place a long time ago. It was in the past. It couldn’t hurt her now.
She heard a knock on the door. “Lady Madeleine.”
“Horatia.” Her voice broke, and she cleared her throat and tried again. “You may come in.”
The door opened, and Horatia came in with a tea tray. One look at Madeleine’s face made her set the tray down and hurry to her side. “The nightmare again, my lady?”
Madeleine nodded.
Horatia wrapped her arms around her. In moments like this, it felt as if she was the mother Madeleine no longer had, and Madeleine welcomed the opportunity for comfort.
“I just like to hear their voices,” she whispered. “Even though they’re screaming—even though it’s painful—I don’t want to wake up because it means leaving them all over again. Is something wrong with me?”
“You’ve been through something horrible,” Horatia murmured. “Of course it’s left its mark on you. That’s not anything to feel ashamed of or judge yourself about.”
“Perhaps it’s not, but I shouldn’twantto have such horrible dreams.” Her tears were flowing freely now.
Horatia poured a cup of tea and pressed it into her hands. “You drink that, my lady, and try to calm yourself. Everything will be all right.” She sighed. “I wish I could tell you it was only a dream.”
“But it wasn’t,” Madeleine said. She understood what Horatia was getting at. “You can’t say it’s only a dream because it was real.”
Horatia nodded.
