“Why would you go to the trouble of brewing the tea I like?”
She rolled her eyes with dramatic flair. “BecauseIlike it. I thought you might want some too.” When he still made no move to accept the cup, she let out an exasperated sigh. “Oh, for goodness’ sake.”
She lifted the cup to her own lips and took a deliberate sip before returning it to its saucer and extending it toward him once more. “See? Perfectly safe.”
He regarded the cup with even greater revulsion now. The thought of putting his lips where hers had just been caused an inexplicable heat to crawl up his neck. Absolutely not.
Reading his expression with irritating accuracy, she rolled her eyes again and rotated the teacup on its saucer. “There. So that your perfect lips do not have to betaintedby touching the same part of the cup my lips have touched.”
Despite himself, Evryn felt one eyebrow arch upward as he finally took the cup from her. “You think my lips are perfect?”
Without missing a beat, she replied, “I think your lips are perpetually formed into a self-satisfied smirk that must be exhausting to maintain. Perhaps the tea will help you relax that particular muscle group.”
Evryn found that his lips were indeed curved into a smirk, and he couldn’t help laughing quietly as she crossed back to the kitchen. He took a cautious sip of the tea—which was, infuriatingly, brewed exactly as he preferred—and placed it on the window sill within easy reach.
He returned to his writing, Mariselle returned to her dream core. He sipped the tea and followed his thoughts across the page. After some time, henoticed the quill moving more sluggishly, his usually precise handwriting becoming increasingly erratic. An unnatural heaviness settled over him, as if the very air had thickened.
How long had he been writing? Minutes? Hours? The words before him blurred, dancing across the page. His eyelids grew impossibly heavy, each blink lasting longer than the one before.
With dawning horror, realization cut through the fog clouding his mind. The tea. She’d put something in the tea. How could he have been so foolish?
“You … youpoisonedme,” he slurred, the notebook sliding from his suddenly weak fingers. His limbs felt weighted with lead, his head too heavy to hold upright.
The last thing he saw as his eyes slid shut was Mariselle leaning closer, her blue hair gleaming in the faelight as she blew him a kiss.
“Sweet dreams, Rowanwood,” she whispered, her voice following him down into darkness. “See you on the other side.”
Chapter Eighteen
Consciousness returnedto Evryn in fragments—disjointed sensations that refused to coalesce into coherence. His limbs felt impossibly heavy, his thoughts scattered like dandelion seeds in a breeze. He struggled to focus, to anchor himself against the disorienting fog that enveloped his mind.
“Goodness, you’re heavy. I can barely move you, even with magic.”
Mariselle’s voice floated to him from somewhere both near and impossibly distant. He tried to respond, but his tongue seemed unable to follow his commands.
Without warning, the world shifted, and Evryn found himself dropping through space. A startled grunt escaped him as he landed with a solid thud on something that yielded ever so slightly beneath his weight. Something that rustled as he moved and scratched lightly against his palms and the exposed skin at his nape.
Music drifted around him, a lilting melody that rose and fell in spellbinding patterns. Tinkling notes cascaded like water over stones, while a deeper, rhythmic undercurrent pulsed with clockwork steadiness. It reminded him of childhood visits to traveling fairs, of whirling rides and colored lights, of laughter and wonder, of that enchanted ballerina music box Rosavyn had cherished as a child.
With considerable effort, Evryn forced his eyes open fully and struggledto sit upright, rubbing vigorously at his face. The world gradually sharpened into focus. A world that appeared … pink and blue? He blinked again. Pearl pink grass and the azure blue of Mariselle’s hair. She was kneeling beside him, her face turned away, her mess of a blue braid far too close to his face.
He immediately leaned back, putting some distance between the two of them. “You drugged me!” he accused, his voice still slurred at the edges.
She turned to look at him, an amused smile on her lips. “Such dramatics. It was merely a mild sleeping draught.”
“Merely a—you really did drug me!” Indignation and disbelief warred in his voice.
“If Petunia were here, she could have taken you across the threshold while you were awake—that’s her manifested magical ability, in case you haven’t been paying attention, and a vital ability for the operation of Dreamland. But she was unable to join us this evening, and I simply couldn’t endure another night of waiting, so I had to make you fall asleep first. Though waking you up this side has proved considerably challenging, which is precisely why we need Petunia’s magic.”
Evryn stared at her incredulously, his mind still reeling from the sheer audacity of her actions. “You might have simplyexplainedyour intentions instead of resorting to tea steeped with sleeping draught.”
“Would you have drunk it?” Her eyebrow arched, challenge evident in her expression.
Evryn conceded the point with a reluctant grimace. Of course he wouldn’t have willingly consumed anything that would render him unconscious in a Brightcrest’s presence.
“You’re utterly mad,” he muttered, still struggling to fully orient himself. “Where did you cart me off to anyway?”
A laugh escaped her, bright and genuine. “You still haven’t realized, have you?”
