Chapter 9: Nightmares and Dragonfire
The world came back in pieces. First, the taste—copper and bitter herbs, thick on her tongue. Then, the cold. The unyielding chill of the stone floor beneath her cheek. A scream was trapped in her throat, a raw, spent thing. Her body trembled, every muscle locked tight from the memory of falling, of fire, of the sound a horse makes when it dies.
The door hung from one shattered hinge, a wreck of dark oak and splinters. And in the wreckage, he stood.
Jace was barefoot, dressed only in loose sleep pants low on his hips. His chest, pale and scarred in the erratic firelight, rose and fell too fast. A long blade was in his hand, held low and ready. His eyes scanned the shadows, violent and sharp, before they landed on her.
Roslin tried to push herself up, but her arms were water. A sob broke free instead.
The sword clattered to the floor. In three strides he was across the room, kneeling, his hands on her. They ran over her head, her shoulders, down her arms, checking for injury, his touch clinical and frantic. “Where are you hurt? What happened?”
She couldn’t form words. She shook her head, tears blurring the image of his fierce, frightened face. The nightmare clung to her—the smell of burning hair, the feeling of rolling, crushing weight.
“Roslin.” His voice cut through the panic. A command. “Look at me. Breathe.”
She focused on his eyes. Violet, dark as a storm. She dragged in a shuddering breath that tasted of salt and smoke.
“No blood,” he muttered, more to himself than her. His hands stilled on her upper arms. He was warm. So warm. The chill was deep in her bones, a cold from the inside out. Without thinking, she leaned into him, her forehead coming to rest against his collarbone. He went rigid.
For a heartbeat, she thought he’d push her away. Decorum. Duty. Distance.
Instead, a rough sigh escaped him. One arm wrapped around her back, the other hand came up to cradle the back of her head, his fingers tangling in her damp caramel hair. He pulled her fully against him. “You’re freezing,” he said, his voice a vibration in his chest.
She cried then, in earnest. Not the silent tears of the garden, but deep, aching sobs that shook her frame. She fisted her hands against his skin, holding on as if he were the only solid thing in a crumbling world. He didn’t tell her to stop. He just held her, his cheek resting against her hair, his own breathing gradually slowing to match the rhythm of his calm.
Over his shoulder, Roslin’s bleary eyes found the other presence in the room.
Alys stood just inside the intact doorway to the antechamber, wrapped in a silk dressing gown. Her dark hair was perfectly arranged, not a strand out of place. Her expression was a masterwork of concerned placidity. But her eyes, those piercing blue eyes, were fixed on Jace’s bare back, on the way his muscles flexed as he held Roslin. There was no warmth in that gaze. Only a cold, calculating assessment.
“I heard the screaming, my prince,” Alys said, her voice a smooth, low current. “I came at once. A night terror, it seems. Poor child. The island’s gloom can prey on a gentle mind.”
Jace didn’t turn. “Fetch a maid. Have them bring hot wine. And find the captain of the guard. I want to know who was on watch outside this door.”
“Of course.” Alys lingered a moment longer, then melted soundlessly back into the shadows.
Roslin’s sobs subsided into hiccoughing shivers. The terror was receding, leaving behind a hollow, embarrassed exhaustion. She tried to pull back. “I’m s-sorry. The door…”
“Fuck the door.” He didn’t let go. “What did you see?”
“I was falling. Then… fire. And a horse. It was screaming.” She pressed her face back into his skin, inhaling the scent of him—sweat, leather, something faintly smoky. Real. Solid. “It felt so real.”
“You drank something at dinner. Something new.”
It wasn’t a question. She remembered then. Alys, her smile kind, pressing a cup of mulled wine into her hands after the meal. A special blend from the Riverlands, my lady. It will help you sleep, soothe your nerves. It had tasted faintly of flowers and something earthy.
“Alys gave me wine,” she whispered.
Jace’s hand on her head stopped its slow motion for a second. Just a second. Then it resumed. “I see.”
He moved then, shifting his grip. In one fluid motion, he slid an arm beneath her knees and stood, lifting her as if she weighed nothing. She gasped, instinctively wrapping her arms around his neck. He carried her to the chair by the hearth and set her down, then snatched the woolen blanket from the foot of her bed and wrapped it tightly around her shoulders. He knelt again, stoking the fire with fierce jabs of the poker until the flames leapt, painting his profile in angry light.
The captain of the guard arrived, breathing hard, his face ashen at the sight of the destroyed door. Jace spoke to him in a terse, low voice that brooked no argument. Guards were doubled. The servants who prepared the wine were to be questioned. The prince’s tone was ice, but his hand, as he took the tankard of hot wine from a timid maid, was steady.
He handed it to Roslin. “Drink. All of it.”
She obeyed. The wine was sweet and heavy with spices, heating a path down her throat to her stomach. The shaking began to subside.
Jace dragged the room’s other chair close and sat, facing her. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. The firelight danced over the map of old scars on his torso—a pale slash across his ribs, the pucker of what looked like an arrow wound near his shoulder. He was completely unselfconscious in his state of undress. This wasn’t about intimacy. It was about a threat assessment.
“Listen to me,” he said, his voice low and deadly serious. “You are not weak for having a nightmare. But you are naive if you think every hand here is friendly. You drink nothing offered to you unless your own taster samples it first. You eat nothing from a shared plate. You assume every kindness has a price. Do you understand?”
She nodded, the blanket pulled up to her chin. “You think Alys…”
“I think she serves a purpose. That purpose is not your well-being.” He held her gaze. “The stone I gave you. Where is it?”
Confused, she pointed a trembling finger toward the windowsill. “There.”
“Keep it with you. In your pocket. A reminder that some things are just stone. Simple. Solid. Not everything is a potion or a plot.” He looked toward the window, toward the eternal crash of the sea. “This is the game. You wanted honesty. This is it. People will try to unbalance you. To make you seem fragile, unstable. It makes you easier to dismiss. Easier to control.”
“Is that what you think?” The question left her before she could stop it. “That I’m fragile?”
He turned his head back to her. The anger was gone, replaced by something more complex, more weary. “I think you skipped a stone six times after one lesson. I think you sat in the cold because you preferred honest discomfort to a pretty lie.” He paused. “I think you cried because you were poisoned, not because you were scared of the dark. There’s a difference.”
He stood up, a tall, lean silhouette against the fire. “I’ll have a guard outside what’s left of this door until it’s repaired. Try to sleep.”
He was leaving. The moment, the closeness, was slipping away, back into the cold protocol of their arrangement. Desperation clawed at her.
“Jace.”
He stopped at the threshold, the ruined door framing him.
“Thank you. For coming.”
He didn’t turn. He just stood there for a long moment, his shoulders tense. “I told you,” he said finally, his voice barely audible over the crackling fire. “Expectations are dangerous.”
Then he was gone, retrieving his sword from the floor and disappearing into the dark corridor.
Roslin sat curled in the chair, the blanket around her, the warm tankard in her hands. The terror was a fading echo. In its place was a new, cold clarity. She looked at the dark stone on the sill, then at the empty doorway.
Alys had meant to shame her. To make her seem a helpless, hysterical girl in Jace’s eyes. It should have worked.
But he’d held her. He’d told her to keep her stone. He’d called her naive, not fragile.
She finished the wine and stood, her legs finally steady. She walked to the windowsill, picked up the smooth, oval stone. It was cool and heavy in her palm. She slipped it into the pocket of her dressing gown.
In the antechamber, unseen, Alys Rivers watched from a crack in her own door as the prince stalked past, his face like thunder. She saw the set of his jaw, the protective fury still humming in his posture. He did not look at her quarters. He did not seek her out.
Her beautifully manicured nails dug into the polished wood of her door, leaving faint, crescent-moon marks. The plan had not just failed. It had backfired. Spectacularly.
Inside her room, Roslin climbed back into bed. She didn’t close her eyes. She stared at the fractured light from the hearth playing across the carved dragonfly on her canopy. Its wings seemed to tremble. Not with fear, she decided.
With anticipation.