Chapter 9: The Nightmare

I fell asleep that night with my back against the headboard and my eyes on the door, the way I always did, and the way I had learned to sleep when I was a child and my stepmother roamed the halls looking for someone to hurt.

But something was different this time. The room was darker than usual, the shadows deeper, and the cold seemed to press against my skin like a living thing.

I did not dream at first, because all I saw was only empty, endless and suffocating darkness, like being buried alive in a grave that had no bottom. I floated in that darkness for what felt like hours, weightless and lost, with no sense of where I was or how long I had been there or whether I would ever find my way out.

Then I heard her voice.

"Sergio."

My mother's voice echoed. It sounded so soft and warm and so familiar that my heart lurched in my chest.

"Mama?" I called out into the darkness.

But she did not answer. She just kept saying my name, over and over, like a song that had no end. And the closer her voice got, the more the darkness began to change.

Then I realized I was standing in my childhood home.

The cottage where I had grown up, with its wooden floors and its small windows and the fireplace where my mother used to hang her herbs to dry. Everything was exactly as I remembered it. The worn rug in front of the hearth, the wooden table where we ate our meals, and the shelf where my mother kept her healing books.

But something was wrong.

The fire in the hearth was burning too bright, too hot, and the shadows it cast on the walls were not the shadows of furniture or books or dried herbs. They were the shadows of people, and the people were moving, fighting, and dying.

I tried to move, but my feet were stuck to the floor, and my hands were frozen at my sides, and my throat was closed tight so that I could not scream.

"Sergio."

Her voice was closer now. Right behind me.

I turned, and I saw my mother was lying on the floor. She was bleeding a lot.

There was so much blood, more blood than I had ever seen, pooling around her body and spreading across the wooden floor like spilled wine. Her grey eyes that were the same as mine were opened, and they were staring at nothing.

And my hands were covered in red, sticky, warm blood.

I looked down at my fingers, and they were dripping with it, and I could not remember how it got there, could not remember what had happened, and I could not remember anything, except the sound of her voice calling my name and the darkness and the blood.

"Mama," I tried to say, but no sound came out. "Mama, wake up. Mama, please. Mama. Mama. MAMA."

I woke up screaming.

The sound tore out of my throat like a wild animal, so raw and loud and without any control. 

I could not stop it, could not make it stop, even when I pressed my hands over my mouth and bit down on my own fingers until I tasted blood.

The room was dark. The fire had burned down to nothing but embers, and the shadows were thick and heavy, and I was alone. Completely and utterly alone.

But I was not in the cottage anymore, I was in the castle. The Ice Castle. The place where monsters lived.

My mother was not on the floor, and there was no blood on my hands.

It had been a dream. Just a dream.

But my heart was pounding so hard that I thought it might break through my ribs, and my chest was heaving, and my face was wet with tears that I had not even realized I was crying.

I pressed my back against the headboard and pulled my knees to my chest and tried to breathe. In and out. In and out. The way my mother had taught me when I was small and scared of the dark.

"You are safe," I whispered to myself. "You are safe. You are safe."

But I did not believe it.

Because somewhere beyond the walls of my room, beyond the locked door and the stone corridors and the frozen courtyard, I knew that other people had heard me scream.

The servants who passed by in the night, the guards who stood watch in the hallways, and the nobles who slept in their chambers and dreamed of ways to hurt me.

They had all heard.

I sat there in the darkness, shaking and crying and trying to make myself stop, but I could not. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw my mother's face. Every time I breathed, I smelled the blood. And every time I moved, I felt it on my hands.

I did not sleep again that night.

When morning finally came, pale and cold, I heard voices outside my door. Servants, whispering to each other in voices that were not as quiet as they thought.

"Did you hear him? Screaming like a child in the night." One voice said.

"It's pathetic. The human cannot even sleep without crying for his mother." Another one responded.

"The whole castle heard, and the whole castle knows." One voice added.

"He is weak." One voice said.

"So weak." Another voice echoed in agreement.

"Soon, Ramiro will hear. And then the human will learn what weakness costs." The last one echoed almost loudly, and as if the person wanted me to hear the words.

Soon their footsteps faded down the hallway, and their whispers faded with them, but their words stayed with me, echoing in my head like the ringing of a bell that would not stop.

The whole castle knew.

They knew I was weak, they knew I was scared, and they knew I had screamed for my mother in the night like a child who could not survive on his own.

And somewhere in the shadows of the castle, I knew that Ramiro was smiling.

I sat against the headboard for a long time after the servants left, staring at the door and waiting for something I could not name. The fire was relit by a servant who did not look at me. The tray from yesterday was replaced with a new one, with fresh bread and fresh cheese and a cup of something warm.

I did not eat, and I did not drink. I just sat there, hollow and empty and so tired that I could barely keep my eyes open.

But I did not sleep. Because I had decided I would not sleep, not again. Not ever again.

A knock came at the door.

It was not soft like Leticia's knock, and not heavy like a guard's. Just an ordinary and unremarkable knock, and I did not answer, because answering would mean admitting that I was awake, that I had heard the whispers, and that I knew they all knew.

The door did not open, and whoever had knocked was gone.

But when I finally looked at the tray of food, I noticed something different. Something that i had not noticed there before.

There was a small pot of honey. The kind that came from the southern territories, where the flowers bloomed in spring and the bees made honey that tasted like sunshine. I had not seen honey like that since my mother died.

And beside the honey, was a small cup of tea that was still warm, and still steaming.

There was no note, no message, and no sign of who had left it.

But I knew.

I did not know how I knew, but I knew.

The king had been here.

While I was sitting in the darkness, lost in my nightmares and my fear, he had come to my door. He had not entered, and he had just left honey and tea and then disappeared into the shadows.

I picked up the cup and held it in my hands, letting the warmth seep into my cold fingers. I brought it to my lips and took a sip, and the taste of honey filled my mouth, sweet and warm and so familiar that my eyes filled with tears again.

I did not know why he had done it, and I did not know what it meant.

But somewhere in the darkness of the castle, the king was watching.

And for the first time since I had arrived at this frozen place, I did not feel quite so alone.