Sweet Nightmare, page 28
“Jude!” I gasp out. “Are you okay?”
He doesn’t answer, and that’s when I realize he isn’t looking at me. Not really. He’s still lost somewhere deep inside himself. Whether by choice or because of the tattoos currently covering his body, I don’t know.
What I do know is that I can’t leave him like this. Not when I can’t tell if he’s okay. Not when I can’t tell if he’s in control of the black feathery things or if they are in control of him.
I’ve been so angry at him for so long, but the idea of losing him turns me inside out. I’ve lost so many people. I can’t lose Jude, too. I just can’t.
So I do the only thing I can do. I let the anger go as I step closer, going up on tiptoes so I can reach him better. Then I cup his cheeks in my hands and whisper, “I’m here, Jude. I’m right here. Please don’t do this. Please, please come back to me.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
Kiss and
Break Up
Jude doesn’t answer.
He doesn’t move. He doesn’t blink. I’m not sure he even breathes.
He just stares straight ahead, with eyes that reflect a myriad of horrors that I can’t see and don’t know how to free him from.
His nightmares? I wonder as I stroke his wet hair back from his face. Or all of ours?
If it’s the latter, I can’t even imagine what he’s going through.
I’ve always wondered what it’s like to be an oneiroi. When we were little, I used to ask him if he remembered from his time before Calder Academy what it felt like to have access to people’s dreams and their nightmares. He never wanted to talk about it back then, and now I can see why.
This is awful. Beyond awful.
“Jude, please,” I whisper, leaning in even closer to him, until the chill of his body bleeds into the heat of mine.
“Please,” I plead again as the wild, unsteady beat of his heart has my own stuttering in my chest.
“Please,” I say one more time as if it’s a secret I’ve kept for years—even from myself—wells up inside of me.
It scorches the inside of my throat, batters against the walls I’ve kept in place for so long. But what do those walls matter if Jude gets lost in this abyss? I’ve already lost too many people—Carolina and Serena and now Eva. I’m not going to lose Jude, too—not if there’s anything I can do to save him.
And so I take a deep breath and say the only words I have left to reach him. The only words that actually matter. “I love you, Jude. I love you, and I need you, and I can’t lose you, not like this. I won’t lose you.”
He jerks back then, gasping as his whole body convulses like a wave of red-hot electricity is suddenly flowing through him.
“Jude?” Fear shakes my resolve. “Jude! What—”
“Don’t,” he tells me in a voice gone gravelly from I can’t even imagine what.
“Don’t what?” I ask, confused.
He blinks, and the black feathery things slowly slither out of his eyes until—finally—I’m looking at Jude again, the real Jude, and he is looking at me. “Don’t love me.”
The words hit me like a brick—like a million bricks—falling back into place as the wall I’ve worked so hard to tear down reconstructs between us. I reel under the pain of it, under the hurt of being pushed away by Jude yet again.
But I don’t back off, don’t run away like so much of me wants to. Partly because where would I go anyway? And partly because I refuse to give up so easily—not this time. Because Jude is worth it, and so am I.
“Too late,” I tell him with a cockiness I’m far from feeling. “It’s already happened. Besides, when have I ever listened to you?”
“For once, you need to listen,” he says hoarsely.
“Maybe I need to do something else.” I push back up on my tiptoes, as high as I can go this time. And then, as the rain and wind crash against us, I sink into him. Melt into him. And press my mouth to his.
At first Jude doesn’t move—not his lips, not his arms, not even his body. He just stands there like a statue.
I pull back, mortified. Traumatized. Hurt—so hurt—because I thought I mattered to him. I thought we mattered. And instead, I’ve made a fool of myself again.
“I’m sorry,” I mumble as I pray for one of the bolts of lightning to smite me. “I don’t know why I—”
And that’s when he strikes.
Jude reaches out and grabs my waist. I have one moment to wonder what’s happening and then he’s yanking me forward, his mouth slamming down on mine.
My brain short-circuits for one second, two, as he… There’s no word for what he does to me.
Devours me?
Consumes me?
Turns my world upside down with the need that pours off him in wild, storm-tossed waves that slam into me—that pull me under—in the best, most indescribable way?
Heat streaks through me, and my whole body—my whole soul—fades into him. I wrap my arms around his waist. Pull him closer. Take every piece of him that I can get—every tiny little molecule that he’s willing to give me.
And still, it’s not enough. Still, I want more of him. Need more of him.
I press closer until I can feel the shuddering of his breath and the wild, rampaging beat of his heart against my own.
Somewhere in the back of my head, there’s a voice telling me that this isn’t the time or the place for this, but I don’t care. I can’t care.
Because finally, finally, finally, this is Jude. And me. And for this one, so not perfect but somehow absolutely perfect moment, that’s all that matters.
He nips at my lip, and I open for him, offering him all the broken, battered, so not perfect pieces of me. Giving him everything that I have, everything that I am, and—
He wrenches himself away.
I whimper, clutching at him with greedy, desperate hands, but he’s already backing away. His cheeks are ruddy, his rain-slicked hair tousled from my fingers, and the black, feathery ropes fill the air around us.
He’s right here, right in front of me. But I can see it in his face. In his blown-out pupils. Jude is already gone in all the ways that matter.
“You can’t love me, Kumquat,” he tells me in a voice so deep and violent I barely recognize it. “No one can.”
“That’s not true,” I whisper from lips still swollen and stinging from his kiss. “I love you.”
He shakes his head. “If you knew—”
“But I don’t know.” I reach for him, but he backs away again. “Because you’ve never told me. If you want me to back off, if you want me to leave you alone, tell me whatever secret it is that has you locking yourself away from me. Tell me why you keep running away.”
He gestures to the air around us, to the swirling, black plumes that fill the air. And then he throws his arms out, and right in front of me, he pulls them back onto his body. One after the other after the other.
They disappear in moments, but he doesn’t stop there. He keeps his arms where they are, his fingers curling into fists as he grasps at the air over and over again. And keeps pulling more and more of the ropes through the air and onto his skin.
Not just the ones around us, but from everywhere. I turn to watch them float like black mist out of the students still milling on the center mall, one after the other. Then they glide through the rain-drenched air straight toward Jude, swirling themselves into tighter and tighter ropes until they finally reach Jude and slither straight onto his skin.
“I’m not just an oneiroi,” he tells me jaggedly. “I’m the Prince of Nightmares. And this”—he gestures to the broken, battered students all around us—“is all my fault.”
Chapter Fifty-Six
Happily
Never After
Shock reverberates through me at his words.
I know there are royal families for each kind of paranormal—along with whole, elaborate courts for each as well. Just like I know that the reinstatement of the Gargoyle Court has swept through the paranormal world like a cyclone, shaking everyone up with its new queen. We’re isolated here at Calder Academy, but not so isolated that something like that doesn’t show up on our radar. Especially since my cousin, Carolina, died trying to help the new Gargoyle Queen in a war against the Vampire King.
But the Prince of Nightmares? The Nightmare Court? Those are things only whispered about in the scary stories kids tell each other—or by adults, late at night, after they’re sure the kids have gone to bed.
The Nightmare Court—and its ruler—is so feared that no one wants to attract their attention. Yet Jude, apparently the Prince of Nightmares—has been here at Calder Academy all along.
How is that possible? And why?
But he’s still watching me with eyes gone prismatic with pain. I know I have to say something, know I have to answer him. But I don’t have a clue how to respond right now.
So, in the end, I say the only thing that I know is true. “I don’t understand.”
“What’s there to understand?” he asks with a pained laugh. “Haven’t you ever wondered why you never had nightmares after I got to the island? Why no one has? It’s because I harvest them.”
“Harvest?”
“I still have my magic, Clementine. All of it.”
“What do you mean?” I demand as I cross to stand next to him. “The school locks down everyone’s powers.”
“Not mine,” he says quietly. “The island’s power blocking has never worked on me—I don’t know why. It’s just how it’s always been.”
His quiet explanation shakes me to my core, has me reevaluating everything my mother and aunts and uncles have ever said to me about student magic and how they control it on the island.
“I don’t understand,” I finally say. “How is that possible?”
“I don’t know,” he answers with a baffled shrug. “When I got here, no one ever mentioned anything to me about locking my powers down, and no one ever did anything to dampen them. I didn’t even know it was school policy until you and Carolina mentioned it weeks later.”
I’m still reeling, so I let that go—as well as the question about why he didn’t tell me any of this sooner. We have bigger things to worry about right now. Though I am curious about one thing. “That’s a lot of magic that you carry around with you. How did you keep anyone from noticing?”
“I use it, every night. Too exhaust my power and keep it in check—keep it from hurting anyone—I harvest nightmares from everyone on the island. I store them—”
“On your skin,” I whisper, part fascinated and part horrified. “All those twisty black things. They’re nightmares.”
He nods.
“But there aren’t enough. I mean, there are a lot,” I tell him, especially now that they’re all over his face. “But not enough to be every nightmare you’ve harvested from every person on the island for the last decade or so. Right?”
“After I harvest them, I funnel them into something else and that takes care of them.”
I want to ask him what he funnels them into—and how exactly they are taken of—but right now, that seems like the least of our problems. So I settle for something more pertinent.
“So, after you harvested them, they accidentally got loose somehow?” I look at the devastation all around us. “That’s what did this?”
“Not accidentally,” he answers. “This time I deliberately set them free.”
“Deliberately?” I’m so shocked I can’t even be angry. Because I know Jude—I know how conscientious he usually is about everything—well, everything except our relationship. This isn’t like him. At all. “Why would you—”
I break off because, suddenly, it all becomes clear. “For me. The unmeshing. You set them free to save my life.”
“I couldn’t let you die,” he answers, throat working and eyes glazed with something that looks suspiciously like tears. “Not if there was anything I could do to stop it. Even this.” Now he’s the one looking around, a deep-seated horror on his face.
“Did you know?” I whisper, heart lodged in my throat. Because I think I would rather have died than know that saving me meant all these people—meant Eva—would suffer and die the way they did.
“That this would happen?” He shakes his head. “I used the same magic that I use to pull nightmares from people to pull the poison from you. But I was so careful. I worked so hard to pull them all back. I was afraid one might have slipped away, but I never imagined this many could have.”
“That’s why you were so upset,” I say, putting things together now. “When you showed up at Mozart and Ember’s earlier. You were afraid you had let a nightmare escape. Why didn’t you ask for help then?”
“Because no one can help me with this. No one can fix the mistakes I make—not these kinds of mistakes.”
“You don’t know that—”
“I do know it!” His voice raises but ends in a whisper. “I do.”
“The only way you could know is if this happened before—” I break off as the truth dawns on me. “Is that why you were sent to the island? You were only seven!”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.” His face closes up like it always used to when I asked about what got him sent to Calder Academy to begin with, so I don’t poke at it. There’s more than enough here to unpack as it is.
“Then when?” I ask. “Because I’ve been here with you the whole time, and nothing like this has ever happened before.”
“The night I first kissed you.”
“What?” I whisper.
“I lost control.” He swallows. “I lost myself in you and I…”
And just like that, it becomes clear. Everything does. Carolina leaving has always been my worst nightmare—way worse than some ugly snake—and after Jude and I kissed… I trail off because the thought is too horrible to fully comprehend.
“That’s why you ghosted me. Not because you don’t care about me, but because—”
“I love you, Kumquat. I’ve loved you for years. But I can’t be with you. Not when there’s a chance that something like this might happen again.”
“You love me?” I repeat the words, like I’ve never heard them before. To be honest, I haven’t. Not the way he means them.
“You really have to ask me that?” He laughs, but there’s no humor in the sound. “I love you so much that I had to cut you out of my life completely because I knew I wasn’t strong enough to be around you and not want you.”
“You love me.” I say the words again, blankly. Because I’m pretty sure my brain has reached its capacity for revelations for the day. The week. The month. Possibly even the year.
“I love you,” he says for the third time tonight, reaching out and running a finger over the tiny indentation in my chin the way he used to.
The small, familiar gesture brings tears to my eyes—I didn’t know how much I’d missed it until right now.
“I love everything about you,” he whispers sadly. “The way you always do the right thing. The way you always care about other people, even when they don’t deserve it—especially here. The way you take a little coffee with your milk instead of the other way around and the way you never, ever, ever give up. Even on me.”
Tears threaten, but I hold them back with sheer willpower and a whole lot of blinking.
“But that’s why I have to do it,” he whispers. “I have to give up on us, because you never will. Unleashing nightmares, destroying people’s lives… I lose control when I’m with you, and I can’t—I won’t—let it happen again.”
I know he’s right. I do. Our happiness isn’t more important than other people’s lives. But that doesn’t make it hurt any less. Suddenly I can’t hold the tears back, no matter how hard I try.
They blur my eyes, turn Jude—and the whole world around me—fuzzy, until it looks like I’m seeing three of everything.
There’s a part of me that can’t help marveling that this is what it feels like—what it looks like—to cry when you’re not in the shower. But the rest of me can’t stop sobbing long enough to really process this. Not when the pieces of my already broken heart have crumbled into so many shattered dreams.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Three Strikes
and You’re Dead
“Kumquat.” Jude’s voice breaks as he skates a thumb over my cheekbone and wipes away my tears. “I can’t walk away from you when you look like this.”
I want to beg him not to walk away at all. But I can’t. Not when I can still hear Eva scream and see her remains every time I close my eyes. Not when I can’t help but think of the years Carolina spent in a prison cell for no reason. And not when I can feel the weight of everything that’s happened tonight—the weight of everything that’s gone so horribly wrong—pressing on my shoulders.
And so I do what feels like the impossible. I stop crying. I wipe my eyes. And I tell him, “It’s okay. Just go. I’ll be fine.”
If possible, he looks even sadder. “Don’t you mean okay?”
I know what Jude’s asking, and the answer is no. I don’t mean okay. I mean fine. Because right now I’m as fucked up and emotional as it gets. But so is he. So yeah, “I do. I’m okay.”
He doesn’t say anything else then. Just nods and slowly starts to back away.
“Clementine!” My cousin’s voice tears through the pain between us. “Oh my God, there you are! We’ve been looking for you everywhere! We’re moving up the time for the portal.”
I force myself to take my eyes off of Jude to look at him. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Because I know, deep in my soul, that when I turn back, he’ll be gone.
“Who’s we?” I ask when he gets closer, even though I already know.
He rolls his eyes, but I’m too busy trying to figure out why he looks so strange even though I’m not crying anymore. All I can say is, if this is what crying outside of the shower does to you, I am even less of a fan than I thought I was.
