The Night Curse (Book one)

There’s no way of telling what time it is or how long I’ve been sitting. If sitting best describes the act of forced inaction. For there is nothing else to do but sit or crouch or cower. I’ve yet to hear about my trial, and I’ve been unable to think of anything else. The sly, unseen date dangles in front of me somewhere—waiting.

A baton rattles against the cell bars, forcing a shrill through my weak extremities.

“There’s a visitor here to see you,” a deep voice calls from outside my prison.

I prise myself off the hard floor and watch as the visitor is given a candle. They come nearer, allowing me to make out their glowing profile and the coin that passes between them. The prison guard retreats into the shadows, leaving me alone with the visitor, who I finally accept as real and not a mirage.

“Brother, you came.” I rush to the bars, groaning at the sight of him and the ache in my bones.

“I did. Despite everything.” There is a gloom to his expression that speaks to more than the incarceration that I find myself in. His steely gaze, gleaming like wet coal, fires a cannon to my stomach. “I met your friend, Amelia. Well met isn’t quite the right word. Rather she accosted my dream.”

I cling to the iron pillars, my knuckles growing white with tension. “What did you do?”

“Me,” he whines with a puffed-out chest. “I told her the truth, Harlow. I told her what you are and what you were employed to do at The Harling Manor.” His mouth tugs into a vicious grin.

“Bastard.”

“Oh, I know you don’t mean that, brother. You can’t help that she infested your dreams and poisoned your mind. She made you think that you like her. No matter, now she knows you’re a Dreamwalker Hunter, she’ll never want to talk to you again.”

I jangle the iron bars like the entombed creature that I am. “She didn’t do that because she can’t. Her powers don’t work on me.”

Austin’s brows rise into curved lines, accentuating the ice-picks in his eyes. “Really? So you have willingly turned your back on your own kind? Despite everything that they have done to us?”

Where is the brother I grew up with? This stranger before me, so callous and stubborn, is not the man that I knew. Even with The Freemasons, Austin was always one to counter an argument—to rationalise the full scope of an issue. Gone are his morals. They are as scarce as the light in this hobble. “They aren’t what we’ve been told. They are harmless and misunderstood. I’ve seen it for myself! If anything, we’re the beasts.”

Austin bursts into a guttural laughter that sends the flame dancing. It rings out for too long, forced, and unnatural. “Do you hear yourself? And to think that I came here to try and save your ass.”

A part of me knew that I’d changed since meeting Amelia, but now I face the sheer scale of my feelings. Something tethers me to her, and I will no longer try and deny the bond that we share. On the brink of death, I strive to ensure that she is safe...that she is loved. “Please, Austin, you don’t need to help me. The only thing that I ask of you is that you leave Amelia unharmed.”

His feline smirk returns. If it weren’t for the light of the candle, the dark shadows would engulf him entirely. They seem to hover close by, ready to strike and take over at any moment. “I will let your pet spiral into a deep depression, unbothered, as a dying wish because we are blood and that actually means something to me. But know this.” Austin presses his face against the bars and spits his words. “You are as good as dead to me now, anyway.”

I’m left frozen as he pulls away his face and slinks into the blackness from once he came.

Death can have me, I consider.

But not before I right a wrong.

I dream of the Harling Estate, as it was when Amelia found my letter at the clearing.

Her favourite spot. The place she calls her own. Even when I distrusted her, she shared that sacred place with me. I sensed her then, spying on me from behind a willow, and now I want, no need for her to return to me. This time, unafraid and unapologetic. For she has nothing to hide. Not anymore.

Amelia, sweet and gentle Amelia, saved my brother. I am eternally in her debt. Although eternity may be short-lived on my part. Only here, in the thicket of trees, can we meet. If she’ll grant me such a luxury.