Page 22 of Their Blood Queen

But there’s a new one I’m looking for tonight.

Where are you, little star?

My tongue flicks out, tasting the air and catching the faint whiff of wine-soaked peaches.

There you are.

I follow the scent until I’m led off my carved path and deeper into broken territory.

What is this? I wonder, marveling at the untouched, spliced, glassy ground that shouldn’t be hospitable to any dreamer.

It’s too dark and isolated.

Too painful.

Concern makes my nostrils flare as I soak in a heavier dose of Scarlett’s aroma, only to find a metallic one accompanying it.

There’s another soul-scent marking Scarlett’s trail, and I follow it, finding the blood-like taste tainting the shadows that lick around my face.

I delve into the darkness, unafraid of what I might find.

I’m the Elite City King.

I’m a Dream Eater.

But something else challenges my presence and makes me wade through the inky shadows.

Scarlett Nightingale hasn’t been directly conferring with me since her first prayer, but she’s been talking to some other entity in the Dream Realm.

And apparently, she’s been linked to this other presence for a very long time. It is far too immersed in her territory not to have had time to take root like this.

Who else is here? I wonder as I pause on the fringes of Scarlett’s territory. I don’t know of any other dream-focused monsters, at least not in my world.

And I’ve never seen anything like this. I’m intimately familiar with the Dream Realm, but I’ve never been here.

There are still recesses I have not yet explored, and that excites me more than I care to admit.

Every living creature capable of sentient, complex thought is automatically awarded land in this realm. When I blink and send my body skyward, I hover over the fog that has settled onto her land.

It’s massive.

Scarlett’s plot stretches out with a vast, incredible space, one that is much larger than I’m accustomed to for a single soul, but it fluctuates with feathery shadows I often associate with nightmares born of bad memories.

It makes them tangible because their source comes from the real world.

It also makes them delicious. There are few energies more powerful than those born of terror.

As I descend, the dark tendrils lick across my skin, and I can’t help but thread my fingers through them, enticing them to dance with me.

Nightmares like me. I feast on them, giving them a vault to call home.

And my monster side can feed.

One curls across my chest, then hovers above my mouth, allowing me to lick.

I’m in my Dream Eater form in this world, so all I have to do is part my mouth and flick out my tongue.

The shadows are sucked in, my body acting as a void that consumes everything in this realm, if it dares to linger within my reach.