2.13: The Starlit Palace p.1

I was back at the Dawn in my dorm room. I woke up sitting cross-legged on my bed. My blue weighted blanket was there, but my favorite down pillow was nowhere to be seen, which troubled me. A bed without a pillow might as well have been a car without a windshield.

What bothered me even more was that I had no recollection of how I ended up here, which seemed to be happening frequently as of late. I remembered we were at the bottom of the ocean floor moments before we were swallowed by a fish bigger than reality itself. But we could really be anywhere now thanks to Iris’s magic. She was a crafty illusionist after all, and illusions seemed to be indistinguishable from reality within the nightmare. We could very well be inside a simulation of my dorm room inside a giant fish inside a nightmare meant to kill us all.

Sunlight trickled through the blinders, checkering my sheets with broken rectangles of light. My table, my dresser, my laptop, and my closet were all where I had left them. Eleanor’s leather backpack sat beside my study table, leaning against the bedroom wall, exactly where I had left it the morning Priscilla and I set out for our journey. I felt at home, even though deep down inside I knew I was anywhere but.

I looked to my nightstand and saw that our covenant seal was missing from its usual place, the one I had punched in half. My eyes darted immediately to the wood-paneled floor beneath. There it was, broken in half, the pieces lying neatly one on top of the other on my favorite duck feather pillow. After making certain there were no glass shards littering the floor as before, I reached over and swiped up both the broken seal and the pillow.

The seal was ice cold, almost as if it had been left out overnight in the dead of winter. I carefully held the two pieces next to each other, my hands trembling from the temperature. For a moment, it looked as if the seal had never been broken in the first place, the two family crests still united as one, as they were always meant to be. But then my eye noticed the unmistakable fissure between the ouroboros and the badger, a quiet line that could neither be hidden nor fixed.

I let the two halves fall apart and rest on my pillow

I clenched my fists.

I’m going to fix this, I swore.

A pang hit my heart as I realized that me breaking this very seal was the event that had set into motion everything that had happened thus far, the ripple that created a tsunami threatening to sweep both Priscilla and me away forever.

If only I had gotten help for my nightmares sooner.

I’m going to fix this, I told myself, uncertain of how I was going to do so.

I hugged my pillow, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath.

I am not going to lose you too.

For a brief moment, a faint hope blossomed, a hope that everything that had transpired so far, the broken seal, the Order assassin, the nightmare that seemed all too real, the awful things everyone claimed Priscilla had done, had been but just that, a nightmare.

Then my foot brushed against something fuzzy.

Something alive.

I stifled a scream as I yanked my foot away from whatever I had touched. I looked at the foot of my bed and saw, to my immense relief, only a black cat curled up into a ball like an overgrown rolly-polly.

A cat, I breathed. I don’t have a cat.

Priscilla and I had spoken about adopting a cat from the cat cafe in San Diego. I was certain we had yet to actually do so.

My hope flatlined like a punctured helium balloon.

The cat must have been Gordon.

I was still in the nightmare.

Priscilla had hurt people unjustly.

And I had no idea what I was going to do about that.

I took a deep breath and reached out to pet the cat. The cat stirred, his ears twitching like the antennas of a sleeping worker bee. After a moment, the cat flipped over onto his stomach and stared at me with his somber yellow eyes.

“Gordon?” I said, not wanting to say a word.

“That’s me,” he replied.

Sensing the pain in my voice, the feline ambled over to my side and laid down next to me. He lazily flicked his tail into my face.

“Stop,” I protested.

“You seem distraught,” he said.

“Was kinda hoping I was back at home and that all of this was a bad dream.”

“You are home,” he insisted. Then, he added, “This is a bad dream.”

“I don’t know who to trust anymore, Gordon.”

“You can trust me.”

He chuckled menacingly, but it ended up being quite adorable instead.

I laughed as I scratched the back of his head vigorously.

He purred in response.

“How I wish,” I said.

The cat stretched his back and leaped off the right side of the bed.

“Iris told me to fetch you once you were properly rested,” he said. “She informed me the two of you were going to have a little chit-chat.”

“Yes. Our chit-chat.”

Answers, I thought. I had spent so much focus fighting for this very moment that I realized I had no idea what I was going to ask her first.

Priscilla, I thought. Ask her about Priscilla.

“Can I trust Iris?” I asked Gordon, knowing full well he was not the best person to ask that question.

“Between you and me, Iris is the better master.”

"So you served two masters?"

“Yes, and I will say again, Iris is the better master,” he repeated. “The other, the one you call Priscilla, does not take kindly to servants failing her or speaking ill of her. Which reminds me, please don’t tell your lord I spoke ill of her. While I do trust Iris’s promise of protection, but would rather avoid the wrath of the other Seraph.”

Gordon’s purring changed to fierce hissing before mellowing into a purr again.

My heart skipped a beat. There it was again, more proof that Priscilla had been awful to the others at the Lodge. It made me angry to know that such a thing was a possibility, but I wasn’t entirely ready to believe it just yet. I knew who she was, I had been her friend for the past ten years. She may have a bit of a mean streak, but she was no monster. There had to be a reason why she was being awful to everyone else.

I nodded stiffly.

“I’ll take your word for now,” I said. “Hey, you’re not hiding in the pocket dimension anymore!”

“Why, yes,” he purred. “We are in the Starlit Palace after all.”

“Palace.”

He nudged his head toward the bedroom door.

“Take a look.”

I climbed out of bed, stumbled to my bedroom door, and swung it wide open.

The universe itself stood before me.