The Dreamlike Curse had been the key he’d hoped it would be.
He’d spent two days adjusting Dream’s frequency—carefully tuning it to match the sleeping sequence.
Then, last night, he sat by Ingvild’s bed, holding Dream’s frequency against the current of sleeping sickness that kept her under, and applied a steady, gentle counter-frequency, like humming against a note that lingered too long.
And he’d followed the frequency down into the dream where she was.
He hadn’t expected the ocean.
He hadn’t expected her to be singing.
He leaned back in the chair, studying her, thinking about what she’d said—sometimes I think I’ve been still for long enough—and how much time it must have taken for someone with her unique kind of quiet to reach even that small measure of restlessness.
She’d built a whole world for herself in there.
It had been a good one, as far as dreams went.
And still, she’d said yes.
Across the bed, her breathing changed.
It deepened, first.
Then it caught—a small hitch, the kind that happened when a body remembered it had been doing something wrong for a very long time and tried to correct all at once.
He was beside her immediately, one hand on the frequency connecting Dream’s residue to her system, smoothing the transition, holding the sleeping-sickness current at bay while her own soul-resonance found its way back to the surface.
Her eyes opened.
They were the color of deep water—not quite blue, not quite gray, that elusive shade the ocean takes on in uncertain light—and for a moment, they felt completely adrift, like someone waking from a long, vivid dream.
She glanced at the ceiling, then the curtains, then her own hands resting on the blanket.
Then she looked at him.
“You’re real,” she said.
Her voice was rough with disuse, barely above a whisper.
“Yes.”
“The ocean wasn’t.”
“Not exactly.” He kept his voice even, gentle.
“Most of it was constructed—a side effect of the illness, given shape by your own mind.
The feeling of it was real enough.”
She was quiet for a moment, taking inventory of herself with the careful attention of someone doing it deliberately.
“How long?” she asked.
“A hundred years.” He said it directly, because she had the quality of someone who would rather have the truth clearly than softened.
“The sleeping sickness took you when you were eighteen.
It’s been a century.”
The silence that followed was very still.
“A century,” she said.
“Yes.”
She glanced at the ceiling once more, and he gave her the space she needed.
He could sense the grief there—not the piercing kind, but the heavy, lingering sort that settles in when a loss is too immense to grasp all at once.
She didn’t cry.
Instead, she breathed with care, her fingers shifting lightly against the blanket, like someone searching for something steady to hold onto.
“The people I knew,” she said.
“A hundred years is a long time,” he said.
“I am not sure.”
She was quiet for a while longer.
Then, with the practical air of someone who believed grief needed a place to rest before it could be carried, they asked, “Who are you?
In the waking world, I mean.
Not just your name.”
“My name is Lucian Marbas.
I’m the last of House Marbas—that’s a Devil House, in the Underworld.
I’m seventeen, which I admit is not very impressive given the context.” He paused.
“I found you because I was searching.
The illness isn’t beyond cure.
I have a Sacred Gear that works on the same frequency as whatever has been keeping you down, and I’ve been holding it back since last night.
It’ll take more effort to make that permanent, but I’m confident it can be done.”
She turned her head on the pillow to look at him directly.
“Why were you looking for me?”
He considered the honest answer.
“Because I knew you were here,” he said.
“And I knew no one else was coming.
And because—” He paused.
“Because I’m trying to build something, and I have the sense that the people I need aren’t the ones who are easier to be found.”
Ingvild Leviathan looked at him for a long moment.
In the dream, she was soft-edged and quiet, her gaze drifting toward the water.
Awake, she carried the same gentle quality, but with a sharper focus beneath it—eyes that belonged to someone who had spent a century alone in her own mind and had become adept at truly seeing what was in front of her.
Something moved in her expression.
Not quite a smile—not yet—but the territory adjacent to one.
“What are you building?”
“A peerage,” he said.
“And something beyond that.
A—” He thought about how to put it.
“A family.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“And you want me to be part of it.”
“I want to offer you a place by my side,” he said.
“As my Queen.
That means, first and foremost, as someone I’m responsible for, with the same claim on my attention and resources as any choice I make.
I’m not asking you to commit to something you don’t understand.
I’m asking you to take a step out of that room—” He nodded toward the window, toward the world beyond.
“—and see what you think of the rest.”
See you next chapter.