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He couldn’t see Siofra’s patterns. No threads, no weave. Just a man-shaped blank spot sucking fibers of Wil’s patterns into itself, forcing them into empty crevices, glutting itself.
He can’t take from you anything you don’t
give him.
Taking the statement purely on faith, Wil staunched the flow, dwindled it to a trickle, just enough to maintain a tether. Almost shocked that he could, even as he was doing it.

I couldn’t find you. I looked for you and I couldn’t
find you. You hid your Thread from me, and now you’re
trying to hide behind mine. How are you doing this, and
how am I supposed to fight it?

There was a push there. Wil couldn’t see it, but he could feel it. Grinding at his senses, digging inside his head, whining and chittering, angry that it couldn’t gain purchase. Harsh and brutal, willing to tear away layers of Self to find what it wanted.

Wil had felt it before, felt it the second before he’d heard Siofra’s voice back in the stable, had kept feeling it since. Felt it in Old Bridge, in Dudley.
You’re one of them.

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Carole Cummings

You came from them
.
Or maybe they came from you.

Too familiar. He tested its limits, felt for its boundaries…

Smothered a smile, looked down at the ground to hide whatever light might be dancing behind his eyes.

I learned it from you. Isn’t that ironic? Funny? Fucking
hilarious? You took from me, but I took from you, too.

And I didn’t even know it. But the funniest part? You
didn’t know it either.

He glanced again at Dallin, saw narrowed worry, brilliant faith.

It’s yours. You can do this. And if you can’t, we’ll
make it ours. Just don’t get lost inside it.

Wil didn’t need any kind of connection to understand it—it was there, all over that hard-set face. When had big, scary, unreadable Constable Brayden become calm, reassuring Dallin with his heart in his eyes?

Wil took a long breath and leveled his gaze at Siofra.

“As a father to me,” he whispered.

Siofra smiled and squeezed Wil’s hand. “Blood to blood.”

The touch, cool and too familiar, brought back comfort and revulsion both, horrible intimacy and deeply entrenched body-memory that made Wil shudder. “Blood to blood.” Wil made his mouth quirk up in a return smile.

“You know my name.”

“Oh, my lad…” Siofra’s face twisted into a mask of concern, a mimic of love that nearly scored Wil’s heart with his pathetic wish for the reality. He made himself not flinch when Siofra reached up, brushed cold fingers over Wil’s wet cheek. “I know everything about you. I know things your
Guardian
—” He spat the word “—

can only guess, things that would turn him from you, things that would twist that honor of which he’s so proud to righteous murder.” He leaned in, laid a kiss to Wil’s temple, whispered, “I know; I see. I only ever wanted to 317

The Aisling Book Two Dream

protect you, keep you safe.”

The pushing ramped itself up to a whining buzz, seeking fingers crawling over Wil’s mind, searching for a crack…

“Keep me safe.” Wil suppressed a shudder, let his cheek turn into the cold caress. “Keep me safe, keep me dreaming.”

“
Yes
.” Siofra’s eyes had a glint Wil used to think of as cajoling in his once-naiveté. Now he knew it for predatory.

“You understand. It was too big for you, too much—it hurt your mind, so I took you to a place it wouldn’t hurt, to keep you safe and happy.”

“Happy.” Wil had to pause and choke back bile. “And took it for yourself.”

Siofra pulled back, grasping Wil by the arms. “I had to. You aren’t well, my lad, you never were. It dragged at your mind, at your spirit. You weren’t strong enough.

You still aren’t strong enough.”

I think you are many things, but weak has never been
one of them.

Wil tilted his head, genuinely curious. “Am I mad?”

Siofra’s smile slid sympathetic. “Ah, my lad, my Chosen.” He pushed sopping hair out of Wil’s eyes.

“‘Mad’ is such a harsh word. Unbalanced. Confused.”

I think you’re different. I think that what I might once
have seen as madness is more just a way of coping and
carrying on that I never would have thought of.

“I took the pain away,” Siofra continued, low and crooning, in that too-familiar tone that skittered down Wil’s spine, sliding oily tendrils into his gut and twisting it into a cold, hard knot. “I took it all away for you. For
you
, Chosen. Always for you.”

“And is that what you want to do now?” Wil asked softly, peering into those blue eyes that had been so many things to him—intimacy and perdition, love and hate, 318

Carole Cummings

want and revulsion. “You want to take it away? For me?”

Pain spiked as he let it all slip, just a little, just enough for Siofra to wriggle blade-splined awareness in through Wil’s defenses. It
hurt
, bit into his mind with razor teeth, and the push that seared in with it burned like venom.

The light in Siofra’s eyes had gone fervent, elated.

“Yes,” he said, a bare hint of triumph behind the hard blue. “For you.”

“All of it?” Wil murmured, twisting his brow and dipping his voice. “It’s so very big. It frightens me.” He shot a wounded look at Dallin, slid a slow glance back to Siofra. “He doesn’t understand. He can’t see it all like I can.”

“Of course not,” Siofra soothed. “It’s what I keep telling you, my lad. It’s why I had to keep you hidden. He doesn’t know you like I do, he can’t understand.”

You forget that I see you.

Wil nodded slowly. “And you’ll take it all?”

“Oh, my boy…” Siofra pulled in a long, deep breath, unfurled a smile that was soft and loving, but Wil could see the oil beneath it. “For you.”

The push was feverish, behind Wil’s eyes now, lancing up his spine and drilling into his ears. Hungry, greedy, mindless and exultant.

Giveitgiveitgiveit…

“For me.” Wil pulled back, keeping his hold on Siofra’s hand. “Blood to blood.” He let his lip curl, teeth bared and grip tight, then—

“Open wide, then—
Father
.”

—pushed back.

Resistance, at first, saw-toothed and excruciating as the push washed over him, tangling itself into him, way down deep. Familiarity with a perverted sense of nostalgia, because oh, he’d been here before, he knew this pain, except then he hadn’t
known
. A bruise to the mind, 319

The Aisling Book Two Dream

a rending of the soul, and
fuck
, it
hurt
, but Wil knew now what it was, knew it was
his
, something of his own Self turned against him.

Sharp edges, like trying to take hold of the blades of a thousand knives, and all of it drilling into his mind, his Self. Tendrils of Siofra’s pattern winding into Wil’s like hot wires under his skin, burning like acid and sliding into everything he was. Wil made himself not pull away, made himself take the pain, made himself
see
it, define its pattern. Almost cried out when he found it, but he didn’t have the breath.

He pushed himself into the weave and drove in. Flailed out, reaching, grasping hold of the pain itself—
tether
—

and latching on to the knots of agony wound about him. He did scream then, using the pain like a lanyard, a connection to Siofra’s own Self, pulling himself in with it and prying his way into the pattern.

And then he was through. Just like that. Taking it over, and forcing it into the shapes he willed.

That’s it? All my bloody life, and that was all I had to
do?

Reeling a little, Wil paused, bracing himself, not quite able to believe he’d done what he’d just done. Took the threads in his hands and just looked, amazed at what he held.

And then he…
plucked
. Unraveled—

“Mutinous

wretch
! What…? Don’t…”

—one then two, and he dimly heard Siofra grunt then throttle a scream, but Wil was already lost in sick fascination, the subtle brutality of the unweaving.

It was too easy. A lifetime of torture, and freedom-revenge-ruination was suddenly in his hands. All this time, all that pain, all the years of imprisonment—retribution shouldn’t be so effortless. He should have to work for it, make it sweeter with the trying.

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Carole Cummings

Color exploded before his eyes, thinning and stretching itself, burrowing into threads, and he pushed at the emptiness with it, swallowed it. Dug through it all, tore heedless with frantic fingers, until the weave behind it all lay exposed to him. He could feel Siofra’s mind reeling, overwhelmed, and he followed it down…

Saw his own birth, heard the screams, paused and stumbled for a moment—
Mother
—when his own infant cries drowned out the harsh gurgle of murder in child-bed.

He tore himself away, flinging himself through a spider-work of memory and forgotten memory, and ignored the screams of a mind rent and warped.

“Where is it?” he growled, digging mental fingers through a frantic wall of resistance. Clawing through a Self so rotted and twisted the man beneath it was barely there, shriveled and furiously betrayed. “
Betrayed
?” Wil seethed. “You
dare
to feel
betrayed
?” He tightened his grip, pushed harder. “Give me my name!”

“
Witch
,” Siofra whispered, eyes stunned, afraid but angry, too.
Betrayed
. As though he had the
right
. He tried to drag his hand away, but Wil wouldn’t let go. Panicked, Siofra pushed at Wil’s mind, struck out with poisoned fangs that sank into Wil’s soul and
burned
, but Wil dug his grip in with mental grappling-hooks and hung on.

“Filthy, ungrateful, mutinous—”

“Blood to blood,” Wil said through his teeth. “Like a
father
to me. I’m only giving you what you wanted.”

With a wave of his hand, Wil pulled the storm harder.

He refused to even flinch against the greedy talons trying to shred their way into his Self, just struck back and brought the hail and the lightning. Built a wall about them with it and shut the world out. Shut Dallin out, because Dallin already saw too much, and Wil couldn’t stand for him to see
this
.

Wil reached out, took Siofra’s other hand, yanked 321

The Aisling Book Two Dream

him in close. Wide, dazed blue eyes stared back at him, appalled and furious. Wil couldn’t even feel disgust with himself that he liked the look, fed on it. He curled the threads of horror and shock into his fist and rammed them into the weave.

“For me, all for
me
,” he snarled. “Let me show you what you’ve done for
me
.”

Spun the threads of his own weave through his fingers, hurled them.

Dragged from his bed, screaming, small fingers
clinging to the sheets, billowing over the floor behind him
as he’s carried, terrified and weeping, to the Chamber…

Held immobile in strong arms, choking as bitter tea is
poured down his throat, the soft, flowery taste of the leaf
fountaining in his mouth, his nose, strangling him…

Longing, a pathetic wish for arms about him, a
shoulder on which to lay his head, like it used to be, long
fingers brushing through his hair, a lap to curl into, the
pleasant rumble of a voice in his ear, ‘They’ll try to come
for you, but I’ll protect you, beautiful boy…’

Dazed and stupid, stumbling about inside the only
four walls he’s allowed to wander, stone and mortar,
latches and locks. Vague awareness that his mind won’t
work properly, unable to care, staring blankly at a fissure
in stone, weeping for what he doesn’t know he can be,
laughing hysterically at nothing through the tears…

Driven into dreams that don’t belong to him, facing
monsters of someone else’s making, writhing through
someone else’s lust, behind someone else’s eyes, dream-kisses scattered along his throat, and knowing all the
while it’s not for him, never for him. Get their secrets, use
their fears, push them along a pattern they won’t want to
go, but they will because there’s an itch inside their mind,
and he put it there when he stole their kisses and wore the
faces of their monsters…

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Carole Cummings

The simple word ‘No’ and the chaos of pain that
follows it, digging into his mind and twisting inside it
like a corkscrew, drilling sanity from him until he weeps,
arches his back and screams, ‘Yes, all right, just stop,
please make it stop!’

Harsh reality and the agony that comes with it,
vomiting ’til his head nearly explodes, shaking and
cramping and begging to be sent back into dreams…

Turning to Father, but Father turns away because he’s
been bad, he can’t behave, he’s changed the Patterns, and
he’s not allowed, and it hurt, and he couldn’t help it, he
had to, ‘I didn’t want to, he made me, I couldn’t help it,
please,’ but Father sleeps and doesn’t save him, and he
understands because he’s been bad, but oh, it
hurts
, and
he wantswantswants, but he can’t have, can’t ever have…

Tears were on his cheeks. He could feel them scalding through the chill of the rain, and it pissed him off.

Because why should he be weeping
now
, damn it? Anger and sorrow for a life taken away from him. Hatred and vengeance for the one who took it. It growled inside the thunder, exploded in a blast above his head. Betrayal beat a throbbing pulse in the air, shook the ground. And
still
, it wasn’t
enough
.

“All for me,
like a father
,” Wil wheezed, gripping Siofra’s hands ’til his own fingers felt as though they’d shatter. Snarling, he pushed and drove Siofra down to his knees in the mud, then pushed and drove Siofra’s mind down inside Wil’s own rage. Wil felt the crack, the fissure at the very edge of Siofra’s mind, and crammed a thread of his own Self through it. “D’you still want what I have?