Dreamwalker's Bride - Chapter 61

Another note
“Trace,”

The addressee at the top of the note removed any hope the man had of the paper being coincidentally in the pocket. Trace wanted to vomit. He resisted the urge to tear up the note on the spot and throw it away. The safety of others was at stake; he couldn’t act rashly and risk their lives because of his frustration.

Although his frustration was very great indeed.

Just how far did the influence of his blackmailer reach? The stable boy had delivered the letter to him before he went to the king, but anyone can hand a child a note and tell them who to take it to, that didn’t mean Issachar knew anything.

Still, If he found an opportunity, maybe he should question the child, even if it was likely to be a fruitless effort.

Trace glanced down. Garnering the delivery services of a child was one thing. But now, to plant a letter in the uniform that would become his, the blackmailer had to have known before the meeting what the outcome would have been, wouldn’t he?

Unless the guard who brought the uniform had written and planted it himself, perhaps?

Trace glanced at the man through the mirror. He yawned. Either he was a good actor, or didn’t know the letter was here. Trace looked back down at the next words.

“You have done beautifully! Absolutely marvelous! Your new sleeping place will be ideally located for the next step of your assignment.”

Trace shuddered and stuffed the note into his pocket before the guards noticed him reading it. If it was seen, there would be questions.

He also didn’t want to read it right now. He wanted freedom from secret orders. He wanted to take Anaisa and go home. He didn’t want to have to spy and lie and hide what he was feeling from others.

He already felt intense anger and trepidation, and that was likely to only get stronger as he read the rest of the letter. The sudden change in demeanor would draw attention from others. That was even if Trace could find some sort of excuse or reason for it, which he couldn’t.

It would be another lie, on top of another secret, burying him until he drowned in the deception.

All stemming from one massive secret from his childhood. Dreamwalker, his parents had secretly called him.

It was an apt title, but one he would readily discard in exchange for a quiet life on a farm. Wouldn’t he?

Trace frowned. He loved his dream world, but there was no one to share it with, and he was only now coming to realize how much loneliness could cripple a person.

“Ready,” He declared with a smile and a final–actual–look in the mirror. Although the uniform was uncomfortable, he had to admit he felt rather dashing. He wondered how Anaisa would like it.

He discarded the thought quickly. Safety was paramount right now. Someone could still be out there wanting to kidnap the princess, and his wife looked close enough for a stranger to snatch her instead.

He couldn’t, and wouldn’t, allow that to happen, now or ever.

The guards walked him through the palace and, he assumed, either towards the king for the rest of his orders or towards the Princess’s quarters for his work. He wasn’t even entirely sure of his job description. Did he just… stand? And guard? Was he supposed to stop people from seeing her? Stop her from going places? Just a blanket instruction to vaguely keep her safe?

He must have changed where he slept. According to the note, he would now be sleeping in a different, ‘ideally located’ place. But ideally located for what?

That bothered him more than he could say. Not just the fact that the blackmailer knew where he would be sleeping before he himself would, which bespoke a level of plotting far beyond Trace’s capabilities, but the implications of ‘ideal’ were far-reaching.

The blackmailer had chosen the inn where he had slept before, which had been coincidentally close enough to Yemi’s quarters for Trace to invade her dreams and discover her treachery. The range of his powers could not encompass the entire palace complex, although, with enough exercise of his gift, perhaps one day he could train himself to be that powerful.

The fact remained that, for now, he wasn’t. And yet, he had been sleeping in the right place at the right time to catch her.

The palace wasn’t even one large building, it was more of a compound within the palace walls, with multiple buildings, courtyards, gardens, stables, and other outbuildings within it. Sure, there was the largest, grandiose building everyone thought of as the ‘palace’, but even that single structure’s higher and further reaches would have been outside of what Trace was capable of reaching from the Violet Lion inn.

He himself didn’t know that until he arrived. So how did his blackmailer know the perpetrator would be reachable? Which side of the palace the inn should be located on?

Trace assumed before that it had been a guess. During the war, he had simply been stationed close to the enemy, in trenches just barely an arrow’s shot from the people whose dreams he was to attack. It was logical, if dangerous.

But now that his sleeping place would be moved, someone more important would be in reach? Did his blackmailer assume again, or did he have some way of knowing Trace’s range?

The implications didn’t sit well with him. He hadn’t told anyone details of his powers, had never set out to test his limits, so no spy would have been able to learn much, even if they followed him through dreams somehow. So the question was, how would someone else be able to discern them?

He frowned, deep in thought as he contemplated every way he could think of for such a fact to be known by an outsider.

He didn’t like any of the possibilities.