The Lord of Dreams-SNEAKPEE

THE LORD OF DREAMS - SNEAK PEEK

C. J. BRIGHTLEY

SPRING SONG PRESS, LLC

Contents Prologue Chapter 1 What happens next?

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

THE LORD OF DREAMS. Copyright 2017 by C. J. Brightley. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information contact [email protected]. Cover art by Jenny Zemanek of Seedlings Design Studio.

PROLOGUE

hen Claire was seven she had a very strange dream. Impossibly tall trees towered above her, the sound of their distant rustling like whispers. The air in the dappled shadows was cool and still, broken only by a murmuring of unseen water. Claire looked down at her bare feet, skin pale against the deep green moss covering the earth. Static made her pink nightgown cling to her slim legs. Where was she? A fluttering overhead caught her ear, and she looked up, her eyes searching the shadowed branches. Nothing was visible, but the whispering of the leaves seemed to increase ominously. She began walking carefully toward the sound of water, chewing her lip. What was this place? Her feet padded on the moss as if it were thick green carpet, soft and cool against her skin. She made her way through some brush, the leaves parting before her invitingly. Screech! The sudden cry behind her made her start in fear, and she froze, looking back into the shadows. It was darker, as if the sun had not only disappeared behind a cloud, but descended to the horizon in a matter of moments. Her heart thudded erratically, and she whimpered a little. Another

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angry cry behind her gave wings to her feet. She flew through the brush, tiny twigs and leaves slapping her in the face and across the arms. She glanced behind her once, not sure what she expected to see. Green eyes glinted in the twilight. Claire cried out and stumbled when her foot hit a nearly-buried rock. She fell headlong, her hands splashing into a pool of water. “You don’t belong here.” Claire looked up to see a boy of about her own age glaring down at her. “There’s a… a…” She pointed helplessly behind her, too terrified to look for the eyes of the creature that had pursued her. “Yes. A cockatrice.” The boy’s blue glare intensified. His eyes were rimmed in red, and she had a fleeting thought that perhaps he had been weeping. “You should know better than to wake a sleeping cockatrice.” His eyes flicked behind her with a frisson of fear, and he grabbed her shoulder. “Back you go, then.” He pushed her into the pool of water, hurrying her deeper while glancing over his shoulder. A final shove sent her flailing, the water closing over her head. Her last glimpse of him was of his silver-white hair plastered down by water, one arm flung up against a beaked maw that struck with cobra-like speed. Claire screamed, water filling her mouth. She woke, trembling and sweaty, tangled in her blankets.

CHAPTER 1

cy rain gusted into Claire’s face a full block before she made it home. She shrieked and ran faster, her backpack lurching awkwardly, the thin soles of her shoes slapping on the wet pavement and up the wooden steps. Damp tendrils of hair whipped across her face as she fumbled with her key. She tumbled inside, grumbling about the storm and her wet feet, shedding drops from her sopping shirt across the floor as she strode toward the stairs. “Anyone home?” Silence answered her. “It would be too much to ask. ‘How was your day, Claire? Happy birthday, Claire! We made you a cake!’ Or something, anyway.” She scowled into the darkness of the kitchen, blinking in the sudden light as her fingers found the switch. “But no. They’re out celebrating something else. Not me. Not on my birthday. That would be too much. They probably forgot.” A folded piece of paper leaned against the vase of flowers in the middle of the table and she snatched it up, hope briefly lighting in her eyes before dying away. She knew the flowers weren’t for her; they’d been there for almost a week and had been for her mother from her father. But the card was undoubtedly a birthday card! Claire, Dad got a call from work and some important clients have just arrived in town. We’re taking them out to dinner and to a show. I’m sorry

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to miss your birthday, but this is important to your father and we can’t miss it. Ethan’s spending the night with Nate. There’s frozen lasagna you can heat up. We can go out this weekend; you pick the place. Claire wiped furious tears from her eyes. “Of course it’s important. It’s anything but me.” She stomped to the freezer and yanked it open, seeing the foil tin of lasagna right on top, just as promised. “I hate lasagna.” She stomped upstairs, aware but not caring that she left damp footprints across the pale carpet and into her room. She stripped out of her wet clothes and pulled on flannel pajamas, then flopped down on her bed and buried her face in her pillow. She screamed, muffling the sound not because she didn’t want to be heard but because it felt more satisfying somehow. The warm, damp air filtered back onto her face as if in validation of her anger. She screamed again, the sound louder inside her head than in her ears. Claire flung the pillow across the room, where it hit the bookcase, dislodging some of her knickknacks. She gave a dramatic groan, then heaved herself off the bed and across the room, where she snatched up the pillow and threw it back onto her bed. She replaced the little resin figurines with more care, checking to make sure they hadn’t been damaged. “Stupid temper. Stupid me. Stupid expecting to be important for once. Stupid birthday. Stupid birthdays, all of them. Why did they even have me, if they don’t care at all?” Tears streamed down her face. “Stupid me being upset by it! I should be used to being invisible by now. Who cares? It’s just Claire. No one important. No one that matters.” She felt a pain in her hand and looked down to find that she was clenching a little resin fairy so hard that one of the wings had snapped, a jagged point digging into the soft flesh of her palm. “Stupid breakable fairies. I wish…” A breath of air across the back of her neck made her shiver suddenly. She glared at the fairy figurine and put it back on the shelf with unnecessary force. She sighed and stood up, shivering as her wet hair slithered inside her collar. Maybe a hot shower would make her feel better.

Half an hour later she slouched downstairs. She’d piled her dark hair in a messy heap on top of her head and clipped it, hoping for curls the next day, but she knew it wouldn’t work. It never worked. She stared disconsolately at the frozen lasagna and groaned. “I still hate lasagna.” Instead, she pulled a box of cookies from the pantry and ate five of them, washing them down with a glass of milk. Then, feeling vaguely guilty, she picked up an apple and crunched on it as she wandered back upstairs. She didn’t have much homework, just a few problem sets for intro to physics and a section of reading for her Shakespeare class. She glared at it half-heartedly. Despite her recent mood swings, she’d managed to maintain decent grades and didn’t want to waste that hard work. Rain beat against the window, angry drops that matched her mood. A crack of lightning made her jump. She stepped toward the window and looked out into the furious darkness. The streetlight near the end of the driveway was barely visible, the rain coming down in sheets. The maple by the corner of the house whipped in the wind. There would be broken branches to clean up tomorrow. She tossed the little paperback at her still-wet backpack and sniffled. “I don’t know what Juliet’s problem was. At least someone loved her!” She snorted. “I’d be so lucky.” She glanced across the room at the little fairy figurines lined up along one shelf. She had a whole shelf of tiny fairies, resin and pewter and crystal, all different shapes and sizes. The shelf above it had other fantastical creatures: several unicorns of various colors and materials, a tiny pewter knight in shining armor, a variety of little goblins and gnomes with expressions ranging from sweet curiosity to diabolical mischief, a crystal griffin, a sphinx carved of blonde wood, and others. “I wish…” The hair on the back of her neck stood up, and she shuddered. She looked around, with the suddenly uncomfortable feeling of being under scrutiny. “That’s stupid. There’s nothing here.” She sighed. She brushed her teeth and went to bed, snuggling with the ragged

bear she’d loved since childhood. She knew it was silly; on her sixteenth birthday, she should be willing to go to bed without a stuffed toy. But tonight she felt lonely and sad. Abandoned. The anger had faded, leaving only a childish grief and a longing for someone, anyone, to think her important. As always, she told herself stories as she fell asleep, stories of fantastic adventure and extraordinary heroism. She was always the heroine, of course, brave and steadfast in the face of whatever phantasms her mind could conjure. Last summer she’d done some research on dreams, and she suspected that she didn’t really dream of adventure at all. Only the stories she told herself were adventurous, not the dreams themselves. Her dreams were quite ordinary, just disconnected images, fears, and dreams of her perfectly boring life. Showing up at school only to find that she was wearing no clothes. Getting a D on her trigonometry test. The cute boy in English class laughing at her. Yet in the stories she told herself, she was important. Sometimes beloved, sometimes shunned, but always important. She made her own way, carving out a place for herself among the heroes of whatever land she imagined. Generally she was a princess, because they were her stories and she wanted to be a princess. She was always beautiful; her hair curled in perfect ringlets, sometimes blonde, sometimes dark. Never was her hair as it was in reality, perfectly straight medium brown without a hint of a curl no matter how hard she tried. This night she imagined a castle, neglected but still beautiful, all white stone and intricate arches casting shadows in the dying evening light. Perhaps the windows used to hold stained glass, but they were empty now, a cool wind curling softly around the worn stones, carrying a few dried leaves through the deserted courtyard. She murmured into her pillow, “I wish… I wish I could be the hero.”

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

This is a sneak peek of a novel-length fairytale adventure-romance inspired by a shadowy fairy king, the incredible gamble he made, and the girl who would not back down. You can order it now on Amazon!