Painted Roses

Ashes in The Night

                  

She was plagued by dreams of Lucinda.

Cold hands around her throat, water rising around her feet, the screams of her horses in the distance, the deafening tearing of wood and metal as a carriage careered from its wheels in the shadows of a forest that whispered and giggled.

Figurs loomed out of the darkness, Cliffwood, his brother, laughing and keeping their hands from her reach as she stretched to try and catch something, to pull herself away from her killer.

And Braydon.

A dark silhouette stood apart from them, in a patch of moonlight, shadowed by his hooded cape, green eyes illuminated in the way they only could be in the logic of dreams.

He didn't help her.

He stood and watched, taking a step away when she reached for him, screaming his name, tears streaming down her face.

"HELP ME!" she shrieked, her voice echoing around her, birds racing from the trees with cries of terror, blurring with her own voice.

Braydon took another step from her.

"Help me!" she commanded and the hands at her throat tightened.

Braydon simply turned on his heel.

He walked away.

"BRAYDON!" she screamed, "Come back! Help me! Help me! Coward! Don't LEAVE me!"

The hands were wrenched from her throat by an unknown force, unseen and unheard. It forced the monster before her back, away from Rosalia. The woman faded, blowing away like smoke in the wind. Her brothers faded with her.

Hands closed on her arms from behind, holding her tightly and she was shaken.

Violently shaken, jarred from her waking nightmare, forced out of her dream world, back to the moonlit silence of her bedroom, the moonlight blocked out by the bulk of a man who loomed over her, his arms tight on her arms.

She didn't even stop to think before she drew in a deep breath and opened her mouth to scream.

A gloved hand slammed down over her mouth and Braydon hissed, "Shh," and Rosalia fell silent, her eyes widening as she looked up in the shadows above her, unable to make out the face, only recognising the voice.

"Are you alright?" he asked, his voice low and deep, hushed even against the silence.

She nodded her head.

"You're not going to scream?"

She shook her head.

He removed his hand, hesitated, then moved it up, gently brushing a lock of her hair from her face.

"Was it a bad dream?" he whispered, not pulling away, so close she could feel his warm breath across her exposed neck and collarbone.

"What are you doing here?" she asked instead.

"Should I leave you be?"

"I mean in this state."

Braydon was quiet for a moment. "You were disturbed, I wanted to wake you."

Rosalia raised an eyebrow. "You've woken me before in your frog state."

"So I have," he muttered and Rosalia made to sit up but he pushed her back, locking his hands on her shoulders. "Stay, rest, you're not well."