Three Fates Entwined | Dream Team

Chapter Thirty

Dream watched George and Sapnap as they stared at him. They looked sad, angry even, but not all that anger was directed at him.

You, the nightmare they call Dream.

Yes, he was a nightmare. A nightmare to all those who got on the wrong side of someone with a lot of influence. A nightmare to all the kingdoms, not just the one with a prince named George.

"Why did you try to kill George?" Sapnap asked.

Dream shrugged. "Isn't it obvious? I'm an assassin; it's basically my job."

"Yeah, but who hired you?" he pushed on.

At that, Dream hesitated. He didn't see why he couldn't say the person who employed him, but he couldn't see any good coming out of that either. "You wouldn't know him, Sapnap."

"Try me."

"Fine. It was a man named Peligro."

Sapnap blinked, then looked away. "Yeah, I don't know him."

"I do," George said softly. "My father mentioned him before. He's like the shadowy dark lord of everything, operating from behind, never doing the dirty work himself. So you're his underdog, then."

Dream scowled. "No, I'm not. It's called employment, George; it's how people get  jobs."

"You have a horrible job," Sapnap pointed out.

"I know. Thank you."

It felt weird for them to be chatting like they usually did after everything that had happened the day before. And now, instead of Dream being an equal among them, he was locked away behind iron bars, separated from his friends.

"You said that my father was dead," George recalled. "And then, when you were going to kill me, you were crying. Where did that come from?"

Dream lowered his head. The lie had been to lower moral, but the tears later on had been real. They had been for George, for everything that Dream had cared for during his stay at the castle.

He didn't want to kill him. Not now, not ever.

"C-can you take off the mask?" George asked suddenly.

"Why?" Dream asked with a frown.

George shrugged. "It's just that... I still can't believe that you're really him. Clay, I mean. I've heard so many stories about you and all the bad things that you have done, all the people that you have killed, but in a way, I still can't connect the two of you together. How come they didn't take the mask away?"

"I think they were too scared to come close to me," Dream admitted.

Sapnap chuckled. "Scared of the man wrapped in lengths of rope, no weapon in sight, and completely and utterly defeated? George, you need to find some better knights, you know."

"Hey, they're trying," George snapped. He glanced over at Dream. "So...?"

Dream sighed. He really didn't want to, but George and Sapnap already knew what he looked like without his mask. There wasn't any point in keeping it on.

He raised a hand up and lifted his mask away, placing it beside him on the stone ground. The smiley-face painted on the smooth white surface gazed up at him. It looked way too harmless to be the symbol of an assassin.

George stared at him, as if unable to believe what his eyes were seeing, even after what had happened the night before. "Oh," he said, somewhat disappointingly. "And here I was, hoping that all of this was just a bad dream." He cringed slightly. "I can't even say your name now without feeling awkward. And your name is such a common word as well."