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Crystal is dreaming.
Her dreams have always been especially vivid, images of far-off lands and unknown kingdoms, intimate details of the lives of strangers she’s never met. As a young girl, she often came crying to her nanny in the middle of the night, still seeing blood and death behind her eyelids. She was summarily put back to bed and told that the things she saw weren’t real, and that there was no reason to worry.
Crystal eventually shook the bone-deep feeling that the things she saw were real—until one night she dreamed of her uncle being trampled by the horses he kept. She didn’t tell anyone about it, but the next day a messenger interrupted lunch to tell them the horrible news.
She tried telling her parents about the things she saw, but they brushed her off. Magic is outlawed in the kingdom, after all, even if her parents control their own duchy. It wouldn’t do to have a fortune-telling witch of a daughter.
Ever since then, Crystal pays much more attention to her dreams. Most of the time she doesn’t know who or what she’s dreaming of in time to act on it, but there have been a few occasions of minor accidents avoided. It feels good to be helping people in the unique way she can.
Tonight, Crystal is dreaming of King Edmund’s palace. She’s only been there once, accompanying her parents to one of the annual banquets, but she recognizes it all the same. In the dream, she’s walking along a long, empty corridor. She doesn’t turn around to see, but she knows she’s left a trail of guards in her wake.
She’s approaching a door, outside of which stands one of the royal family’s bodyguards. He’s young, with curly hair and a keen gaze. He doesn’t even have the chance to get a word off before she places her palm on his forehead, and immediately his eyes are rolling back in his head as he slumps to the ground.
Then she’s entering the room, which turns out to be the prince’s sleeping chambers. He stirs as the door opens, calls out for someone named Charles. She walks over to the bed and pulls out a pouch of herbs, which she crushes in her hands and then blows in his face. He collapses, and the dream ends.
Crystal wakes with a gasp, as she usually does whenever one of her visions is so strong. Someone is going to sneak into the palace, likely tonight, and find the prince. She has no idea what those strange herbs will do, but she knows it isn’t anything good.
The duchy is on the very edge of the Payne kingdom, bordering Infernus and the Witchlands. It’s a full day’s travel to the palace, all the way on the coast. It’s a good thing her parents allow her free reign to travel wherever she likes—or rather, they don’t bother to care. Crystal only has to visit the stables and saddle up a horse, never mind that it’s the middle of the night, and then she leaves, heading south.
The sun rises. She takes brief breaks to allow the horse time to rest and graze, taking swigs out of her own waterskin that she’d thankfully remembered to pack, and then she continues, past wild, untamed forests, past fields of grain swaying in the breeze, past groves of fragrant fruit trees. By late afternoon, she’s exhausted, her thighs sore from riding and her head pounding.
She presses on. She’s never personally met the prince, but he’s depending on her to stop this, whether he knows it or not. Her foresight shows her horrible things, but it’s clearly for a reason. She has to act.
Nobody looks at her twice when she rides into the city, just as the sun is starting to sink below the horizon. Only a few hours before full dark, when the mystery assailant will strike. As she finally considers how the hell she’s going to get inside the palace, someone calls out to her. “Hey, beautiful. Where are you off to in such a hurry?”
She pulls her horse up short just in time for a young man to step out of an alley into her path. “I’m kind of busy,” she says flatly, tugging at the reins to steer her horse around him. He just walks backwards alongside her, his hands in his pockets.
“I can see that. Headed to the palace? Good luck,” he says, in a tone that says he thinks she doesn’t have a chance.
“How do you know that?” she asks. “I didn’t even tell you anything.” In her surprise, she’s pulled to a halt. Her horse snorts and paws at the ground. She dismounts. “Who even are you?”
“I’m going to let you in on a little secret, Crystal,” he whispers, leaning in close. “My name is David. I’m like you. I know things I shouldn’t.”
“You…” she hesitates. Fuck it. “You have the dreams too?”
“It works a little differently. You’re…” he closes his eyes and inhales, swaying even closer to her. “You’re even more powerful than me. But not powerful enough to save him.”
“I have to do something,” she argues, the mantra that’s been echoing in her head ever since she woke up last night.
“Then I guess I have to help,” he replies easily. “You can do more than just see visions, but you haven’t reached your full potential yet. I can…” He reaches up a hand to brush against her temple. “I can unlock more for you. I can join our minds and together we’ll be strong enough to do anything.”
“How do I know I can trust you?” she says, suspicious. She can tell there’s definitely something unique about him, but whether that’s a good thing is another matter entirely.
He holds out a hand for her to take. “Take a look,” he offers. “If you don’t like what you see, then just let go.”
She takes his hand and closes her eyes, feeling out a connection between their minds. It’s not something she’s done before, and she fumbles around blindly before there’s something like a spark, and gets pulled down into a whirlwind.
Everything is sensation and light, fire and burning, and it takes her an unknown amount of time to even remember that she has a mind. She tries to find her way back to her body, tries to let go of David’s hand and open her eyes, but it’s suddenly like she’s trapped in a small, dark room. She can hear masculine laughing echoing all around her.
“Hey!” she yells, but her voice is small, quiet. “What did you do?”
“God, you’re so stupid,” David’s voice comes from behind her, but when she whirls around, she just sees more of that darkness. “This was so easy.”
“Let me out of here!” she yells, her fists balling up, but no matter how hard she tries, she can’t move her body. “Why can’t I see anything?”
“Oh, you want to see what I’m going to do with this delicious, powerful mind?” David crows. “Take a look.”
Her eyes open, and she finds herself back in the alleyway with her horse, though David is nowhere to be seen. That’s because, she realizes as her body starts to walk without her permission, he’s the one controlling her body. She’s a helpless passenger to his whims.
She screams, she cries, she beats at the walls containing her with her metaphorical fists, but she can’t do a damn thing to stop him as they slip into the palace grounds. They go entirely unnoticed by the guards, who are too busy with the change of shift to notice one girl sneaking expertly around. David must have been planning something like this, because he moves her body through the shadows like it’s second nature to him.
It’s once they’re actually inside the palace, walking down a long hallway like they own the place, that Crystal recognizes the events of her dream beginning to unfold. The entire time, she thought her actions were those of someone else, her mind taking her to someone else’s, but no—this entire time, she’s been a self-fulfilling prophecy.
A guard turns the corner and spots her walking where she’s obviously not supposed to be, and calls out in alarm. Easily, as if it costs him nothing, David lifts her arm and twists, and the guard crumples to the floor. He does the same to all the others that block their path, and soon he’s brought them to the doors to the prince’s chambers. Just like in her vision.
There’s another guard standing outside, young and curly-haired, wearing the special insignia of a Royal Protector on his armor. His brow furrows when he sees them standing there, though he doesn’t immediately go for his sword. She’s not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing—she doesn’t want to die being puppeted by a monster, but she also doesn’t want David to get to the prince.
Just like in her dream, her palm shoots up to his forehead, and he doesn’t even have a chance to react before he’s falling in a heap to the floor. She prays to every God she doesn’t even believe in that David hasn’t been killing these guards with whatever strange mental powers he’s using. Was he lying when he said he wasn’t powerful enough? Whose powers are these, his or hers? Or some combination of them both?
He laughs in the back of her mind. “I told you,” he gloats. “We can do so much together.” He pushes the door open, which creaks like an omen. “This is just the start. With him as a prize, Infernus will welcome me back with open arms. Soon it’ll be a whole new age.”
Every footfall against the soft carpet of the prince’s chambers feels like a step toward the edge of a cliff. Every muscle in her body strains, but she can’t stop the inevitable tread that spells out disaster. “Stop it!” she screams, to no avail.
More laughing, that endless laughing, as he reaches into her pocket and pulls out a pouch he must have grabbed while she was battling through the waves of fire and darkness.
The prince sits up in bed, rubbing at his eyes. “Charles?” he asks, his voice thick with sleep. Swift as a hawk, David takes a fistful of the herbs, crushes them in her hand, and blows them in the prince’s face. His shocked expression, if Crystal weren’t so panicked, might be comical. His eyes roll back in his head and he slumps back onto his pillow. This close, she can hear him trying to mutter something, the words coming out muddled on his drugged tongue.
David crows with laughter. Though the prince is a whole head taller than her, and several stone heavier, David manipulates his body until he can throw it over her shoulder, her muscles screaming under the strain but holding steady.
David begins to lug him out of the room, when suddenly the prince twists and breaks out of their hold, landing on his hands and feet like a particularly adept cat. David snarls and lunges, but the prince is faster, darting over to his bookshelf—why doesn’t he run?
He chants several foreign words in quick succession, and suddenly her body is brought to a grinding halt. She still can’t move a muscle, but it seems like David can’t, either. Magic?
“Who are you?” the prince demands, and David snarls again, straining against the invisible border. His thoughts inside her mind are only a loop of kill rip tear asunder kill kill. “Ah. I see. Madam, if you can hear me, I will free you in only a moment. To dispose of your unwanted passenger will only take a tick,” he says coolly.
He—he knows? He can tell that it isn’t her doing this? Thank fucking God—he sounds confident that he can get rid of David, and maybe she won’t even be immediately executed for treason.
He flips to another page in his book, and at that moment, the door to his chambers bursts open again, admitting the Royal Protector—Charles, the one the prince had called out for. “Edwin!” he shouts in a panic, his sword at the ready and his eyes burning with anger.
“Wait, Charles!” Edwin throws out a hand to halt him. “I’ve bound them. She isn’t a threat,” he explains, because it still looks like Charles is ready to behead her at any moment.
“Edwin, what the fuck?” he asks, but he does lower his sword—so that’s an improvement. “Get back—she’s got magic or something, knocked me right out.” He places himself in between her and the prince, holding a hand out behind him to try and make Edwin back up.
“I know—but it isn’t her doing this. I believe she is currently under the control of another. See her eyes?” He gestures—Crystal doesn’t know what they see, especially in a room only lit by moonlight, but it’s enough to make Charles pause. “Now, hold on just a tick, both of you.” He finds the correct page and begins chanting again.
A strange sensation, like hot steam billowing against her skin, starts up. David snarls and snaps, a rabid dog held only by a leash. He screams, echoing in her mind, and then all at once the oppressive presence in her mind vanishes.
She falls to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut. Her mind, though, her body, her movements, are her own again. “Holy shit!” she yells, the first thought that makes its way out of her mouth. It feels so good to stretch her own vocal cords, to know that the only words coming out are her own. “Is he gone?” is the second.
“I’ve banished his presence from your mind,” the prince says, as Charles sheathes his sword to offer her a hand up. She takes it, her head still reeling. “You may experience some residual dizziness—ah,” he says, as her head spins and Charles catches her around the shoulders. “Perhaps some rest, and then we can all have a talk in the morning. It’s rather early for this sort of thing.”
She’s a little hazy as Charles sits her down on the bed, hears the two of them speaking softly to each other—she can’t decipher what they’re saying—and when her head hits the pillow, she’s gone. She wakes hours later with the sun full in the sky and Edwin and Charles bickering.
“Charles, I assure you, I am fine. Those herbs were nothing—any second-rate magic user would have built up a tolerance to them after only a few months of study.” Edwin sounds stiff, annoyed.
“But what if you hadn’t built up a tolerance? I was bloody useless, mate—”
“Charles.” There’s silence, and then the soft sounds of a kiss. “Everything worked out. It is pointless to beat yourself up for failure when I am entirely fine.” Another kiss. Who knew the prince was getting it on with his Royal Protector?
“Fine. But you’re giving me some of them herbs, building my tolerance, yeah? I’m not having anything like this happen again. Whatever magic she did—”
“He, Charles. I’ve told you, she was not the one to blame. Just as much a victim in this scheme as me—no, more of one.”
“He, then. You’ve gotta make it so that nobody can get into my mind like that again.”
“Are you sure? You hate it when I experiment with you.”
“No, I hate that your dad would bloody kill you if he found out you were practicing spells in your spare time,” Charles corrects. “I think you’re proper brills with magic, you know that.”
Crystal suddenly gets the feeling that she’s been eavesdropping on them for far too long, and knows far too much. She makes a show of rolling over and sitting up.
“Morning,” Charles says easily, coming over and perching on the foot of the bed. Edwin’s bed, she realizes, which is where she’s slept away the rest of the night and most of the morning, it seems. “How are you feeling?”
“Bad,” she says bluntly. Her eyes are gritty and her limbs still feel heavy. “What time is it?”
“Almost midday. We were about to call up the palace physician, but that would have raised more questions than we had answers to. Lucky for us you woke up on your own,” Charles explains. “Edwin, is that normal?”
“Yes, disorientation, weariness, and various aches and pains are all to be expected after possessions, depending on their duration. How long had he been controlling you?” Edwin asks, sitting down at the desk and picking up a leatherbound notebook.
“Just last night. God, I was so stupid,” she laments. “I saw…”
How much can she trust them? It’s the king himself, after all, who would have her hanged as a witch for her visions. But clearly Edwin has been disregarding the magic laws for God knows how long. And they haven’t thrown her in the dungeon for attempted murder, either. Maybe they’ll listen.
“I have these—visions, I guess. I don’t know. Of the future, or maybe, possible futures. Horrible ones. Most of the time it’s people or places I don’t recognize, but sometimes I can change them. Two nights ago, I dreamed of someone coming into the palace and attacking you.” She looks directly at Edwin. “I came here to try to stop it, but David stopped me. He said I wouldn’t be powerful enough alone to fix things, but if we joined our powers together, then we had a chance.”
“Nasty trick,” Charles comments.
“Next thing I knew, he was dragging me around like a puppet. How did you know it wasn’t me?” she asks.
“The eyes are a dead giveaway,” Edwin responds. “Clouded over, dark. And my paralysis spell caught two beings—I could feel it. It was natural to deduce that your body wasn’t your own. And from there, a banishment did the trick.” He preens, evidently pleased with his own abilities.
“Listen, you can’t tell anyone, yeah?” Charles interrupts. “That Edwin’s doing magic. It’s not exactly allowed, not even for a prince.”
“Who would I even tell? Besides, I told you, I’m not exactly mundane myself.”
“Aces, that’s that sorted, then,” Charles says, flashing a grin at her. “Actually…”
Edwin shuts his notebook. “No, Charles, we couldn’t.”
“Come on! You haven’t even heard what I’m gonna say.”
“What?” Crystal demands. Being with these two, who never seem to finish their sentences around each other, is making her headache even worse.
“The king’s been making noise about Edwin needing advisors,” Charles says. “I can’t think of anyone better than someone who can literally see the bloody future.”
“We hardly know her, Charles! You have not even asked her name.”
“It’s Crystal,” she interjects, but she gets the feeling Edwin isn’t even listening.
“You cannot fill the palace with every stray you come across. Need I remind you of the great puppy debacle we had two years ago?” Edwin says, standing up from the desk with a flourish.
“He doesn’t mean it like that,” Charles says in an aside to her. “Look, why don’t you at least consider it? You’re gonna have to pick someone eventually. She’s got a good head on her shoulders—she came all the way here to save you. That’s aces in my book.”
“You also have not asked what she wants,” Edwin argues. “Crystal, would you want to be my advisor?” Edwin says, turning to her and obviously expecting her to demur. She’s getting sick of being talked about like she’s not even there, and fires back.
“How kind of you to offer. I accept,” she says on impulse. She hopes she doesn’t come to regret it later, but for now, the way Edwin’s eyes widen and his jaw drops is absolutely fantastic.
“That is not how this works!” Edwin protests, looking between her and Charles, who has thrown his head back in laughter.
“You asked, mate! Oh, this is gonna be brills.” Charles is still laughing as he stands up and claps Edwin on the shoulder. “I’ll go tell old Barnabas to sort out a room. You’re staying, right?” he asks Crystal. “No offense, but you look like you could use some more rest.”
“I’d kill for a hot drink and a bath,” she admits. She can’t believe she slept in the prince’s own bed, still dirty from the road, but actually, that’s far from the craziest thing that’s happened in the last twelve hours. And apparently it’ll only get crazier—intentional or not, she’s now a Royal Advisor. Holy fuck.
“Back soon,” Charles promises, and then he’s gone. Awkward silence reigns—she’s not quite sure what the protocol is for when the prince saves you from possession and then accidentally makes you his advisor. Does she bow? It feels like they’re past that.
“I believe we skipped proper introductions,” Edwin says suddenly, also grasping for social propriety. He sits down on the bed and holds out his hand. “I am Edwin.”
“I know,” she says, but then relents and takes his hand anyway. “I’m Lady Crystal Palace of the Surname-von Hoverkrafts.” She winces, as she always does when she has to spell out her full title. “My parents rule the duchy to the north.”
Edwin gives a short laugh. “At least you’re nobility. My father will already have much to say about my appointment of you, I’m sure. He certainly hasn’t stopped talking about my choice of Royal Protector. Are you sure you’re up for the scrutiny of the position?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. “I will honor my offer—Charles is right, you have all the makings of someone well-suited to the task. But I would not wish for you take on the… pressures of the palace without proper preparation.”
He speaks with the well-worn weariness of someone who has grown up in the Court and spent his entire life playing their games. “I can do it,” she says resolutely. She’s been playing politics with her parents for years, and hiding her powers for even longer than that. “I’m not taking it back.”
Then, the first time she’s seen it on his face, a smile. A genuine one, pleased. “Excellent. Well then, Lady Crystal, why don’t we get you that hot drink and bath. I’m sure Charles has at least one of those sorted out by now.” He offers her his hand to help her out of bed, proper as any prince.
“God, yes.” Later, after she feels a little more human, there will surely be more introductions and politics and evasive explanations. Despite that, she finds herself excited to open up this new chapter in her life. Maybe her gift isn’t such a curse after all.