Free Dark Side of Dawn: The Nightmare Chronicles by Kathryn Smith

death to the person I am now, but my essence lives on, and will be remade into something else.”
    “Like what?”
    I shrugged. “Anything they want.” I hoped to God they didn’t decide to put me into the mist.
    “You’ll still be Morpheus’s daughter, won’t you?”
    “I’ll be part of him, just like any other being in the world.” I met Noah’s gaze. “I won’t be me, Noah. I’ll bewhatever they want me to be.” My voice rose, trembled a little. A month ago I hadn’t wanted anything to do with my father’s world, and now…Now that I was faced with the prospect of losing all that I was there, I was scared.
    Never mind that my own people seemed to hate me. Never mind that I didn’t fit in. I liked what I could do in the Dreaming. I liked feeling like I did there. Without that, I wouldn’t be me in this world either. I had always known that I wasn’t human and it shaped the person I’ve become.
    What if I changed so much I didn’t recognize myself? What if Noah didn’t want me anymore? What if no one knew me anymore?
    Don’t lose it. Don’t lose it .
    I lost it. Just for a second, and just a little, but I lost it all the same. I couldn’t stop it. Tears filled my eyes and fear grabbed me by the throat and shook. I sobbed once. Then twice. And then I had my head in my hands and my palms filled with tears.
    Noah’s chair scraped against the floor and then I felt his hands on my hand, pressing me into the firm wall of his stomach. I wrapped my arms around him, heedless of the soaking my tears gave his shirt, and let myself have a good cry out. Just long enough that I didn’t feel overwhelmed by it anymore.
    Noah didn’t try to shush me, or stop me. I liked that. I hated it as well, a part of me seeing it as his need to be cleansed by a woman in need’s tears. That wasn’t it, and I should know it.
    I pulled back and wiped my eyes. Sure enough, the front of shirt was soaked, but it hardly showed on the black fabric.
    I sniffed. “Sorry.”
    He wiped at my cheeks with his thumbs—one of which had a little dried paint under the nail. Burnt umber, if I wasn’t mistaken. I looked up at him, and found him watching me with such softness that my heart cracked, I swear to freaking God.
    “Have you been painting me again?” I asked, taking the hand with the paint on it in mine. He’d already painted one portrait of me. “The Nightmare” hung on his bedroom wall.
    He smiled. “Maybe.” Then he squatted before me. “You OK?”
    Another sniff. I needed a tissue. I grabbed a napkin instead and swiped at my nose. “I will be. Maybe it won’t be so bad. Maybe the Council will side in my favor.”
    “Or you could tell your father to grow a pair and tell the Warden to leave his baby girl alone.”
    I chuckled. “I don’t think that would go over well. Besides, he can’t do anything. Even he isn’t above the law.”
    “He’s got your mother living with him. Tell me that doesn’t break at least one rule.”
    “It doesn’t. She’s there as a dreamer, even if she never wakes up. It might not be ethical of him to fall in love with a human, but there’s no rule against it.”
    Noah frowned. “There was for Antwoine and his succubus.”
    He was right. Antwoine was a mentor of sorts to me. The only human in New York other than Noah to know that I was a Nightmare. Years ago Antwoine had fallen in love with a succubus named Madrene. My father had forbidden them to be together because it was against the rules, he said.
    Was it all right for a Nightmare and a human to be together? Then again, I didn’t count. I was half human.
    “Maybe he could do something,” I allowed, “but lately he’s had enough to worry about with my family trying to wake my mother up and his subjects conspiring against him.” Some of my father’s people, like Karatos, weren’t happy with his rule, his human wife, or his half-breed daughter.
    “You think he should let you suffer to save his own ass?”
    I sighed. Every