Free Spirit Binder by Meghan Ciana Doidge Page A

as if the betrothal was scheduled to be formalized in the near future …
    She really was having a difficult time remembering she wasn’t sixteen anymore.
    ∞
    She dreamt again.  
    She realized where she was, and what she was dreaming, the moment after she felt the smooth surface of the gilded column underneath her hand. She looked around the darkened ballroom. It appeared now as it had earlier in the afternoon when she’d wandered through it; neglected and unused, covered in a pallor that had nothing to do with cleanliness and everything to do with lack of joy. A room like this should be continually filled with laughter and gaiety.
    Though, honestly, if the reason it looked like this was because her mother had mourned the absence of her daughter, then she didn’t mind the dolefulness at all.
    She glanced down to see she was wearing her clothing from today, so this wasn’t a memory dream as it had been before. The observation made her glance around to see if she’d been pulled here by a dreamwalker rather than her own dream state.
    The ballroom was empty, but something about it put her on edge. Some sense-memory that she couldn’t access had triggered when she wandered through here this afternoon, and remained with her even in her dream.
    The upsetting thing was that this memory loss seemed to predate the loss she was currently struggling through. She looked deep within the memory to trace the feeling, but came up with nothing.
    “Theo.”
    She turned to see Ren, if that was indeed his name, standing in the middle of the dance floor. Even in the low light, he looked completely out of place in light armor and sporting a sword, but, then again, he wasn’t really there at all. She had an inkling that he’d never be invited to one of her mother’s parties with all their tedious politics. She was, once again, stuck by how fiercely handsome he was, though there was nothing at all beautiful about him.
    “Ren?”
    “You remember!” He quickly closed the space between them. His smile transformed all the hard lines of his face, but it faltered when she took a few steps back at his approach.
    He dropped his hands. They’d been raised as if to clasp her, which was odd for two reasons: he couldn’t touch her in a dream, but, if he could, why he voluntarily touch her at all?
    “You look more like yourself.” He spoke as if he wanted to say so many things all at once but was restricting himself. “I hope that means you are well?”
    “Yes, thank you.”
    “I … I’m … I have … We’re looking for you. Are you in the castle?”
    “At Hollyburn? Yes.” It was odd that he was asking, as surely that was common knowledge by now? That she’d returned?
    “Has she got you locked up? In the dungeon? There’s been no ransom demand.”
    “Why would there be?”
    He looked as confused and frustrated as she felt.
    “Theo. You are so … so … formal, and, and, coolly poised. Do you not know me at all?”  
    “No. Though I think your name might be Ren.”
    “Yes. That’s good you remember that at least.” He grinned and she loathed to mention that she’d read the name, his name, from the dreamwalker, not that she’d remembered anything. But, then looking at him … maybe if she just took some time to look at him, she could remember … something about the sun and sand … the wind lifting her hair … she was holding something heavy in her left hand, which was odd because she was right handed … then the feeling dissipated.
    “We met on a beach?” she guessed.
    “No. Not on a beach.” His grin was gone again, and he ran an exasperated hand through his hair, again as if something was holding him back from speaking. “I have a feeling that there are many things at play here that I don’t yet understand.”
    “That makes two of us.”
    “A least we have some common ground.”
    “Is that why you are here? Why the dreamwalker is using you to access my dreams? Because we have common ground?”
    Ren