JenB’s the lucky one to read Kathryn Smith’s latest, the second book in her Nightmare Chronicles series. But the rest of us are not totally left out! Take a gander at this exclusive excerpt of Dark Side of Dawn and then tell me you won’t be running down to your local bookstore. I dare you!
Life can be a Nightmare – literally…
Dawn Riley saved herself and her boyfriend Noah from a Night Terror bent on crossing over into the real world. You’d think she would be safe now, but now there’s a price to be paid. The Nightmare Council claims she’s broken their laws and is threatening to have her ‘unmade’ And as if that’s not bad enough, there’s a real world villain whom Dawn needs to find before he finds her. At this point the best Dawn can hope for is not to die in her sleep.
The Warden had cold green eyes, complete with black rims, but instead of being spidery, the line was thick and bold, as though someone had drawn it there with a magic marker. Weird. Her hair was bright copper, and hung down the back of her violet robe like a ripple of flame.
She was scary, and she knew it. I lifted my chin as she joined us at the table and fixed me with a cold gaze. I held her attention, and though I wanted to look away, I refused to give in.
“So you are the one named after Eos,” she half asked, half accused in a tone that was as scorching as her hair. “The daughter of Morpheus and a human.” She said human like it was some kind of disease.
“Yes,” I answered with a slight incline of my head – all the acknowledgment she would get from me. I’d be damned if I’d be ashamed if what I was.
The Warden’s peach lips thinned. She could have been a beautiful woman were it not for the bitterness etched in every feature, every aspect of her being. “You have been brought before this council on charges of willful endangerment of the realm, wanton disrespect for our rules and reckless disregard for the safety of our kind.”
I scowled. Hell, I glared. “I haven’t done any such things!” The only way I could have sounded more indignant would have been if I’d had an English accent.
Clearly the Warden didn’t like being talked back to. She drew up to her full height – which was a little taller than my own – and shot daggers at me with her eyes. Thankfully, she didn’t try to conjure real daggers. “You endangered this realm by bringing a human into it. A human who was fully aware of this world and totally cognizant of his time in it.”
That was Noah. I had brought him through a portal into the Dreaming when we’d realized Karatos had stolen his ability to dream. “I didn’t know it was wrong,” I replied. “I only wanted to help him.”
She was unmoved. “Your ignorance only proves your disrespect for our customs and rules. Had you taken the time to learn these things, you would have known better, but apparently twenty plus years of knowing what you are hasn’t provided you with adequate motivation.”
She was such a bitch. I managed to keep my mouth shut, even though I wanted to defend myself – and tear a strip off of her. Nothing I could say could change the fact that she was right. I should have learned more about this world. If I hadn’t turned my back on what I was and what it meant, I would have known that it was wrong to bring Noah into this realm.
I would have known that I shouldn’t be able to bring Noah into this realm, which was really what this was all about. I scared them. Well bully for them. They scared me too.
“And your involvement with that same human put him directly in harm’s way,” the Warden continued. “Something every Nightmare has sworn not to do.”
I knew that harming humans was against what the Nightmares stood for. We were protectors. “I haven’t sworn anything,” I retorted, ignoring my father’s shaking head. “I never asked to be half of this world and half human. I never asked to be a freak. I may have broken your rules, but it wasn’t my involvement with Noah that got him hurt, it was the fact that a Night Terror, working for people in this realm, decided it wanted to cross over into the human world and chose Noah to be his body. If I hadn’t stopped that Terror, you’d have bigger problems right now than me.”
I was mad – nostril flaring mad – and the Warden looked at me like I was a bug on her shoe. “You claim that the Terror called Karatos acted on the orders of another?”
I took a deep breath, forcing my temper down. “I don’t claim it. Karatos told me him…itself.” I had to remind myself that the thing that had tried to kill me and Noah wasn’t human.
The Warden lifted her chin defiantly. “Did the Terror reveal the name of his benefactor?”
That was an odd way to put it, since there had been nothing good about what Karatos had done. “No.”
She looked far too pleased. “Then you have no proof.”
I lifted my chin as well. “You don’t have any proof that I acted out of disregard for this realm either.”
I had her there, and from the dislike shining in her creepy eyes, she knew it.
“Indeed,” she replied frostily. “And so we have this inquiry into your actions. The council plans to watch you closely, Lady Dawn, and discuss your past behavior. If you are found to have acted out of good intent, without lasting effect on this realm, then you will be found innocent and no further action will be taken against you.”
Okay, so this didn’t sound so bad. I hadn’t done anything wrong, so there shouldn’t be any ramifications. So why did I have this sinking feeling in my gut?
“However,” the red-headed witch continued, “if it is determined that you acted willfully, with the intention of harming this realm and what it stands for, then I will have no choice but to pass judgment upon you and see that punishment is carried out.”
“P…punishment?” I sputtered like a stuttering kid on a bad sitcom. “What kind of punishment?” And why did Morpheus look so pale? He was king here, damn it, and I was his daughter! I don’t care how spoiled I sounded, but I was this realm’s Paris Hilton, and the worst punishment I should get was a few days without cable.
The Warden actually smiled at me, but there was no warmth in it, just the opposite. “To disregard the rules of this world is akin to treason. And the penalty for treason is unmaking.”
Thank God Verek chose that moment to take my arm again, because I might have fallen flat on my ass at that moment. Oh shit. I was in such trouble.
The equivalent to unmaking in the human realm was death.
