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She had not expected to sleep easily, but she fell into the dream as if into a chasm.
She stood in a hallway of dark wood. It was lit, from a source she could not see, only so much as to confuse her eye. The Empress was somewhere in the maze of rooms ahead. She had to find the Empress, then she could take it to Ainsley and they could go. They could both escape.
There was something distinctly wrong - more wrong than needing to escape and needing to get her father to safety. For one thing, someone else was there with her. Invisible, but incontrovertible. She hesitated.
The dream changed. She knew all at once that Beales was the other presence, and that he was ahead of her; had reached the emerald first. The light turned green, and rose around her, lapping at her like an eerie tide. She had to get to the Empress, and somehow get past him. He had it in his hands, its light reflecting off his dark hair.
But no - that faceted, glittering thing wasn't the Empress. He held it up out of her reach, mocking her, but it wasn't anything she wanted. At last she was able to turn and run.
If Beales had the wrong stone, all they needed to do was escape.
And yet the mocking laughter turned into something more genuine, powerful and not just petty. "You have seen it, then," he said. "And recently."
In the way of dreams, she knew the object in his hands had changed into the real, astonishing stone; but she wasn't looking at the stone. She was looking into his eyes...
Courtland's hand on her shoulder woke her, and it was a long moment before she understood who he was and where they were. "I'm sorry it couldn't be longer," he was saying, apologising for the little rest she'd had.
It hadn't felt like only a half-measure of an hour.
"Odette, tell me," Callie said. "What is Beales' power?"
The old woman pursed her lips, her gaze piercing despite her ever-present exhaustion.
"Why do you ask now?"
"Because," Callie bit her lip. "Father showed me the Empress, Odette. And I know how much Beales wants it. If it comes down to it - that I'm between what him and what he wants - I need to know what he's capable of."
Her mouth twisted, too, at the words. She'd thought she had known what Beales was capable of, in all its horror. HIs atrocity already stained the story of the Beckets all the way through - a professional dye. But it seemed he had hidden something else beneath his cruelty.
"Others know, in the family, don't they? I need to know too. Even if you think of me as a child still - not knowing won't protect me." You can't protect me she didn't say, because that was cruel - when Odette was already doing all she could for Eleanor! - but she knew Odette heard it. And Odette was staunch against self-deception. She knew it was true.
"Not knowing is a protection," Odette contradicted her. "But not enough of one, true. He can enter dreams, child. Easier if you know; then you've thought of it happening, and made a wider door for him."
Callie caught her breath.
She'd been right.
"Lisette..." she said, horrified again.
But Odette was shaking her head. "She is of his blood; he cannot touch her. But he can touch you. When he's looked in your eyes; then he has that power over you. But someone under his power can be free of him. He is only a man."
Beales had looked into her eyes scant days ago. And now she understood why she'd been reluctant to tell Courtland.
If he hadn't visited her in her dreams last night - perhaps he had not, himself, been sleeping.
But he would try her again - she was sure of it. He considered himself a match for any woman - that much was plain. His connection to her was newly forged, and she was not practiced in resisting him.
Callie was no Morgan, no Fanny, but she thought she could manage a distraction as well as any Becket.
They were dancing; Eleanor's clear voice called the figures, and all around Callie, her family, in a set of riotous partners, trod the boards. Lisette and Ethan bowed to each other, stepped forward, and stepped back. Rian and Julia followed them, and out of the corner of her eye, Callie saw her father, a patriarch at the centre of his brood.
That broke the illusion. She thrust it all away from her; only her own partner remained, and the dance continued, and the voice continued calling the figures, only it was not Eleanor's voice any more. They were surrounded by moving shadows.
She could deal with that; only keep Beales from her family. She could not stand the thought of even an illusion of her father watching her with their enemy.
The life she'd lived close to home was no advantage; she did not want to picture the family home as the setting of their meeting, but had little else to offer instead. She supposed it was Beales' own memories that filled in the unfamiliar hall, the soaring ceilings, the dim and surging crowd. She did not want the intimacy of his memories either, but it was better than yielding up her own.
She was, she discovered, clad in the burgundy gown, and Beales' touches burned through the cloth when he guided her elbow or set a hand at her shoulder.
An incongruous thought: she was glad she had never learned to waltz.
"Never yet out in society," Beales agreed in a murmur, "but a woman in all ways that matter - and so much more use to me than a blushing maiden."
Damn him! She would not think of Courtland, and her fierce new awareness of her own body. Beales' touches, even though they followed the rules of fashionable dancing and not the scandal of the waltz, evoked an unwelcome intimacy; conveyed interest and desire. None of her own; it must be more of his deceit.
"Or authentic feeling, simply shared with you," he corrected her. "You are a delight, my dear." She liked that thought rather less; hated that she could not ignore his sentiments any more than she had been able to ignore the weight of his gaze.
"Would you rather think of the Empress?"
No; she would rather stay in this illusory hall, trapped, but also the trapper.
"I could ask you more forcefully, my dear," Beales said. "But I confess I enjoy this more - your defiance and your attempts to learn what powers will avail you here." They each turned on the spot, and Beales caught her hand, and kissed her knuckles quickly. She felt him, a taut thread from his cool lips to the core of him, a hook that tried to snag the core of her.
If he enjoyed her defiance, all to the good; she had plenty of it to offer him.
She opened her mouth to reply and felt his awareness leave her. She was dancing and Beales was with her, but shortly after that he turned into a ship, and the ship was stuck in a river, trying to heave itself towards the sea like a struggling fish. She was wearing a giant's boot, and making it move by crouching down within it then jumping. She woke up.
She was sure Beales had not got what he wanted from her. Surely, instead, she had compelled him to waste his time.
She thought he would choose to waste it again.