[edited: 19/07/2017]

She is not at the beach anymore, the way she had been in all of her other dreams. She is in Astracia now—she can tell from the pink glow that illuminates her surroundings and the strange gold markings etched into the walls—though she is sure she has never been here before. She takes a moment to find out where here actually is, and discovers that she is in a place that looks an awful lot like a church, though it is empty of anything that might confirm her suspicions: a skeleton without its body, she thinks, and shivers as a draught brushes past her like long, cold fingers tracing lines into her skin.

As she walks closer to the front, her footsteps echoing noisily in the silence, she realises that she is not alone. A man and a woman stand in the shadows, and Remy cannot see their faces. At first, she thinks that the man might be Maksim, but as he steps forward into a ray of light that seeps through the stained glass windows, illuminating his skin so that it is fragmented into millions of different colours, she realises that she is wrong.

Of course it would be him, she thinks. The man dressed in black, the one who is in every dream I have dreamt since meeting Maksim.

There is something different about him now. His eyes look darker, if that is possible, and his expression is more confident and sinister than she has ever seen it. She searches for the sword that is usually clasped in his left hand, but it is not there, having been replaced with black sparks that flutter and jolt off his palm as though they cannot be tamed.

The man has almost reached Remy now, and she tries to turn back, to run away, but she is stopped before she can even begin to by a wall of blackness. She falls backwards and realises that the wall of blackness is Maksim, and if he has noticed Remy, he does not show it. His eyes are like glass as he stares back at the man, his lips drawn into a harsh line.

He watches as the man reaches for Remy, and as always, his hands find the key around her neck. She looks at Maksim desperately, pleading silently for him to do something to stop him, but he is still stood motionlessly, as though he is nothing but a cardboard cutout.

Before she can scream, the black sparks fly towards her and she is flung backward. She gasps in pain as her body ignites, flames licking her skin at first and then engulfing her entirely. The last thought she has before she wakes up, drenched in sweat, is that she is no longer on fire, but that she is made of it. She is the fire.

She screams.

* * *

Maksim returned home in the early hours of the next morning. He was glad that his brother had been so thorough in hiding the evidence of his short stay in Astrakane, otherwise Maksim was sure that he would still be there now, trying to decipher what on Refilyn it was that Ackmard truly wanted—besides power and the freedom to always dress in black, that was. Maksim was not sure he would ever understand.

Warmth greeted him as he stepped into his house, and he threw his coat off carelessly, knowing that his mother would nag him for not putting it on the coat hanger in the morning but not caring enough to prevent it. He felt like he had not slept for weeks, and perhaps he hadn't. Even when he did sleep now, he never felt much better afterwards the way one was supposed to. Until he found his brother, he had concluded, he would live in a constant state of tiredness.

That did not stop him from treading slowly to his bedroom, his shadow large and hunched against the lamps that lined the corridor. He was ready to open his door and fall onto his bed when he heard a scream from the next corridor along.

Without thinking, he ran in the direction of the sound, his feet slipping against the carpet as he went. He didn't have time to wonder who or what the sound was, instead finding out for himself as he stopped outside one of the spare bedrooms—he assumed Remy must have been in there—and pushing the door open without knocking.

"What is going on?" he questioned, a flash of white shooting through the pitch black room as he used his magic to turn the lamp on. He relaxed when he saw Remy sat up on the bed tangled in bedsheets, sweat glistening on her forehead and her round face paler than usual.

"Nothing," she whispered, though the tremor in her voice begged to differ. Her grey eyes were widened as she eyed Maksim, one hand clutching something—the same necklace that she had held before, probably—against her chest. "Aren't you supposed to be looking for your brother?"

Maksim ignored the question and took another few steps into the room. "I heard you scream. I thought something had happened."

"Well, it hasn't," she sighed and rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands. "I just had a bad dream, that's all. You can go back to not caring, now."

He narrowed his eyes, leaning against the wall stiffly. "Did it involve the Dark Ones again?"

"Do you care?" she snapped angrily.

Maksim wondered what he had done wrong, besides making sure that she was alright and not being attacked in her own bedroom. It seemed that even when he was surprisingly considerate, she was not. "Are you still angry with me because of what I said to you in the forest? I told you that I did not mean it."

"No, you didn't actually," she sounded more tired than enraged now, "and I never expected you to. I'm just a stupid mortal girl anyway. It doesn't matter if I'm hurt."

Raising an eyebrow, he replied, "You were hurt by what I said?"

She sighed and pulled the covers closer to her body. "Never mind. Just leave me."

"I do not want to leave you," Maksim said without thinking. "Something is wrong and I wish to know what it is. What happened in the dream?"

Remy hesitated, biting her lip so hard that Maksim wondered how she had not drawn blood. "It was the same man dressed in black. He wanted my necklace, and then he used some sort of magic on me. I was on fire and you were just stood there, watching. I don't know what it means. It's probably just a stupid dream."

He sat on the edge of the bed, his frown turning into a scowl as Gale, the godforsaken cat who always managed find Maksim, appeared seemingly from nowhere and crawled onto Remy's lap. It glared at Maksim with a look of possession in his eyes. Maksim glared back before turning his attention back to Remy. "And you keep having these dreams?"

She nodded, gulping. "This one was different, though. We were in some kind of church, but I knew we were here in Astracia. Usually, we're on the beach."

"The man, does he have a name?"

Remy's eyebrows knitted together, her forehead wrinkling. Her eyes looked almost golden against the light from the lamp, and shadows danced across her jawline as she breathed. "Does it matter? It's just a dream."

"I often find that these things are never 'just' dreams, especially when you are dreaming about places you have never been to and people you have never met." He glanced down at her clasped hand again. "You said that he wanted your necklace. Why?"

"I don't know, but he always reaches for it before he hurts me."

"Show it to me," he demanded, though his voice was softer than he had expected it to be.

Her fingers uncurled to reveal a shining piece of black metal that swirled and coiled into a pattern that Maksim had never seen before. Looking closer, he realised that the bottom of it was cut like a key. He reached out to touch it, his fingers brushing against Remy's, and she threw her hand down quickly. He pretended not to notice. Beneath the silver chain, her chest rose and fell quickly.

It took him a moment to realise why this key was so important. His mind was a puzzle where the pieces would not fit together. Then, all at once, they did, and he found himself remembering, without much effort, his last real encounter with Elthar.

"What exactly are you doing here, in the Mortal World, anyway? What are you looking for?"

"A key," he had replied.

The pieces clicked together in his head then, giving him one final dose of understanding. The Dark Ones had come to Refilyn just after Remy had arrived here herself, after months of living in the Mortal World. His brother had asked him about her, and at the time, he hadn't known why, but now he knew that Ackmard was aware of her and most likely the key. It was not a coincidence that he had bumped into Remy every time he had been looking for his brother; it had been because she had what they wanted, they just hadn't known where to find it. Until now.

His eyes jolted up to look at her, and there must have been something in them, because she gulped. "Where did you find this?" he questioned urgently. 

"Why does it matter? It's just a key."

"Keys are very dangerous things, Remy. They have the power to unlock. Where did you find it?"

"On the beach," she answered as Maksim eyed it again. "It had washed up with the tide. I didn't think anybody would care if I kept it."

"You were wrong." He let the key fall back onto her shirt and looked at her gravely. "Nobody can know that you have it. You need to hide it until I know what to do with it."

"But why? It's just a key. It doesn't mean anything!"

"It means that the Dark Ones are after you, and they will be willing to do anything to take it from you." He stood up and crossed his arms over his chest as though to contain his panic. He had pushed Remy through the portal thinking that he had saved her from the Dark Ones, not knowing that she had been at the centre of this from the beginning. He cursed himself for not realising sooner. "This key is what they have been looking for all along, and that means that they must not have it. Whatever it does, whatever it unlocks, it cannot be good. We cannot let them have it."

"So now I'm somehow involved in your melodramatic pantomime?" She pointed to herself as though Maksim could not be sure who she was referring to, a very mortal thing to do.

Maksim scoffed. "I'm terribly sorry for the inconvenience. Perhaps if you did not pick things up that were not yours, you would not be in this mess."

"So it's my fault, then."

"Well, yes! As usual, you have stumbled into something that has nothing to do with you. I am beginning to think it is the only thing you are good at."

She rolled her eyes and pulled the necklace off violently, throwing it at Maksim, who stepped aside to let it fall to the floor. "You deal with it instead, then!"

He glared at the necklace for a few moments before sighing and picking it up, letting the cold chain dangle between his fingers. "Why did you care so much about it, anyway? Why do you wear it around your neck if it was simply something that had washed up with the tide?"

"Does it matter?" she asked through gritted teeth. Her eyes, glistening with tears that Maksim hoped would not fall, said it did.

Slowly, he sat down again beside her and held the necklace out for her to take. She glanced warily at him before she did so, and as she did, he carefully curled her fingers back around the key. He was not sure why his hand remained there once he had finished. "It is yours. As long as you stay here where it is safe until I can get you home, there is no reason why you should not keep it."

"And if they come after me?"

"I will let you deal with them whilst I run away," he joked.

Remy gave him a look, but the corner of her mouth curved into a slight smirk.

"I would sooner give them the key and do whatever hellish thing they are hoping to do than let them hurt you," he said more seriously, and knew as he said it that he meant it. "This is not your fight, and you will not fight it, even if you have gotten us all into rather deep trouble."

She looked surprised, but hid it quickly. Colour had returned to her face, her cheeks flushed the way they always were, and she did not look as fearful as she had before. Maksim was glad. "Max," she said in mock astonishment, "are you being nice to me?"

Maksim stared blankly at her. "Max?"

She shrugged in amusement. "Nicknames are a mortal thing, I guess."

"I suppose Maksim is too difficult a name for you mortals to say."

She laughed quietly, pulling her hand away before Maksim could. "Weren't you aware of our terrible language skills?"

"How could I not be with you around?"

She didn't respond, instead gazing out of the window, where the night sky, illuminated only by the moon, hung like a thick blanket. Maksim could almost feel the weight of it against his skin, and had to look away. His eyes fell to Remy again, to the way the silver light radiated off her cheekbones and two shadows clung from her eyelashes like dark crescent moons. He had never noticed that about anybody before. He wondered why that was.

Exhaling shakily, he forced himself to stand up and look away. "You must be tired. I will let you rest."

"Wait," she stopped him quickly, looking down at the key and the markings etched into it. "The markings on the key. Are they a language?"

Maksim raised an eyebrow, unable to hide that he was impressed. He had spent a rather long time thinking that mortals were nothing but shallow, pointless beings, but her intelligence—and everything else about her, if he was to admit it—proved him wrong with everyday they spent together. "They are Refilyn's language, yes."

"So you can read them?"

He rolled his eyes at this. "I would like to think that I am rather literate."

"Alright." She held the key up to his face, showing him a set of marked words that he had not noticed to be there before. He wondered now he had missed them; shadows lingered in the dinted metal like a threat. "Then what does it say?"

It took him less than a moment to decipher it, but his eyes fell on Remy before he read the quote aloud. "We are but a Door of Darkness that is made to be unlocked."

Remy shivered, lowering the key. "That's ... cheery."

"Cheery is not quite the word I would use, though I suppose it explains why my morbid brother has taken an interest in it." The corner of Maksim's mouth twitched as though he might smile, but the moment was gone and he was preparing to leave again. "I will have another look at the key tomorrow, but for now, you really should rest."

"Okay," she whispered and clasped her necklace back around her neck, shoving the key underneath her shirt. He wondered how she was not put off by it now that she understood it. Maksim felt uncomfortable even holding it, never mind having it dangle around his neck. "Goodnight, Maksim."

He nodded, shutting the door quietly behind him. As he wandered the halls back to his own room, he wondered why his name sounded so much better coming from her lips than it ever had from anybody else's.