“Oh, this stuff isn’t in the archives, Ora. It’s just…what I heard, I guess,” Silas said, his eyes never leaving mine. I had myrobe over the nightgown and I was perfectly concealed, but I still feltnakedsitting there just now. Like he really could see far beyond my eyes.
“Funny thing—I asked Reggie yesterday about the visit he paid Master Talik that night. You know about it, right? We talked in the kitchen.”
He paused for only a split second. “Yes?”
“He claims he’s never been to Master Talik’s workshop at night.”
Silas took a long sip of his tea. Smiled. “He probably forgot.”
I was tempted to smile, too. He was lying and he knew I knew. “Yes. Probably.”
“It’s easy to forget in these circumstances. I’m sure you can agree,” he said, putting the cup on the table before he grabbed a croissant. “After all, we’re basically in a game against time, and you know what they say about that.”
“Time always wins.” That’s what everyone knew to be true.
“Exactly,” said Silas. “Unless…someone cheats the deck.” And he bit into his croissant.
“Cheat, how?”
“Plenty of ways,” he said, chewing slowly. “We can talk about it another time.”
“There is no other time, remember? The trials will be over soon and then we’ll be going back home, and we won’t be seeing each other again.” The way my insides broke at my own words, when I didn’t even care. Just that empty space that rang inside me. It still had power over me. “Unless you want to travel to my town and see me, that is. To talk about how one cheats time.”
“Idointend to travel to your town to see you regularly, brave Ora,” he said. “Not sure if you remember but you did save my life once.”
“You saved ours, too.” This was the trials. We weren’t keeping score, I didn’t think.
“Regardless. A very dear, very furryfriend of mine once told me that a debt like that transcends centuries.”
I raised my brows. “Afurryfriend?”
“Very furry,” he confirmed with a grin. And I knew he was messing with me, of course. But the tea he’d made me was indeed exactly how I liked it.
Which then made me flush because that bastard of a Heartling had no business knowing how I liked my tea.
“All right, then, Silas. We’ll meet someday in our court, far away from this place, to tea-talk about how one cheats time,” I said with a nod. “What will we talk about today?”
“Dreams,” he said without hesitation. “I wanted to talk to you about a dream I had.”
“Why me?” Not that we were strangers or anything, but he was much closer to Reggie and March.
“I thought you were an expert at tea-talks.” He turned then, threw a look back at the nightstand, at my picture of Jinx with her wide smile and bright eyes.
I expected the question. I expected theis that her?but I shouldn’t have. This was Silas.
“You looked a lot like her when you smiled.”
I wasn’t surewhathe did just now, only that there was warmth cocooning me where I sat all of a sudden. I wasn’t able to feel it as deep inside me as I wanted—that empty space absorbed it too quickly, but it was still there.
Tears pricked the back of my eyes for a moment. Nobody had ever told me I looked like Jinx before. I had no way of knowing just how much I’dlikeit.
“That’s not the only reason why, though,” Silas then said. “The other is because you were in my dream, too, brave Ora.”
“I am not brave.”
“I beg to differ,” he said without hesitation, like he knew itfor a fact. “Nevertheless, you’ll come to the conclusion yourself given the right time. I have faith.”
What could I even say to that?
