“Someone you cared about,” Hazel said.
“Someone I failed to protect.”
He waited for her to push, to demand details. Instead, she just nodded.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“It was a long time ago.”
“Time doesn’t help with that kind of thing.” She stood, wrapping her arms around herself. “I should try to sleep again.”
“Hazel.”
“Yeah?”
He didn’t know what he’d been about to say. Thank you for understanding? Tell me your own failures so we’re even? Stay and keep me company in this uncomfortable vigil?
“Get some rest,” he said instead.
She smiled, sad and knowing. “You too. Wake me at three. And Marcus? You can’t protect anyone if you’re exhausted.”
The door closed gently this time. Marcus returned to his files, but the words blurred together.
By three AM, when he should have woken her for her watch shift, he let her sleep. She needed rest more than he needed relief. By five, his own exhaustion won. He told himself he’d close his eyes for just a moment.
When pale dawn light filtered through the windows, he woke to find a quilt draped over him, the same patchwork monstrosity from the bedroom. Hazel was curled in the armchair across from him, wrapped in one of his suit jackets, which she must have retrieved from his luggage while he slept. Her face was peaceful, one hand tucked under her cheek.
She’d given him her blanket. Taken his jacket in trade. Kept watch while he slept.
Marcus pulled the quilt higher and stared at the water stain on the ceiling. The shape didn’t matter. What mattered was that she was eight feet away, breathing slow and even, and he hadn’t woken her.
Nineteen days.
5
This wasthe dream where her grandmother died. It was always this dream.
Hazel knew she was dreaming: the trees stretched too tall, too close together, and the moonlight had a sickly green tinge that belonged in no natural sky. She was back in Blackwood Forest, but the path kept shifting beneath her feet.
“Run, child.” Her grandmother’s voice, coming from everywhere and nowhere. “Run.”
She ran. The trees closed in behind her, branches snapping at her heels. Ahead, a clearing opened: the same clearing where she’d watched Tobias die, except now her grandmother knelt in the center, silver hair matted with blood.
“No—” Hazel lunged forward, but the ground turned to tar, sucking at her boots. “Grandma!”
“She can’t hear you.”
The voice came from her left. Hazel spun, and there he was.
Viktor Blackwood looked nothing like the cold-eyed killer from the forest. Here, in her nightmare, he wore a perfectly tailored charcoal suit and an expression of genuine sympathy. He held two cups of tea, steam curling in the green-tinged air.
“Chamomile,” he said, offering one. “Your favorite, isn’t it? You always make it when you’re stressed.”
“Get away from me.”
“Miss Wickwood.” He sighed, setting the rejected cup on thin air where it floated obligingly. “I’m not the one hurting you. That’s just a nightmare demon doing what nightmare demons do. I’m simply… taking advantage of the opportunity to talk.”
Behind him, her grandmother screamed. Hazel tried to move, but her feet were rooted to the ground.
