Black lines crawl across his neck, like an unseen hand is inking them right before me. A circle forms, soon filled by two black lines. The traitor mark. My heartbeat thunders in my ears.
Alarm doesn’t come, even if I don’t understand this strange, impossible magic that’s hidden his mark. If anything, there’s only grim resignation. I’ve known who he is all along. My excuses and denials were flimsy at best. And now that he’s revealed himself to me, he either trusts me…or wants me dead.
“You don’t look surprised,” he says, still pressing my hand against his throat. I could kill him with a single word, whispered into the small space between us. My fingers twitch around his, and a knot of fear and anticipation tightens in my chest.
“I’d be a fool not to suspect it,” I whisper, my voice barely more than a breath.
“True. I saw it in your eyes when you walked into the inn last night. The dead man confirmed it for you, though.”
I swallow. My throat is dry, but the tingling in my skin makes me feel impossibly alive. As much danger as I’ve faced before, nothing compares to this: staring into the eyes of the most dangerous man in the realm. I could end him with a word, but he could do the same to me.
“I know what you are,” he murmurs. “I’ve seen you in my darkest dreams.”
My lungs freeze, and the world narrows to him. Taliesin Wynn—the unstable, violent exile—leans closer and tucks a windswept strand of hair behind my ear while my hands remain locked around his throat.
“Necromancer,” he breathes. “Commander of the dead.”
I dig my fingers into the hollow of his throat. “Call me that again, and I will kill you where you stand.”
“Do it, then,” he dares. “Say the word with your perfect little mouth.”
Then his earlier confession strikes me like a coastal storm. He’sdreamtof me. But that doesn’t make sense. We’ve never met.
He nods, like he’s reading the realization in my eyes. “Oh yes, I’ve dreamt of you, Angharad Morgan. More than once. But…” His head tilts. “You looked different then.”
I flinch back and wrench my hand free, nearly stumbling over the rocks. The traitor mark fades into nothing.
“How do you know my name?” I ask, my pulse hammering.
“You told me. In my dreams. I know it sounds mad, but—”
“I don’t believe you.” I narrow my eyes. “Why are you doing this? Is it some kind of sick joke?”
“I wish it were,” he muses. “She warned me to stay away from you, to avoid Caer Draen, the borderlands, and the Order, so we would never come into contact. She—you—said us meeting willbe the undoing of both of us. And yet here you are. It seems you can’t escape fate, no matter how far you run.”
His words echo in my ears. None of this makes sense—it soundsabsurd—and yet…a strange sense of knowingruns through my veins, like my soul recognizes the truth in what he’s said. Something terrible will happen because we’ve met.
“I need to sit down,” I say, my voice thin.
My knees tremble beneath me. Taliesin grips my arm, steadying me. I look up into his eyes, searching for reassurance, but he looks almost as lost as I feel.
This dream magic…it isn’t new. Before the stars vanished, some could wield it, but since then, no one has.Icertainly can’t. So if a vision of me has reached him, I don’t know how. All I know is a power that great should never be ignored. It will turn on you the moment it is.
He should have left the inn the moment he saw me.
“Why did you speak to me?” I ask roughly. “Why insist on travelling together? You could have just let me go.”
“After dreaming of you for a decade, I couldn’t bear to walk away.” He smiles grimly. “And I thought you might try to kill me last night. When you didn’t…I wanted to see what you would do next. You seemed to know who I am but then acted like you wanted to get away. I don’t know, Swynwraig. You’ve scrambled my mind.”
“Your mind is scrambled?” I laugh bitterly. “How do you think I feel? I knew nothing about any of this.”
He nods. “Clearly this is the start of something. I just don’t know what.”
“Or it’s the end,” I say, taking a step away from him. “We go our separate ways at the fork in the road, like the vision told you to do.”
Silence flows between us. Above, the sky has darkened, and the wind’s touch has grown bitterly cold. Up the hill, the horsesbray, sensing the turn in weather. We’ve spent too long dwelling on a dead man and parsing dreams and portents. A brief pause has stretched into an hour—or more.
“We should go,” I say again. “And take the separate paths.”
