“That was the day you started visiting me, you know. The day I tore off that band.”
I pause in the middle of the dark room. I’m not sure how to respond to that, or even if he expects me to. I’m not even sure he’s awake. Perhaps right now, in his mind, he’s speaking to her. Tome.
I shake my head and leave. I’m still not sure what to think of it all. Not sure how much of it I believe. Because if I accept I’ve been in his dreams, there are only two explanations: either someone is impersonating me, or I don’t remember doing it. I don’t know which is worse.
I slip into the other room. In the gloom, it looks identical to the first. A large bed is tucked into the far corner from the singlebarred window, and a threadbare rug covers most of the floor. Weariness rolls through me. I drop my pack, kick off my boots, and crawl beneath the covers.
Still, my heart pounds in my ears and my veins thrum like they’re full of lightning. Wide-eyed, I pull the blanket to my chin and stare into the dark. Sleep feels like a distant dream. How can I possibly close my eyes after everything that’s happened? Everything I’ve learned?
I’ve ‘joined’ the rebels—at least for now. Do they know how many others I’ve helped Osian capture or kill? How many are still chained in the dungeons? They mustn’t. If they did, they would have greeted me with swords rather than an offer of alliance. I would make a good hostage. The Order would be more than willing to trade a few rebels to get their necromancer back.
I hiss between my teeth. Stars, I hate that word.
Frowning into the dark, I count the minutes, hoping it will lull me to sleep. It doesn’t.
I’ve reached two hundred and nine minutes when a soft knock sounds at the open door and a darker shadow hovers just outside. The scent of rowan blossom drifts toward me.
“You should be in bed,” I say.
“You should be asleep.” The shadow shifts as he steps inside. “Are the dead keeping you awake?”
“Quite the opposite. I can’t stop thinking about the living.” I toss the blanket aside and stand, stretching my tired bones. “It’s not dawn yet, is it?”
“A few more hours yet.” A long pause. “But after I woke from my rest, I couldn’t settle again. I wanted to talk to you about what happens next.”
I frown. “You going to chain me up again if I disagree with you?”
“No, Swynwraig, I’m not.”
A candle suddenly sparks to life, casting a soft light across the room. Taliesin places it on the bedside table, then glances around, notices there are no chairs, and sits on the edge of the bed like it might bite him if he gets too comfortable.
“Where’s Bryn?” I ask.
“I told her to wait outside the camp. She’ll be fine.”
“And you? Are you fine?”
“I will be. But these people,” he says, “I don’t know how much we can trust them.”
“Do you think they’re telling the truth?”
“About the Order?” he asks. When I nod, he continues, “Almost certainly. But their own intentions…I can’t be sure. I’ve heard of them, and this place, but most of the rebels I’ve met have been wilder. They want to fight, but there’s no strategy to it. Just an instinctual need to survive.”
“I noticed something similar,” I admit. “These are nothing like the rebels the Order normally sends me and Osian after.”
He looks at me for a long moment, thoughtful. An unexpected heat curls through me.
“I didn’t expect you to join them. Or even believe them,” he says.
“It’d be foolish to ignore the proof,” I say, frowning. “But I haven’tjoinedthem. I just want to stop something terrible from happening, and if their way works, then that works for me.”
He shifts sideways to face me. “Interesting choice of words. I’m assuming the terrible thing you speak of isn’t the magic hoarding.”
“No.” I frown, looking down at my hands. “I don’t know what it is, I just have this gut feeling our world will suffer in ways we don’t expect. The first time, hundreds died because of what theOrder did. We can’t let them do it again. That doesn’t mean I’m just going to hand this harp over to the rebels.”
“All right.” He extends his hand. “So we stay and we fight, but we don’t declare our loyalty to a group we don’t know or understand.”
I swallow and meet his steady gaze. The exhaustion is gone from him now, and the blue-streaked veins have faded back into his skin. A coil of tension unexpectedly loosens inside me, like part of me was worried he wouldn’t recover.
