Page 93 of Revenant

She hasn’t told me the details. Every time I’ve asked, she just pleads for me to trust her.

So I do.

I always do.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, beneath every layer of my certainty, a whisper that sounds uncomfortably like my twin’s voice stirs.

Taking her hand in mine, I bury it.

It’s instinct—the same as breathing. Her fingers are familiar intertwined in mine, and she’s already turning back toward her grimoire, buzzing with whatever tonight is supposed to become, and I am so gone for this woman it borders on pathetic.

Then, I feel it. A pressure. Faint at first, like a hand pressed against the inside of a snow globe. Something observing from within it—present in a way that has no business witnessing this memory of mine. It lives in the darkest corners of my mind, the part of me I don’t revisit often and certainly don’t share, and yet—

My grip of Veil’s hand loosens.

I know this feeling.

No.

The bookshelves begin to blur at the edges. The amber lantern light wavers. Veil’s voice stretches thin as she disappears, her laugh unraveling like a thread pulled from a hem, and the warm solid reality of Blackthorn Den dissolves around me because I know exactly what I’ve done.

I’ve dream-walked.

And unintentionally brought something with me.

Or rather…someone.

Alicent.

I spin around and find her immediately. She’s impossible to miss—slight and pale in the corner of the flickering room, watching me with those wide blue eyes like she’s trying to make sense of something she had no business witnessing. Her long copper curls fall loose over her chest, barely decent, and she’s drowning in an oversized shirt that smells unmistakably of my brother.

This is going to cost me. Her being here—her seeing the night of our damnation. I take a slow step toward her and she skitters back like a startled gazelle, shoulders hitting the blurring wall behind her, and I almost laugh. Almost.

“Where am I?” she questions, eyes darting from wall to wall, hunting for an exit.

“A dream.” I keep my tone flat. The same voice I use when a conversation has already exhausted me before it’s had the chance to begin.

Her brow furrows. “Why would I be dreaming about you with…Veil?”

“You’re not.” I hold her gaze. “I am.”

She blinks. “What? Then how am I—”

“My brother told you about our abilities.” It isn’t a question. Elias has never known when to keep his mouth shut. “This is mine.”

“So you just—” She gestures vaguely at the gutted remains of the original Blackthorn Den around us. “—pop into people’s heads while they’re sleeping?”

“Essentially.”

“Without permission?”

The bookshelves shudder again, a few more dissolving into nothing but air. The amber light pulls inward like a dying breath, and for a moment the disappearing room catches her face at an angle that makes something in my chest go very still.

“My specialty,” I goad.

The corner of her jaw tightens. She squares her shoulders and tilts her chin up the way she does when she’s finally decided to stop being polite. “You mean like force feeding from someone without their consent?”

There it is.