She ought to feel something in the midst of this confession. Something other than dull prickles on the back of her neck and a vague, steady headache between her eyebrows. “They’re not like regular dreams,” she went on. “I’ve had vivid dreams before, and these are different. It’s not like I’m falling asleep and waking up, it’s like I’m walking between one room and the next.”

  She looked up to gauge Eli’s response, but he only dipped his chin in a shallow nod of encouragement.

  “They feel so real. Almost always, I wake up in the same room, and I could tell you every detail about it. That’s how real it is. It’s a bedroom with a four-poster bed, with drapes with little flowers embroidered on the fabric. There’s a window seat, and the window looks out, down a steep mountain slope onto a blue river. It’s always the same. There’s always a prezleret tree just outside the window, and I’ve never even seen a prezleret except in drawings.” As she spoke, her voice grew more fervent, rushing out of her like it had been under pressure and needed to escape.

  “I know the titles of all the books on the shelves, I know the paintings on the walls, I know the way the sheets feel against my skin. The room is real, and so is Davy. He’s always there with me, and it’s him. I swear, it’s him. On my life, to the Depths and back, I swear it’s him. Not a memory. Not a dream. It’s Davy.” She no longer felt numb. She felt frantic. “He’s real. I don’t know how, but he’s real. You have to believe me,” she finished, her voice cracking unexpectedly.

  When she finally dared to look at Eli, she found him staring deeply into his cup. He twisted it one full rotation in his hands, and when he raised his head his eyes were somber and serious, his gaze taking the pressure from her before he even opened his mouth to speak. “I believe you.”

  Mara dropped her gaze back to her own mug and blinked away a burning haze of tears. His gentle acceptance hurt. Her gratitude for it hurt. With Eli, there was always pain, as if he was handing his soul over to her in bloody chunks with each kindness, and all she could possibly do was to rip loose a commensurate chunk of her own to offer in exchange. Perhaps in the beginning she had been able to take him lightly, but that time had long since passed.

  “Thank you,” she said, clutching the blanket.

  “You know it’s no trouble, Mara.” He placed another log on the fire, moving things around so the flames flared bright and hot. “You don’t have to tell me, but I’m assuming tonight was different? That they’re not typically nightmares?”

  “No, they’re not.” Sipping her tea, she shifted back a little from the crackling heat of the fire. “Most of the dreams are quiet. Uneventful. There’s all these unspoken rules, where I can’t seem to ask him meaningful questions, and we can’t talk about the fact that he’s… that he’s…”

  “So, light conversation only?”

  Sniffing, she nodded. “Yeah. Yes. For the most part. There’s been some exceptions.” She decided to omit that first night in Cinder. She didn’t know how to explain Davy’s jealousy to the man of whom he was jealous without fumbling. So she skipped forward to the first night on the plains–the dream where Davy tried to leave. And then to the night where it seemed like he didn’t truly know her anymore. And finally to the bloody nightmare.

  “He was just bleeding,” she explained, setting her empty cup aside and hugging the blanket around her as she stared into the flames. “I couldn’t even find a source. There was so much blood, but no wound. I didn’t know what to do. I tried to go for help, but the doors were locked. I tried to break the window, but I couldn’t. I yelled but nobody came.”

  Technically, she reminded herself, someone had come. The exact person she’d been calling for, no less.

  “What do you think it means?” she asked, looking up to find Eli staring at the flames as well, his own empty cup dangling from a curled finger.

  “I’m not sure. You’ve had these dreams every night?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “No exceptions?”

  “No.” She straightened a little. “Actually, no, that’s not true. Last night, our first night in the Smokestacks, I don’t think I dreamt of anything.” Now that she thought of it, it was odd. She’d chalked it up to exhaustion, but she’d been more exhausted in the past and still visited Davy. “Do you think it was because I was channeling?”

  He nodded slowly. “Maybe.”

  Beyond the circle of their shared confidence and the crackle of the fire, the forest was dark and quiet–not unusual for this time of morning, when the nocturnal creatures were all tucking themselves in to sleep and the diurnal creatures hadn’t yet roused themselves to their day’s work. She was grateful. She didn’t think she could confess her fears and secrets anywhere else but in such a void.

  “What about… I know you don’t know, but do you think last night was… Do you think he’ll…” Her throat closed against the question, and the words piled up behind a barrier of fear and despair. She pulled her knees up, wrapping her arms around them and cocooning her entire body in the blanket. The smoke from the fire shifted toward her with her movement, and she settled her chin on the divot between her knees and closed her eyes until it moved away. When it finally passed, time had carved out a notch in the blockage in her throat and the words trickled out in a tentative murmur.

  “I’ve always known how it ends. I know I can’t keep him forever. I just thought… I don’t know. I thought he was seeing me through to the Enclave, or maybe just until the grief wasn’t big enough to bury me, or just something. I thought it would end at some point that made sense. I knew it was coming, but I thought it would arrive when I could bear it. I don’t know what I’ll do if last night was it. What if I never see him again? What if it’s just over?” She shuddered, the cold a living thing within her.

  In her periphery, Eli climbed to his feet, and a fleeting hope passed over her–that he was standing so he could come closer. That he would sit and wrap her in his arms. She was coming apart into pieces and she didn’t trust the blanket to hold her together, but she trusted Eli.

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  He stood for a heartbeat beside her, unmoving. Then, “We need more firewood. I’ll be back in five minutes.”

  She couldn’t blame him for wanting some distance. Though he’d tolerated her emotional upheavals in the past, this one was different. She was inside out and bleeding her grief and need into the earth beneath her–a messy, pitiful disaster. She couldn’t blame him. She didn’t blame him.

  But it still hurt.

  “Okay,” she said, forcing herself to look up and offer him a tight smile.

  He frowned down at her, his face warmed by the light of the fire. “I’ll be right back, Mara. We’re not done talking.”

  “We can be,” she said, dropping her gaze from his concerned frown and the weight that accompanied it.

  “We’re not. Put a fresh pot on while I’m gone, okay?”

  He left, melting into the darkness, and she disentangled herself from the blanket and did as he asked, setting another pot on the fire to boil. When Eli returned, it had just begun to rattle.

  He set the firewood down and fed some to the flames before preparing two more cups of tea, all without speaking, without so much as looking at her. Mara had managed to cram her jumbled feelings back into the overstuffed closet from which they’d tumbled, though the hinges were straining and she wasn’t confident they would hold against the pressure. If she sat very still and didn’t think too hard, she might just manage not to cry.

  When the tea was brewed, the fire prodded into a joyful, crackling dance, Eil sat beside her once again and they both studied the flames and cradled their cups between their hands. As if disturbed by all their movement, the forest had begun to rustle to life. Something skittered along the branch of a tree to their left. A few early birds chirped a modest greeting to the day. Finally, Eli offered his own voice to the quiet morning song.

  “I don’t think last night was the end.”

  So much for not crying. Mara tucked her chin to hide her face. “How do you know?”

  “I don’t know. I just think you’re right. He’s seeing you through, maybe to the Enclave, maybe to some other landmark. But I don’t think he’ll let go until you’re ready.”

  She perked up at his choice of words. “What do you mean? You think he’s controlling this? You know what’s happening?”

  He sighed and grimaced, tipping his head to the side in unspoken concession to the limits of his knowledge. “Davy’s persuasion was powerful. More powerful than mine, and more practiced. He knew the way into a person’s mind, and persuasion is exponentially more effective on those the user truly knows. Familiarity and emotional intimacy open doors to the spaces in which persuasive magic is most potent. They expand the limits of what’s possible.”

  “So you think it’s just persuasion?”

  “I don’t think it’s just anything. But it makes some sense that when he died, knowing that you were still in danger, he’d have used what doors he could find to,” he waved a hand, eyes unfocused, “slip inside, I suppose. Hitch a ride. Take care of you until you’re safe.”

  Though the thought should have given her comfort, it sent a powerful shiver down her spine. “Do you think he’s here? Now?” she asked, feeling suddenly as if she stood inside a well-lit room, staring out into the night, her own reflection in the glass hiding whatever eyes might be watching from the darkness. She loved Davy, trusted him, missed him, but that didn’t mean she wanted him watching through her eyes, riffling through the contents of her mind, seeing her when she couldn’t see him. “Do you think he’s in my head?” She swallowed a surge of nauseous fear. “Is he possessing me?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “You’ve been practicing your sensing and your resistance technique. Have you ever felt his presence, anytime other than when you’re dreaming?”

  “No,” she admitted, “but that doesn’t mean he’s not there.” Depths, what if he was in her head, watching her suffer, watching her miss him and hate him for making her miss him? What if he felt the little bubbles of hot resentment forming in the cauldron of her grief? What if he had to watch through her eyes as his son came to worship another man more than he had ever worshipped Davy?

  “Give yourself more credit, Mara,” Eli said, interrupting her mental tumble into guilty dread. “Persuasive magic is subtle, but it’s not undetectable, and persuasive possession would be impossible to ignore.” He looked down, swirling the tea in his cup before going on, his voice quieter but more firm. “If he was in your head, you’d know.”

  “Then what about the dreams?”

  He shrugged. “Think of that like a seed. It lies dormant in your mind during the day, and when you let your guard down in sleep it flourishes, feeding off the free magic of your dreams. Then, when you wake up, it retreats back into a seed. In some sense, I suppose it’s possession, but he’s only possessing your dreams. Not your waking moments.”

  “Are you sure?” She trusted Eli’s honesty in this, but did she trust his judgment? If Davy wasn’t watching through her eyes, how did he know to be jealous back in Cinder? Then again, if he was watching through her eyes, why was he jealous at all? Shouldn’t he have known that she had, at the time, wished fervently and constantly and cruelly that Eli was the man who was dead and Davy the one protecting her? Shouldn’t that have allayed his jealousy? Mara rubbed her forehead, where the dull ache had begun to spread. “How do you even know all this?”

  “You’re not the only one who can read, Mara,” Eli grumbled over the rim of his cup, taking a sip before he went on. “And yes, I’m sure. If he was there in your waking moments, you would know. And you wouldn’t be a helpless victim of it. You’d be able to box him in with your resistance technique.”

  “Didn’t you just tell me he was more powerful than you?”

  “He was.” In life went unspoken, but she heard it clearly, and sudden guilt melted through her in a cold, sick wave.

  In all of this, she had somehow managed to forget that Davy was dead. His body was rotting somewhere, or reduced to ash, and still he lingered. Not by some divine providence as she had suspected, but by the sheer strength of his will and his love. He’d reduced himself to a seed inside her mind so he could comfort her in her dreams, and her reflexive reaction had been not gratitude but fear?

  “And you really don’t think last night was the end?” she managed. Her voice was small. Pleading.

  “No.”

  “What was it, then? If it’s Davy doing this, why would he do that?”

  “I don’t know. This is ancient magic we’re talking about. There’s record of the theory behind it, but if there was ever a practical handbook it’s been lost to time. If I had to guess, I’d say that he can’t control the content of the dreams any more than you can. They’re just a product of your fears and hopes, and of his.”

  “He can’t control the content, but you think he can control when they end?”

  “No.” Eli leaned forward, placing another stick on the fire. She watched the moss on its surface shrivel and flare bright, fading to a dark spot of nothing before he spoke again. “I think you can.”