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A cold rush of relief raced through my body as he held me to him. My chest eased and I felt my voice return. “Ow.”

Ruan let out a similarly hoarse sound as he pulled back, running his trembling hands over my face, my shoulders, my arms then back to my hair, before pulling me against his chest again. “You were dead. I don’t … I don’t understand…”

I wriggled out of his grasp, looking at him as if he’d grown a second head. “I can assure you, Ruan Kivell, I have been a great many things in my thirty years of life—but I’m fairly certain dead is not one of them.”

He let out an improbably wet laugh. The dampness on his cheeks still there from the tears he’d been shedding. “You’re not dead…” he whispered.

I shook my head, pulling my knees up against my chest and wriggling away from him. “I had a dream…”

His eyes widened as I told him about the village, the café, and the message my mother was trying to show me in my dream.

“You saw a dead man…” he repeated quietly. “And then you walked into a lake with your mother…” His gaze drifted to my soaked nightdress, which smelled oddly of the sea. Likely the salt from my sweat.

“Two dead men. I did not see their faces, but yes.” I took his hands, putting them squarely in his lap. “But I need you to stop being so overprotective. I was not dead. There is no scientific explanation for a woman being dead then not. So please stop treating me like I am going to break.”

Again, his lovely green eyes grew wide, that dear divot between his brows betraying his emotion. I reached up, smoothing it with my thumb. “Science does not live between us, Ruby Vaughn. And this”—he poked me in the chest—“is beyond anything I’ve ever seen. Your heart stopped beating.”

Absurd. I let out a huff of air. “What is normal? Besides, I can assure you I was not dead. I would know if I were. It was … whatever was in that ale or perhaps the stew. I must have been drugged—sedated with something that slowed my pulse.” I threw my legs over the side of the bed, feeling wobbly before tumbling down with a squeak. “I must get back to the café. Find Alfred—if that’s even his real name.” Anger surged through me as the memories of our conversation returned. “The bastard tried to kill me.”

Ruan let out a strangled sound, his hands tangled in his hair. “Ruby, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. He did kill you. You had no pulse. Mrs. Wauters already left to send for Owen…”

I stared at him in disbelief. “How could you?”

Ruan stood, hands on his hips, nostrils flared. “You were dying. Your pulse was so weak for an hour that I thought if he wanted to see you alive, he needed to come quick.”

My chest tightened at the thought of Mr. Owen coming to Saint Oda’s. I shook my head hard. “It’s too dangerous…”

Ruan squared his shoulders. “And what do you think would happen to him if you did manage to die and he wasn’t there with you? He’s lost three children—he could not bear it to lose you next. Every time you hare off, without a single care for yourself, you forget there are people in this world who love you.”

Chastened, I looked away. He was right. Of course he was. But it wasn’t my fault someone tried to poison me. Though if I’d not taken that first drink this afternoon, I might have been able to resist the second. The third. And most of all, I’d have been paying attention and might have seen the warning for what it was. Alfred, the barman, had been watching me as I drank. I’d thought it curious at the time, but perhaps it was to make sure I’d taken enough of the drug for it to work.

“It’s only a little poison. I’ll be right as rain soon enough.” I waved him off, unwilling to admit he was right—besides, whatever I’d ingested had allowed me to see my mother again. She wanted to tell me something, of that I was certain.

“Ruby, this is serious.”

Of course it was, but it didn’t mean I had to agonize over it. What’s done was done. “Is it though? For us, I mean…” I held up my left hand, ticking off our misadventures on my fingers. “Shot. Poisoned. Arson. Bashed about the head. Where do explosions figure into things, I wonder.”

“You’re mad … utterly mad.” Ruan made a broken sound in his chest, before rubbing at his face. “Gods, what did I do to deserve this?”

I reached up, taking his hand into my own and laying it against my chest in a peculiar echo to what my mother had done in the dream. His pulse and mine thrummed together. “I’m all right, Ruan. See? You needn’t worry. Not now.”

He shuddered, slipping my fingers between his and holding them against my breast. Defeated, he muttered something in Cornish half to himself, but I picked up the distinct word morvoren. The same word the White Witch in Cornwall had flung at me as an accusation all those months ago when I first met Ruan. She’d appeared with a veiled message that I’d kill him. Ruan had been unbothered by her visions, assuring me that they meant nothing, but I still worried that she might be right. That loving me would be the death of him. She’d uttered the word as if I were some dirty, horrible, untrustworthy creature. I’d scoured all the books I had, unable to find the meaning of it, and after a while I’d given up trying. “I can’t understand when you speak in Cornish, you know.”

The edge of his mouth curved up into a sad small smile. “I know.” He pressed a gentle kiss into my palm, before pulling it to his own chest and drawing in a steadying breath. I’d never seen him so afraid, so broken, and I felt guilty for snapping at him as I did.

“What did you say?”

The hesitation was written in his expression and for a moment I thought he would not answer at all. He brushed the hair away from my face. “Only that I love you.”

“And … morvoren … is that what the word means? Love?” Because that wasn’t the sense I’d gotten from the White Witch.

He swallowed hard and gave me a nod. “For us … yes. That’s what it means.”

I leaned up and kissed him softly. He stiffened, warring with his own good conscience, before softening and deepening the kiss. If I was a fanciful sort I might have believed in such things as destiny—that the two of us had been born to find one another—but such things are the stuff of fairy stories, not real life. And as I shifted beneath him, to make room for the two of us in the small boardinghouse bed, I knew destiny or not—I was where I wanted to be.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN … About Djhan …

RUAN left the boardinghouse long before I woke late the next morning. My body still felt queer after sleeping off the remnants of whatever Alfred had dosed me with. Mouth painfully dry, I sat up in bed looking for a glass of water when I spotted Ruan’s hastily dashed missive atop my open notebook.