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“The hospital.” I turned to look at him. “I need to speak with the patients. I think you’re right. I think von Keller or Dr. Crawford are doing something to the patients … I think that’s what the first reporter figured out. Narcisse, the orderly, must have known. The poor man from the bar—he must have too. That’s why they were killed.”

Ruan gave me a grim nod. “It makes sense.”

“Of course it does. Which means my mother, Manon, Djhan …They must be in hiding. But until I have some evidence of what they’re doing to those patients—something damning … it will just continue.”

Ruan grew still as stone.

“Don’t you see? I need to talk to Félix. He will know where the proverbial bodies are buried.”

Ruan’s brows rose. “Are you already not doing enough? You’ve nearly died on this quest.”

I shook my head, eyes burning. “If I’d come in November … none of this would have happened. Hari had been pestering me before Oxford. Telling me this woman wanted to see me.” Tears filled my eyes. “If I’d come … If I’d not been so damnably afraid … they might all be alive now.”

Ruan grew pale as I spoke, his skin oddly cool and damp.

I wiped the irritating tears from my face with both palms. I would not cry. It wouldn’t help us. Not now. “If I don’t help them—then who will? And what of my mother? She’s here. She’s alive, I can feel her.” I began to tell him the rest of what I’d learned about Félix, how von Keller would lock him in the isolation room, just as he had my mother. How every clue pointed right back to the hospital and the two doctors.

Ruan took on a decidedly green shade as I went on, before he interrupted me, tilting my chin up with his thumb. “You cannot do this.”

My brows shot up in righteous indignation. “How else will I learn what is going on inside those walls? Earlier today Dr. Peterson told me von Keller suspected Félix’s dreams of the future were activated by his war trauma. That pain unleashes one’s abilities. What if that is what is happening here…? That von Keller is putting them into that isolation room to hurt them. To manifest … magic.”

Ruan’s pale eyes widened. “And what do you think will happen to you once you’re inside?”

I set my jaw, drawing my knees up against my chest. “If she managed to escape, then I can too.”

“Are you out of your bloody mind?”

My nostrils flared. “Just because I share your bed does not mean you are in control of me, and if that is what you think, then—”

“This isn’t about control. Gods know I can’t control you. I don’t want to control you. This is me wanting you to think for one moment of the repercussions of your actions before you hare off. An asylum is no place for people like us. It’s not safe. Once they have you, what will happen next? What if that is the plan—the reason why you’re here to begin with? Someone certainly knew all about you—and if they did, then they knew you would never leave well enough alone.”

I looked up, fully prepared to argue, but saw the heartbreak written on his face. His large rough hand trembled as he clenched his fingers, hearkening back to the nightmare he’d had only last night. He dug them into the fabric of his trousers, battling within himself to keep his composure.

People like us he’d said. He’d not dreamt of the war. That wasn’t where he had been in his nightmare. I swallowed hard, suddenly understanding exactly why he was so afraid of me investigating Saint Oda’s. Ruan had reason to fear the convalescence hospital, because he had been put into one himself.

I covered his fist with my own hand, his fingers loosening beneath mine—lying flat upon his thigh. Ruan shuddered, resting his head on my shoulder. His green scent flooded my senses, and my other hand found its way to his unruly dark curls, scratching the back of his head. “Tell me.”

For a half a moment I thought he might not answer at all, stand up, leave, and get on with our investigation. But that would be me, not Ruan. Ruan wasn’t afraid of his pain—never had been. “I almost died during the war.”

I nodded, recalling the story of how he’d gotten the nasty scar paralleling his spine.

“We had orders to dig a shaft beneath an existing enemy tunnel, fill it with munitions, and set a charge. Doing so would collapse their route and stop the Germans from reaching our lines. But they knew what was coming before we did. A small contingent surprised us in our own tunnel. One caught me in the back with his bayonet. Nearly went straight through me.” Ruan’s voice was low and gentle as if he were telling me a bedtime story. “We were soon overrun. They set a charge to our own munitions and left us for dead. Gods there was so much blood. I thought we’d drown in it. Then came the blast. The heat. The scent. And the only thought in my head. The only thing in the world was a desperate plea to my grandmother’s gods. Not like this. Gods … not like this … I’d fought so hard to leave the mines. I didn’t want to die in one.”

I wasn’t sure I even drew breath as Ruan spun his soldier’s tale. “I woke a week later in a hospital bed alongside five of the other lads from Lothlel Green who survived. Those closest to me. We’d been trapped within a pocket of air. Those farther from the blast … they were buried alive.”

Farther from the blast? It was impossible. What he described … it couldn’t happen. But this was Ruan we were talking about. His abilities were far beyond science or logic. He was a pellar, born with abilities he did not even comprehend. Nor did he know how to control them. Not fully. And I needed to accept that fact.

Ruan’s voice cracked as he continued his tale. “In the hospital they gave me morphine. Enough of it I started talking nonsense. At least they thought it was nonsense. But all the voices. The sounds. The thoughts. I couldn’t keep them straight. Couldn’t tell what was said from what I’d heard—” He tapped his temple. “It made the nurses uncomfortable.”

I let out a startled sound. “I would imagine so. I confess it was rather disconcerting when I realized you could hear my thoughts.”

The corner of his lips curved up in a weary smile against my temple. “They kept giving me more of it to keep me quiet—but it made things worse. The colors. The sounds. It wasn’t long before they decided I was suffering from war neurosis. The explosion had affected my brain.”

I sucked in a sharp breath. “They put you in a hospital. Like Saint Oda’s?”

He let out a grunt of agreement. “For six months I learned to become someone I was not. For hours on end they would ask me questions about what I’d said when taking the morphine. How I knew things. How I was able to predict what someone would say. What they were thinking…”

“But you cannot lie…”