Page 55

He gave me a wry look. “No, I can’t. They’d give me all sorts of tests. Water baths. Draw my blood. All trying to understand what caused the phenomenon. Just as you suspect von Keller is doing here. After a while I stopped talking altogether. A compliant soldier is a good soldier. One they can send back to the front. A temporary madness. That’s what they called it. Once I held my silence, they sent me back.”

My chest seized up at the thought. “Oh God … I’m sorry…”

He turned toward me, tipping my chin up with his finger. “I don’t want you to be sorry. I want you to understand. Those places…” He pointed in the direction of the priory. “They aren’t safe for our kind. What if they find something about you—something you don’t know about yourself?”

“But I’m not like you…”

Ruan’s fingers curled up against my cheek and he drew in my very breath into his lungs. “You and I are more alike than you know. There’s something about you, Ruby. Something different and I fear … no … I worry it has to do with your mother. What if they already know what you are?”

My pulse stuttered in my veins, for Ruan voiced the very question I’d been too afraid to countenance. Our unusual connection, the way I can smell power and he can hear my thoughts clearer than anyone else. There had to be a reason for it all. I did not want to know—and yet I could not keep the question from escaping my lips. “What do you think it is?”

He swallowed hard, his pale green eyes troubled. “I told you I didn’t dream often.”

I nodded uncertainly.

“As a boy I used to dream of a little girl. She was of an age with me, with dark hair and eyes the color of oarweed.” His face as serious as I had ever seen it. “She would come to me when I was lost—or afraid. I would tell her all my secrets. My dreams. We would climb trees and sit by the sea. She was my dearest friend, the only person in the world who knew me. We grew up together in my dreams.”

His thumb traced the back of my hand absently, and I was transfixed by his story though not at all understanding the meaning.

“I asked my grandmother once about her. About the dreams … if I’d ever meet this girl when I was awake. A cunning woman, my grandmother was. People would come from miles for her medicines and charms. From birth, she began to teach me the old ways. Of what herbs will help and which would harm. Of which charm would bring love, which would end it, and how to identify harmful magic. How to break curses of witches and how to treat with the old ones so as not to offend them.”

“But what did she say about the girl?” I asked impatiently.

Ruan let out an exasperated laugh. “She told me to never speak to her again. Grandmother believed the girl would bring death with her.”

I drew in an uneasy breath, not liking the sound of this.

“I never spoke to anyone of her again. Not until now. Then one day—right before my sixteenth birthday, the dreams stopped.”

The moon was beginning to rise in the darkening sky alongside the first handful of stars. Nocturnal creatures stirred in the woods behind. Waking to hunt or feed.

“I consigned the girl to the memories of a lonely childhood. That is, until I was nearly dead, laid up in that hospital. When I was most alone, I found her again. She’d grown up too—but I knew her at once.” He hesitated, studying my face.

“What is it?”

He shook his head. “You’ll think me mad. I certainly do.”

I took his hand in my own. “Tell me.”

He swallowed hard. “It was you. The girl. The woman she became. I knew it the moment I saw you again in Tintagel. You were the one who visited me in my dreams.”

My breath caught in my chest and I slid a few inches away from him upon the rock, uncertain how to take this peculiar revelation. “And you didn’t think to tell me before now? Odd dreams of me since you were a child and you never once thought it might be important?”

He let out a dark laugh, running his hands over his face. “I thought of it. Many, many, times—but how exactly does one bring up this subject?”

I raised my brows gesturing at him. “You just did.”

He blew out a breath, resting his forehead upon his knees. “I didn’t want to frighten you. At first, I did not think we’d see each other again—so what did it matter? You’ve always been so mistrustful of the otherworld. Skeptical.”

I wasn’t frightened exactly, but I also wasn’t certain I wanted to know what it might mean. I caught my lower lip between my teeth. “But you think it comes back to my mother?”

“It’s the only thing I can think. You have the sight. We both know it, regardless of whether you’ll admit to it. It’s not uncommon among our kind to dream things before they occur. The sleepwalking is also quite commonplace—but Ruby, the way I hear you and the way you can sense power. That is much more rare. It’s more than mere witchcraft.” His grip upon my upper arms grew tight.

Ruan was unraveling, his fear was thick enough it pulsed within my own body. So, I did what I always did when things became too uncomfortable. I feinted. I slipped out of his grasp and wriggled a few inches away from him. “Very well. I won’t get myself admitted. But if it worked for Nellie Bly…”

Ruan grimaced at the mention of the nineteenth-century newspaperwoman who had herself admitted to an asylum in order to report upon its abhorrent conditions. “Admirable woman she may have been, you are far more precious to me than Nellie Bly. Swear it, Ruby.”

I held out a hand, which he took uncertainly. “I swear I will not try to lock myself into the hospital.”