The way Arthur had spoken to me, it was like I’d come to him of my own volition. How did… I look down when something falls from my grasp. In sleep, I’d held the Pendragon coin so tightly in my fist that the metal is warm and damp from sweat, and the old blood has stained my fingertips.

By my blood. Just like in the Rite.

In Rootcraft, we bring offerings to our ancestors. A collection of items, organic or edible, things that used to be alive, or things that are fresh. Mariah says we offer the favorite pieces of life to our dead, because they remind the ancestor of their time on our plane. But what kind of offering is blood?

My skin burns again. Sel’s eyes are two golden beacons in the darkness. The silence between us is the awkward kind that fills space when there is too much to say and all the time in the world to say it.

“How long was I out?”

“I wouldn’t know. I only returned a few minutes ago from a long talking-to in the galley from one Liege Gillian Hanover.”

I frown. “So you came back, sat down, and decided to watch me sleep?”

He snorts. “Is that your immediate area of concern?”

“Not really.”

He waits for me to continue.

“Something happened in my sleep. I saw Nick.”

Sel’s voice turns mocking. “Well, Briana, there are these remarkable things called dreams….”

“It wasn’t a dream,” I insist. “It was a memory of Arthur’s, but then it became something else.”

“You have been drugged and mesmered, repeatedly, for days.” Even his sigh is dismissive. “You cannot trust your own mind. Not until the serum leaves your system and you have gotten proper rest.”

My eyelids flutter and my mouth goes dry. He’s right. But still… “I told him we were coming for him. I think it was real, Sel.”

He’s listening now, not mocking. He narrows his eyes. “You think it was real, or you know?”

“I know. I’m sure.” But I feel a tiny sliver of hesitation. Sitting here in an airplane cabin, with the engines rumbling beneath the sore thighs I earned from running away from a prison, the blood walk world feels like it’s slipping away. Like a dream, it’s already fading around the edges.

Sel leans forward, resting both hands over his knees. His face appears through the shadows to regard me with a scowl. “You are not sure. I don’t want to talk about a maybe-vision, probably-dream. We will take action on facts and gathered intelligence.”

The motion draws my eyes to his hands. The three-inch-wide black iron cuffs on each of his wrists are so dark they seem to absorb what little light there is in the cabin. “Those cuffs. What are they?”