I chewed on my lip a moment, wondering. Phelan had mentioned his near death to me the first night I had shared dinner with him, when he had striven to win me over, but he had not further regaled me with details. It seemed everyone was anxious to know what had happened: Nura, Olivette, the duke. Me.

“Don’t worry,” I reassured them. “I’ll guard his back tonight.”

Olivette appeared relieved, but Nura appeared a bit doubtful.

“Good luck tonight, Anna,” Olivette said.

“Same to you.” I waved farewell to them.

I hurried back to Phelan’s town house, the temperature dropping with the sun. A shiver nipped at my bones as I closed the front door behind me. Mrs. Stirling was in the kitchen, preparing dinner. The fragrant aromas embraced me in the corridor, and for a staggering moment, I was back home in Hereswith, and Imonie was cooking and setting the fine porcelain on the table. A place for me and a place for my father.

I laid my palm over the pain in my chest. I was learning how certain things were threats to the stone half of my heart. They were like swinging hammers, eager to form a crack within me, and I was struggling to know how to filter them into my life. Things such as memories of home, Deacon’s smile, Nura’s and Olivette’s friendship. The way I sometimes caught Phelan looking at me.

I forced the memories haunting me into dust, until my homesickness was nothing more than a tiny trace, and I headed to the library. But Phelan wasn’t there. I cast an inquisitive net of magic throughout the house, but I failed to sense his presence. He was gone, and I sat at his desk to read through the book of nightmares, only to discover the old tome was absent. He must have been summoned to fetch a last-minute dream, I thought, and leaned my head back in the chair, closing my eyes.

Just for a moment, I told myself, and drifted off to sleep.

I woke to the sound of Phelan speaking my name for the second time that day.

“Miss Neven?”

I jerked awake, rubbing a crick in my neck. He stood before me holding the book of nightmares, top hat perched slightly crooked on his head. His face was flushed from cool air, and the cut on his cheek had scabbed at last. Only a thread of sunset filtered through the library window; the rest of the room fell to shadows.

“Dinner is ready,” he said, gently setting the book on the desk.

“I’m sorry,” I croaked, my voice clogged from sleep.

“For what?”

I indicated the book of nightmares. “For being away. I should have accompanied you to fetch the dream.”

“You didn’t miss much,” he said, removing his hat and tossing it onto the desk. “A recurrent nightmare, and one that is more bizarre than it is frightening.”