Defeated, Phelan rose with a weary groan and drained the last of his lukewarm tea. “Take a remedy tonight, Anna. I’ll be the one to dream. Surely, the knight will be delighted to use my nightmare as a doorway this upcoming new moon.”

To my shock, I stood and said, “No. Let us both dream tonight.”

Perhaps it was because of the late hour, somewhere long past midnight when reality begins to blur into recklessness. Or perhaps it was because we were both exhausted. Or because I liked him more than I wanted to, and the thought of him suffering through the night so I wouldn’t have to vexed me. Or perhaps it was merely because I had never allowed myself to dream at night, and I longed to experience it.

“All right,” he agreed.

Together, we banked the fire and extinguished the candles, ascending the stairs to the second floor. There was an awkward pause before his door; Phelan stalled for a moment, holding a candlestick. The solitary flame carved shadows on his face; pinpricks of light shone in his eyes. I knew he wanted to say something else to me, and so I also tarried on my threshold.

“I’ll leave my door open tonight,” he finally said, darting a glance at me. “If you need me, call and I’ll come to you.”

I nodded and slipped into my chamber, shutting the door behind me. But I stood there for what felt like years, stiff with apprehension. And I decided to open my door and leave it that way, just as Phelan had left his, and I prepared for bed.

I lay down in the dark, drawing the coverlet up to my chin. If I dreamt of my old life—of a girl with auburn hair and charcoal-streaked fingers, walking the streets of Hereswith—I would break all laws of wardenship and fabricate a nightmare to record in Phelan’s book. And if this nightmare happened to spawn on the new moon . . . then I would be exposed and I would flee, as Papa had prepared me to do.

I drifted into sleep before I felt wholly prepared for it.

When I woke hours later, the sheets were crumpled around me, the night pitched dark and cold. The hour before sunrise. It was not a nightmare that had startled me awake. It was the emptiness. The howling quiet. A terrible sense of unease crept over me.

I hadn’t dreamt at all.

I sat forward in bed with a gasp.

I was chilled to the bone; I trembled, full of aches I had never felt before. It was as if I had slept in a snowdrift on midwinter, and I struggled to rise. My fingers and toes were like ice.