My sleep was dreamless, although it shouldn’t have been. My mind was hollow, but I told myself it was nothing to worry over. Nothing to worry over as I left my room and crossed the hallway, to where Phelan’s door sat open with invitation.

I took two steps into his chamber and then halted, as if I was truly losing my mind. I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t seek him out for comfort.

“Anna?”

He was awake, as if he had been waiting for me. I listened as he shifted in bed, sitting forward. “Anna, are you all right?”

“Yes,” I replied, and the lie sat in my mouth like glass. Something that would tear me up as soon as I swallowed it. And I said, “No. No, I’m not.”

“Do you want to join me? There’s room for both of us.”

I already knew there was room in his bed. I had slept at his side once, and it had been one of the best nights of sleep I had experienced since leaving Hereswith.

I couldn’t see in the dark, but I surrendered and felt my way to his bed. I listened as he moved the blankets, as he fluffed a pillow, as he made space for me.

I eased into the warmth of his bed. The sheets were like silk, steeped with pine, meadow grass, rain, and spices. The smell of his skin and his soap. And the ice I had felt upon waking dreamless began to melt. The bed was generous enough that we could both lie side by side without a chance of touching, and I relaxed, sinking into the feather mattress. But I could sense him, how slim the distance was between our bodies. If I reached my hand out to the gentle darkness, my fingertips would brush his shoulder. His hair. The line of his jaw.

I felt safe lying beside him. As the tingling left my limbs, I asked myself why I didn’t dream. A voice echoed in my memory, as if in reply. Tell me, Clementine . . . have you read one of my nightmares recorded in your father’s book?

Mazarine’s words, haunting me weeks after she spoke them. And then it was like she was speaking to me, because I heard her whisper, “Have you read one of your own nightmares in your father’s book?”

“Anna?”

“Mm?”

I was thankful he spoke, breaking me from my reveries. I listened to him breathe, wondering if he was about to tell me what nightmare he had dreamt. If I would need to write it down for him. And when the silence deepened like a canyon between us, I thought he had drifted asleep until he spoke again, and his confession echoed through me. . . .

“I dreamt of nothing.”

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