I stared up at the ceiling while he stitched my side. “How long have you known of your mother’s plans?”

He exhaled, as if he had been waiting for it. “I sensed she was up to something when she gave me and Lennox orders to take Hereswith and study the book of nightmares for a dreamless sleeper. We suspected she was looking for a particular wraith, but I didn’t realize her full intentions yet. When she finally told me that she herself was a wraith, and that she had located nearly all of her kind and planned to return to the mountain and break the new moon curse . . . I was furious. That was the night you saw me tear apart the library. It made me question everything . . . who she was, who I was. What was to come for all of us.”

I bit my lip against the sting in my side. “When did you realize who I was?”

“When I saw those scars on your leg,” he replied, cutting the thread. “That entire day, I kept telling myself it was ridiculous, that there was no way you could have fooled me for so long. But I started to examine every single one of our interactions, and I realized I should have seen it, right from the very beginning when you viciously attacked me at the interview.”

I struggled to hide a smug smile. “I wasn’t vicious.”

Phelan was silent so long it prompted me to look at him. As soon as I did, he leaned so close that our lips almost touched. “You were indeed vicious,” he breathed, but pulled away before I could kiss him. “That’s why I wanted you. And then after the new moon, you snuck from the house. I followed you, all the way to the mines. I saw you speak to Ambrose and I knew without a doubt it was you.”

He wiped my stitches with antiseptic, the air between us full of static. And then I whispered, “Why didn’t you reveal me to your mother?”

Phelan glanced away, repacking the medicine kit. “I thought about it, at first. I was so angry at you for deceiving me. But I couldn’t do it. Every time I approached her about it . . . I couldn’t speak the words.”

I felt like he was withholding something else. Why wouldn’t he meet my eyes when he answered?

I chose to be vulnerable in that moment, hoping it would encourage him to be the same, and sat forward, my stitches pinching my side. I took his hand and I laid it over my chest, where my heart was beating. Phelan’s eyes widened at first, uncertain of my intentions until I said, “My heart is only mine by half.”