“Do I ever dream?” he repeated, amused. He walked with his hands in his jacket pockets, and the wind stirred his hair. “You mean if I’ve experienced my own nightmare, Miss Neven?”

“Yes, I suppose that is the better question.”

He was quiet, and when he slowed his strides, I slowed mine, to keep in pace with him.

“I’ve never dreamt,” he replied, meeting my gaze. “But then again . . . I’ve never given myself the chance to.”

I hated how his words resonated within me. I hated how his words could have been my own. I hated how they made me want to ask him more questions.

“You’ve taken remedies all your life, then? Even before you were a warden?”

He nodded, and a line creased his brow. “I know that must sound strange to you. But my mother, the countess, never wanted my brother and me to dream at night.”

I drew in a deep breath. A vain attempt to quench my interest. “And why would she desire that? If I may ask, of course.”

“You may ask, Miss Neven,” said Phelan. “And I will answer only if I may ask a question of you, which you must likewise answer.”

I grimaced, loathing myself for letting him play me into a corner. “Very well, Mr. Vesper. You can ask two questions, and I will choose which one I want to respond to.”

“Fair enough,” he said, and guided me around a street corner. “My mother didn’t want Lennox and me to dream because it meant we would need a warden to record our nightmares down in their book.”

“And that’s terrible, in her eyes?”

“Not terrible, but a vulnerability. A weakness,” Phelan replied. “We would be dependent upon another, who would then know our dreams. And sometimes dreams are ridiculous, but most of the time . . . they reveal our innermost pieces. Our desires, our fears, our ambitions, our plans. Our past, even.”

I mulled on that, thinking his mother must be very shrewd. If there were no dream records of their family, then I might have a harder time uncovering their secrets.

“Now,” Phelan said, and I could hear the smile in his voice. “You must answer a question of mine.”

“Go on,” I said, bracing myself.

“Do you have any family in the city, or have you ever dreamt, Miss Neven?”

“I’ve never dreamt, either, Mr. Vesper.”

That surprised him, and he glanced at me. “Really? Why is that?”

“Actually . . . let me take back my words for a moment. I have dreamt. Once,” I lied, and I was amazed at how smoothly it rolled off the tip of my tongue. “When I was a little girl, I had a nightmare that frightened me so badly I was afraid to leave my room. So my mother began to give me a remedy every night, promising the monster in my dreams could never find me again.”