There was hurt in his voice that he wasn’t even trying to mask, and Anton understood suddenly, painfully, why he was so reluctant to reach for Anton the way Anton had reached for him.

“I did scry for you,” Anton said. “That’s how I knew Pallas had you. That’s why I came for you.”

“Two months, nine days, and four hours.” Jude’s voice was so quiet, Anton wasn’t sure he’d heard him correctly.

“What?”

Jude looked up, and the tempest of his gaze knocked the breath from Anton’s chest. “Two months, nine days, and four hours. I had no idea where you were. You were just gone and I—I dreamed of you. And I hoped and I—”

“They weren’t just dreams,” Anton said as steadily as he could. “That was really me. I walked into your dreams and told you … as much as I could tell you.”

Jude’s mouth fell open as he took a floundering step back. “You … walked into my dreams?”

Anton nodded. “The Wanderer taught me how. I wanted to tell you that I was safe, that you didn’t need to worry. I never knew if you believed me so I just … I kept coming back. Every night, nearly.”

“Every—” Jude cut himself off, hiding his face in his hand. He looked overwhelmed, angry. A little mortified. Anton wanted to take him in his arms again, to soothe him, but he couldn’t make himself reach out if there was even a chance Jude might rebuff him.

“It was torture,” Jude said at last, his voice muffled in his palm. “Seeing you and thinking it wasn’t real. Like my own mind was taunting me.”

Anton’s chest lurched with guilt. He had known what he was doing to himself, going to Jude in his dreams. He hadn’t even thought about what he was doing to Jude. “I couldn’t stay away. I didn’t—I didn’t know it would be like that.”

“What do you mean?” Jude asked.

Anton’s lips parted as he tried to put into words how agonizing the past ten weeks had been. But how could he describe something he’d never, in his seventeen years, felt before now? A ceaseless ache, like someone had reached inside him and pulled out a piece of his heart. He’d never let himself miss anyone before, but with Jude it hadn’t been a choice. It had just been there, the fixed point around which the rest of his thoughts turned, the rocky shore that his heart crashed into again and again.

He shook his head. Even now, standing inches away from Jude, he felt that same longing pull at him.

The storm in Jude’s eyes returned. “I would have gone with you. Wherever you needed to go, whatever you needed to do, I would’ve—”