“Do you trust Ronan?” Declan asked. His brother was many things, he thought, but murderer he was not. Even at his worst, it was only himself he’d wanted to destroy, and that hadn’t seemed to be the Ronan he heard on the phone. Ronan’s sin was immediacy, not villainy.

Adam looked pensive. “I don’t trust Bryde.”

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

But Adam just flicked a remaining beetle back under the bench and turned his face into the coming sunset.

Declan understood then that Adam Parrish was allowing him not much closer than he’d let those friends in the waffle truck line. This was still just a corner of the situation. A very different corner than he would share with his Harvard buddies, but still. Need-to-know basis. No more. Actual closeness and truth had been reserved for only one person, and Declan’s relationship to that person was the only reason he was being given even this much of a look at Adam’s concerns.

“What do you want me to do about it?” Declan asked.

Adam said, “Is he taking your calls?”

Chapter 25

Growing up, the Lynch family hadn’t talked about the dreaming.

It seemed unfathomable now, that their entire livelihood had been based upon dreams, that two-fifths of them had been dreams, that two-fifths of them had been dreamers, and yet they did not talk about it. Niall Lynch sold dreams on the black market, and Declan took calls from buyers for dreams, and yet they did not talk about it. Aurora was a dream, and Niall had always known that if something happened to him, the children would immediately become orphans of a sleeping mother, and yet they did not talk about it. Ronan accidentally dreamt a brother into being, and had to teach himself how to prevent it from happening again, and yet they did not talk about it.

Ronan had thought there was no one else like him in the world, and it had nearly killed him, and yet they didn’t talk about it.

Looking back now, Ronan tried again and again to understand it from Niall and Aurora’s point of view. Perhaps they thought the children would be less likely to betray the secret if they didn’t have words for it. Perhaps they thought Ronan might grow out of the dreaming if he didn’t pay attention to it. Perhaps they had lost trust in humans so thoroughly that they numbered their sons among the untrustworthy.

He didn’t remember the first time he’d dreamt something into being. He didn’t remember dreaming Matthew. He did remember, however, one of the only times they talked about his dreaming.