Ronan had been young. He didn’t remember if Matthew existed yet. Memories were like dreams that way—they skipped the parts that weren’t interesting to them at the time. He had been playing in the back fields at the Barns, the deep sloping pasture that now contained the pond he and Adam had dug. He was young enough that he wasn’t allowed out alone, so Aurora had been there with him, reading a book under the shade of a tree, laughing to herself every so often.

How idyllic it must have been, he thought now. Young Ronan, tumbling through the waist-high grass. Beautiful Aurora, sprawled in one of her light dresses in the grass, hair golden as Matthew’s or Bryde’s, a book in one hand, the other finding grapes out of the basket she’d brought with them. Overhead, the clouds in the summer blue had been as inviting and drowsy as an afternoon comforter.

Ronan had fallen asleep. He did not remember this; he only remembered the waking. He remembered waking in the grass and being unable to move. Not his legs asleep, but all of him, his mind looking down at his body sprawled in the grass near his beautiful, sweet mother.

And then the memory skipped to him plucking something from the grass to show to Aurora. It was a book like the one she’d been reading, but much smaller, sized for his child palms.

“What do we have here?” she asked him, putting hers away.

“Open it.”

Aurora let the tiny volume fall open. Inside there were not pages, but a summer sky graced with towering white clouds. She poked her fingers into the book and watched the clouds part around them. The sky was in the book but it was also over the book, a page and a sky, two-dimensional and three-dimensional at once as it towered upward.

“Look at you, Mr. Impossible,” Aurora whispered fondly. She opened and closed it several times to see if the sky would change. It did. From day to night to day again. Sun to stars to sun. “Now let’s bury it.”

“Bury it,” echoed Ronan. He wanted to show it to Declan. To Niall. He wanted to put it on his shelf.

Aurora stood up and brushed the grass off her skirt. “Little things like this are best as secrets. It’s very important to remember that.”

It didn’t feel important to remember that. It felt important to show it to someone. Ronan tried to understand. “For how long?”

She kissed the top of his head. “Forever.”

Forever?

“This seems like a really nice place,” Hennessy said. “Are we here to destroy it?”