Declan found himself alone with his brother, experiencing the impression of privacy if not the reality. He had not seen him since they’d parted on the banks of the Potomac River, and he realized that part of him had been preparing itself for the idea that he might never see him again. It was a worry that he hadn’t fully felt until now that the danger of it had passed, and he found his knees wobbly with relief. Ronan, his family, his brother. Older, stranger, but still obviously Ronan.

“You heard him,” Ronan said. “What room have you always wanted to go into? What other rope have you always wanted to step over?”

Declan didn’t fancy touring the museum under these circumstances, but he wanted some space from Bryde to talk to Ronan, so he walked with his brother through the eerie, quiet building. They found themselves standing in the Dutch Room, the green wallpaper looking black in the dim. Two empty frames hung on the wall in front of them, one for each of the brothers.

“What’s the deal here?” Ronan asked.

“I was about to ask the same.”

“The empty frames.”

Any other time, Declan would have had the whole story at the ready, but tonight he simply said, “They were stolen. Twenty years ago. Thirty, maybe. It’s been a vigil since then. This whole place was made by a woman who wanted it to stay the same even after her death, so after the paintings were stolen out of the frames, the museum hung the frames back on the walls to wait, until the—do you care about this? You don’t care about this. Ronan, I’ve been hearing the news. What are you doing?”

“Sounds like you already know.”

“I’m worried,” Declan said, following Ronan as he began to walk again. “Don’t forget there’s a real world you want to come back to. The point was to get to a place you could do that.”

“Was it?”

“Don’t do that. I remember what we talked about. Don’t pretend it was me telling you how to live. Adam. You wanted Adam.”

“Adam,” Ronan said slowly, as if remembering, as if he were a man enchanted himself, and Declan realized he did not know any of the things Bryde could or couldn’t do with his dreams. Perhaps this was not even Ronan at all, perhaps this was a Ronan—no. He was not going to let himself even picture it; that was the way to absolute madness.

“The Barns,” Declan added, voice terse. “You told me you wanted to be a farmer.”

Ronan’s mouth slid to a grin, surprising Declan thoroughly. “You remember that.”