His heart was beating hard in his chest. Just a few days ago he’d been contemplating how he felt about destroying a trash dump, and here he was figuring out how to take down a project that surely had cost billions of dollars and taken years to build. The electricity it generated was used to power all the vacation homes he could see dotting the mountains. Probably. Ronan didn’t know a lot about how electricity worked.

He thought about how wonderful it was to dream in Lindenmere, where the ley line was good, where Lindenmere was focusing him, where everything was as he liked it. He imagined what it would be like to make that even better. He thought about the little Aldana-Leon dreamers. He thought about Rhiannon Martin’s mirrors. He thought about Matthew. He thought about himself, what it would be like to live without fearing he would manifest rooms of murder crabs or bleed to death from nightwash.

He also thought about how Declan was worried that this was something he couldn’t come back from.

“It is frightening how fast the world sickens,” Bryde said. “Decades ago it seemed like we had years. Years ago it seemed like we had months. Months ago it seemed like days. And now every day, every minute, every second, it is harder to be a dreamer. It’s so noisy. Even here in these mountains, it is so noisy. How they shout at us all, even in our sleep. Soon there will be no place for the quiet things, the things that undo themselves when they have to shout. Soon there will be no place for secrets, the secrets that lose their mystery when they are uncovered. Soon there will be no place for the strange, no place for the unknown, because everything will be cataloged and paved and plugged in.”

Ronan thought about Adam’s gloves set upon his shoes in the mudroom.

He thought about wanting to feel like he had been made for something more than dying.

“I know you are two things,” Bryde said. “I know you are of both worlds. That will never change.”

“What if it’s too much?” Ronan asked. “I don’t know if I want to do it.”

“You do.”

“You can’t just say I do. You don’t know what I’m feeling.”

Bryde’s voice was very, very soft. “I know you’ve already made this decision. You made it long ago.”

“On a hoverboard floating in the air? After Rhiannon Martin was killed?”

“Further back than that.”

“When we decided to go with you?”

“Further back than that.”

“No,” said Ronan.

“Yes.”