Robin didn’t answer. He just quickened his pace.

His vision came in swaths. Time didn’t really make sense anymore. All he could rely on was the pulsing pain in his forehead. He kept on up the tunnel, seeing nothing that suggested a man had gone through there recently.

“Robin, stop.”

“No.”

“Robin, who was he?”

Robin didn’t stop. Didn’t look back. “A man. In a white top. Gray track pants. Beard. Long hair. Living in the tunnel. Doesn’t matter who he is. All that matters is that he’s out there.”

“Someone else can do this, Robin. It doesn’t have to be you.”

The blood from his head had trickled down and into his mouth. He spit out a mouthful of it. He looked up to see a small glimmer of light on the wall of the tunnel.

The hole. It had to be. It had grown slightly since he had last been through it. Either Sally or the man must have caused some more of the rock face to fall away. It looked even more precarious now.

Robin didn’t even think—he launched himself at the hole, retracting his arms to his sides and wriggling through it. The rock above him shifted, but he didn’t even hear it. He just kept going.

Soon enough, even more sunlight flooded his vision, and he was pulling himself out of the hole back into the clearing that he had created. It was empty—there was no one there. He got to his knees and looked all around—it was like the man was a ghost, and had just disappeared.

Who knows how long he had been out? The man could be miles away by now.

But that didn’t matter. Not to him. He had to get up. He had to keep going. Because this was what he’d been searching for.

This was to get him closer to her.

He wrenched himself upright. With nothing to hold on to, he staggered and almost fell. But he was okay.

He almost smiled then, but caught himself. Instead he took in a deep breath of fresh air—his first in God knew how long. It felt good.

But then—a feeling. The sharp cool air was rushing to his head and his vision was going blurry.

He was going to—

He fell.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Ringing.

Not in his head. No—actual ringing.

He opened his eyes—both of them. He was lying on the bed in his room in The Hamlet. He sat up and grazed a finger over his forehead. It was clean, but the cut above his left eye stung to the touch. He winced.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed. He felt like he’d slept for days, and looking at the clock, he saw it was 10:00 a.m. He wondered what day that referred to.