He released the collar from around her neck. Nuala butted him with her nose. I waited for her to run, but she just stood there, gazing up at Warden. He spoke to her in a strange language, stroking her white throat, and she seemed to really listen. She was mesmerized. “Would you like to feed her?” Warden slid a red apple from his sleeve. “She has quite a penchant for these.”

He tossed me the apple. Nuala turned her gaze on me, nose twitching. “Gently,” Warden said. “She is easily startled. Especially with a cold spot open nearby.”

I didn’t want to startle her—but if Warden didn’t, how could I? I held out my hand, presenting the apple. The doe sniffed at the fruit. Warden said something else, and she snatched it.

“Forgive her. She’s very hungry.” He patted her neck and gave her another apple. “I rarely have the chance to see her.”

“But she lives in Magdalen.”

“Yes, but I must be careful. Animals are not permitted within the limits of the city.”

“So why keep her?”

“For company. And for you.”

“For me,” I repeated.

“She’s been waiting for you.” He sat down on a flat rock, letting Nuala wander off toward the trees. “You are a dreamwalker. What does that mean to you?”

He hadn’t brought me out here to feed a baby deer.

“I’m attuned to the æther,” I said.

“Say more.”

“I can sense other dreamscapes at a distance. And ethereal activity in general.”

“Precisely. That is your nascent gift, the bottom line: a heightened sensitivity to the æther, an awareness that most other clairvoyants do not possess. It comes from your silver cord, which is flexible. It allows you to dislocate your spirit from the center of your dreamscape—to widen your perception of the world. It would drive most clairvoyants mad to do that. But when we trained on the meadow, I encouraged you to push your spirit against my dreamscape. To attack it.” His eyes smoldered in the gloom. “You have the potential to do more than merely sense the æther. You can affect it. You can affect other people.

I didn’t answer.

“Perhaps, when you were younger, you could hurt people. Perhaps you could put pressure on their dreamscapes. Perhaps they noticed things: nosebleeds, distorted vision—”

“Yes.”

He already knew. No point in denying it.

“Something changed on the train,” he continued. “Your life was endangered. You feared detainment. And for the first time in your life, that power inside you—that power emerged.”

“How did you find out?”

“A report came through that an Underguard had been killed—killed without blood, without weapons, without a single mark on his body. Nashira knew at once that it was the work of a dreamwalker.”

“It could have been a poltergeist.”

“Poltergeists always leave a mark. You should know.”

The scars on my hand seemed to drop a few degrees.