I looked at him, assessing his face. His brow was dark, as if with regret. He caught my gaze and dropped it.

“I see,” I said.

“You do not see. You have never seen.”

He turned his face away. I waited. When he didn’t move, I broke the silence.

“I’d like to.”

“I do not know if I can trust you.” The light receded from his eyes. “I believe you are trustworthy. You are clearly loyal to the people you care most deeply about. It would be regrettable to share a golden cord with someone whom I cannot trust, and who does not trust me.”

So he wanted to trust me. And he was asking me to trust him. An exchange. A truce. I could ask him anything now, anything at all, and he would do it.

“Let me into your dreamscape,” I said.

To his credit, he didn’t look surprised. “You wish to see my dreamscape.”

“Not just see it. Walk in it. If I know what’s in your mind, I might be able to trust you. I can see you.” And I wanted to see inside a Rephaite dreamscape. There must be something worth seeing behind all that armor.

“That would require equal trust on my part. I would have to trust you not to damage my sanity.”

“Exactly.”

He seemed to mull it over. “Very well,” he concluded.

“Really?”

“If you feel strong enough, yes.” He turned to face me. “Will the morphine affect your gift?”

“No.” I shifted into a sitting position. “I might hurt you.”

“I will cope.”

“I’ve killed people by dreamwalking.”

“I know.”

“So how do you know I won’t kill you?”

“I do not know. I must take a chance.”

I kept my features carefully blank. This was my chance to break him, to smash his dreamscape like a fly against a wall.

And yet I was curious, more than curious. I’d never really seen another dreamscape—only in flashes, glimpses through the æther. But the iridescent garden in the butterfly—I wanted that again. I wanted to be immersed. And here was Warden, offering his mind.

It would be fascinating to see a dreamscape that had been given thousands of years to develop. And after his sudden confession about Nashira, I wanted to know more about his past. I wanted to know what Arcturus Mesarthim looked like on the inside.

“Okay,” I said.

He sat down beside me. His aura touched mine, jarring my sixth sense.

I looked at his eyes. Yellow. This close, I could see that he had no colobomata. He couldn’t be unsighted, surely. “How long can you stay?” he asked.

The question caught me off guard. “Not long,” I said. “Not unless you’ve got a self-automated BVM handy.” He narrowed his eyes. “It’s like an oxygen mask. It provides artificial respiration when my body stops.”