“There’s nothing.” My breath steamed in the cold. “Nothing at all.”

It was no exaggeration.

“Our dreamscapes are where we feel safest,” Warden said. “Perhaps I feel safest when I think of nothing.”

“But there’s nothing in the dark parts, either.”

He didn’t reply. I walked a little further into the fog.

“There’s nothing for me to see. That suggests to me that there’s nothing inside you. No thoughts, no conscience. No fear.” I turned to face him. “Do all Rephaim have empty dreamscapes?”

“I am not a dreamwalker, Paige. I can only guess at what other dreamscapes look like.”

“What are you?”

“I can make people dream their memories. I can weave them together, create a delusion. I see the æther through the lens of the dreamscape, and through the dreaming herb.”

“Oneiromancer.” I couldn’t take my eyes off him. “You’re a sleep-dealer.”

Jax had always said they must exist. Oneiromancers. He’d categorized them several years ago, long after On the Merits, but never found one to prove his theory: a type of voyant that could traverse the dreamscape, pick out memories, and lace them into what amaurotics called dreams. “You’ve been making me dream.” I took a deep breath. “I’ve been going through memories since I’ve come here. How I became a dreamwalker, how Jaxon found me. It was you. You made me dream them. That’s how you knew, isn’t it?”

He met my gaze.

“That was the third pill,” he said. “It contained an herb called salvia, which made you dream your memories. The herb that helps me touch the æther. My numen, flowing in your blood. After several pills, I was able to access your memories at will.”

“You kept me drugged”—I could hardly get the words out—“to get into my mind.”

“Yes. Just as you watched dreamscapes for Jaxon Hall.”

“That’s different. I didn’t sit there by my fireplace and watch memories like—like some kind of film.” I stepped slowly away from him. “Those memories are mine. They’re private. You even looked at—you must have seen everything! Even the way I felt about—about—”

“Nick. You loved him.”

“Shut up. Just shut the fuck up.”

He did.

My dream-form was falling apart. Before I could get out of there myself, I was tossed from his dreamscape like a leaf in a high wind. When I woke in my own body, I put my palms against his chest and shoved him.

“Get away from me.”

My head pounded. I couldn’t look at him, let alone be near him. When I tried to get up, the drip pulled at my hand.

“I am sorry,” he said.