Did it really, though? What about all the times you said things to your friends and they looked at you strangely and you realized that things about your relationship were weird? When Guy’s parents came to town but you couldn’t meet them? When he drove to visit his brother but didn’t invite you? When he took you to brunch for your birthday but was busy on his? Come to mention it, the number of brunches you went to instead of dinners…

“Fuck me.”

Truman pulled the duvet over his head. It smelled of lavender, which made him homesick for Horse. He fumbled out his phone to look at a picture of his dog and nearly dropped it on his face, so he dragged himself to a sitting position and scrolled lovingly through the many, many pictures.

Then he let his body do what it wanted, which was to slide back down to the floor, nudging the bed to the right as he slid. He lay on his back and looked at the ceiling. It had an unusual pattern of plaster—almost a sunburst, which reminded him of the healing hut where Clarion finds herself imprisoned in book five of the series.

Turning onto his side, he saw a mark on the wood floor just under the bed. At first glance, it looked like a wedge patching a hole in the board. But when he nudged the bed aside more, he could see what it really was: a ship inlaid in the wood floor.

“No. No way. You’re just drunk. And sad. And jet-lagged. You’re drunk-lagged. That’s not… No.”

But a few minutes later, he still couldn’t stop thinking about it. The flashlight on his phone illuminated a wooden sailing ship, set flush with the floor, its prow pointing into the room, its mast jutting proudly.

It was a ship just like the one Clarion touches every night before bed in book six, after Aerlich has turned dark and she has to drag herself to bed without him. She runs her fingers over the ship and imagines that it’s taking her heartbreak away—pulling it far out to sea and releasing it for seabirds and fish to pull to pieces.

“Am I in Agatha Tark’s fucking house?” Truman breathed. He scrambled for his suitcase and pulled out book six, The Heart Screams.

Clarion took it for a sigil. An artisan generations before had laid each piece of the Draggør sailing ship into the floor. They were carved from light skrimwood and dark mhyrtlewood—both hard, strong, and nearly impossible to cut with any but the sharpest blade. This craft had been a work of love and obsession. More and more, Clarion believed they were the same.

“Holy shit!” He squinted at the ship again. “No. No way. It’s impossible.”

His spinning head insisted that he stop squinting.