Page 73

I sit up with my bunny ears still in my lap. Somewhere around the third person asking whether there’s tea yet, I realise that I am going to have to say the actual words out loud. To people who are going to have opinions about them. There’s no version of this where I get to ease into it gently.

“So,” I say, into the general shuffle of sleeping bags being rolled. My voice comes out slightly higher than I mean it to. “Something happened last night.”

That gets their attention faster than tea would have. Even Dis stops mid-fold of Felix’s sleeping bag.

“There was this place,” I say, and it comes out wrong straight away, backwards, no proper starting point at all. “Not the Shadow Realm. Not this room. Somewhere else. Mist, mostly, no proper floor, or there was a floor but it wasn’t doing anything floors normally do, and he was just there, standing in the middle of it, and neither of us had any idea how, and...”

“Who was there?” Felix says, gently, the way you’d talk down a small child who’s woken up from a nightmare.

“Dark. Sorry. Dark was there,” I say.

“In your dream,” Felix says, not quite managing to keep the doubt out of it.

“In a dream, yes,” I say, “except not only my dream, his too, at the same time. He says he can do that. Walk into dreams. Except he swears he didn’t do it on purpose this time, it just happened, because apparently we both wanted it enough that it built its own place to happen in.”

Dis’s arms are already folding. I push on before he can say a word.

“And we talked. Properly talked. About whether any of this, us, was ever real, or whether we were just magnets, prophecy pulling two opposite pieces together because that’s what fate needed. He told me about the first time he ever actually saw me, in the coffee shop, and how he didn’t move or speak again for two hours afterward, because nobody had ever simply said good morning to him like that before.”

“That’s...” Adam starts, and doesn’t finish, looking genuinely moved despite himself.

“And I told him about accidentally banishing Hex and Dis,” I say, ploughing on. “About being scared of what I might actually be capable of now. And he told me he hates being king. That some of his own people frighten him. That he doesn’t want any of this either, none of it, not the throne, not the fight, none of it.” My voice cracks slightly on the last part. “And then we just. Said it. Both of us. Out loud. That we refuse it. The roles. The whole thing.”

Nobody says anything for a second once I’ve finished. My hands are shaking slightly. I only notice because I look down and find myself gripping the broken bunny ears too hard.

It’s Dis who breaks the silence first, arms already folded, expression already doing the thing it does when he’s testing something for weight before he’ll stand on it.

“You are describing a shared dream,” he says, “with no witness beyond yourself, initiated by a being with an admitted, established skill for walking into other people’s minds uninvited.”

“He didn’t invite himself in on purpose,” I say. “He said it wasn’t intentional. He said he couldn’t have summoned it even if he’d tried.”

“That is precisely what someone with the ability to manipulate dreams would say,” Dis says, “whether or not it happens to also be true.”

“Dis.” Felix’s voice, quieter, but with an edge under it I recognise from the wreckage of the shop. “I actually agree with you on this one, for what it’s worth. Not that Bunny’s lying. But that doesn’t mean it’s safe to just accept at face value.” He looks at me properly, and there’s real worry underneath the dryness. Not doubt about my feelings. Doubt about whether my feelings are the only thing in that dream that were actually mine to have. “He’s a shadow king now, Bunny. Kings lie. Even the nice ones. Especially the nice ones, sometimes, because they’ve had the most practice believing their own reasons are good ones.”

“He’s not lying,” I say.

“You don’t know that,” Felix says. “You want it to be true, which isn’t the same thing, and I would really rather you didn’t get your heart broken twice by the same person in one week, on top of everything else this week’s already handed you.”

I open my mouth to argue and don’t get the chance, because Hex is already talking. There’s something in his face I haven’t seen there since long before any of this started. Open and hopeful and entirely unguarded.

“He refused it,” he says, half to himself, like he’s still catching up to the shape of it. “He actually said it out loud. To you. Properly, not just implied it and hoped you’d fill in the rest, the way he usually does.” He laughs, short and disbelieving, dragging a hand back through his hair. “That absolute idiot. That beautiful, stubborn idiot.”

“You believe it,” I say.

“I’ve known him considerably longer than any of you have,” Hex says. “He does not say things like that lightly. He certainly doesn’t say them to trick someone. That’s simply not how he operates. He’d rather say nothing at all than say something dishonest. Always has, even when saying nothing cost him things he wanted.” Something in his voice catches slightly. “He didn’t want any of this. Not the throne, not the war, not being the thing a prophecy pointed at. If there was ever a way out of it, of course he took it. Of course he did.”

“That is a lovely theory,” Dis says, “built on affection rather than evidence.”

“You’d know all about building things on affection rather than evidence,” Hex says.

For one horrible second, I think we’re about to have a repeat of the shop floor. Both of them go very still in that particular pre-storm way.

Felix physically wedges himself between them, both hands up. “Right, no. Not doing this again. Not this early, not before anyone’s had caffeine.” He’s already moving towards the kitchen, Dis in tow, whether Dis wants to go or not.

“I am simply asking for proof,” Dis says, stiffly, allowing himself to be steered away.

From the kitchen comes the sound of the kettle being filled with noticeably more force than it has done anything to deserve.