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“Don’t be absurd. Your life is there.”
“I thought so. My work is my life and it means so much to me, but I feel nothing there. It’s as though, whatever I do, I am always empty. Devere—I almost do not believe I am speaking this aloud.” I swallowed and said firmly, “I only feel when I’m with you, albeit much of that is rage or frustration or even…”Love?
Devere shoved me away. Rejection stung, but there was more happening here than my muddled feelings. “I am nothing,” he said, pacing the room. “I’m not even—” He stopped and sighed. “You will not remember this, so why do I care?”
“You’re not what?”
“Your mind is a lens through which you see the world,” he snapped, perhaps as angry and frustrated as I was. “Everyone has one, and every lens is different. With time, or trauma, the lens warps, skewing your perception. No single person sees the world the same as another. Our minds weave stories. They tell us lies. Nobody reads the same book.”
“I don’t understand.” I took a step toward him, but his glare rooted me down. “I see you here, now. A book doesn’t change. Words on a page do not change.”
“The book doesn’t, no. Just the perception of its meaning. Like your dreams. That’s where he resides—in the lies and half-truths, in the shadows and unseen. He watches from the in-between and turns the cogs. You must escape, Val, if it’s not already too late. Take a carriage when you wake. Go. Live your life. Never return.”
I took another step closer, and he stiffened. This moment seemed so fragile. If I touched him, would he vanish again? “He?”
He growled in exasperation and started pacing again. “This is pointless.”
I did not want this dream to end, for him to be gone. “I went to the grave,yourgrave. Jacapo’s baby boy died. Who are you, Devere? Tell me truly? Tell me something!”
His smile, so light and fragile, fell away. “Not a who… a what. I’m nothing but a dream.”
I blinked and reality flew at me like a splash of water to the face. The dream evaporated, slipping through my fingers, until there was nothing left of it but feelings of regret and loneliness. Rage and fear. And a tangled sense of love and loss.
I opened my eyes and knew one thing: it was time to let go.
ChapterNineteen
The coach driverloaded my bags onto the stagecoach while I climbed in and sat back with a sigh of relief. Snow buffeted the window and a gust of wind rocked the carriage. The weather was closing in, but the driver had assured me the roads were clear farther out of town. The vicious turn in weather likely explained why nobody else was traveling alongside me.
Leaving didn’t hurt as I’d expected it to. Devere had been my only tie to the place. I hadn’t found him, but wherever he was, it seemed as though he’d want this. It was time.
With a jolt, the coach rattled into motion. With every passing mile, a great weight lifted off my chest. I was doing the right thing. I had to return to my work in the city. I’d deal with the blackmail, the same as I’d deal with the huge bill for the inn. A few more clients, some income, and I’d put this whole sorry episode behind me. It would be as though I’d never returned to Minerva or met Rochefort, and Devere was just a mistake I’d made fifteen years ago.
The coach rocked in a lulling motion. Wrapped in my traveling cloak, I tucked myself against the side panel and closed my eyes. Everything would be fine, as soon as I’d left the past behind.
* * *
A jolt shook through the coach, rattling my eyes open. Between one moment and the next, my whole world churned. My head struck the carriage roof, then the floor. I thrust out my hands to stop the tumbling, then my shoulder hit the bench seat. Something screamed, the horses or me. Glass rained. I pulled myself into a ball, tucked my head under my arms, and toppled over and over.
Even when the world stopped turning and the thick silence fell over me, I clung on, breathing, heart beating, waiting to see if any part of me had broken. A few bruises throbbed. My shoulder twinged. I unfolded myself and pushed up on my hands. I crouched on the side of the coach, its broken door buckled against the frozen ground. Snowflakes drifted down from the opposite door above me.
I staggered to my feet, climbed the bench, and heaved myself through the broken window. Snow dallied in the murk, teased by a slight breeze. Pine trees stood like tightly packed statues. The road was gone, or more accurately, the stagecoach had fallen from it and rolled down a cliff face. The driver—I could only see his leg and a piece of an arm. He’d perished, crushed under the coach. The horses too had died among the mangled wreckage.
It all seemed… too much.
I’d been asleep, then this.
I laughed, even though I shouldn’t.
Blood dripped from my fingers, leaving red dots in the thin layer of snow. Iwashurt. I examined my arm and found a deep gash up the back of my hand. Now that I’d discovered it, it burned, along with several other cuts on my face and leg.
Well then… I was in the woods again. Alone. And bleeding.
But it was fine. Everything was going to be fine. Laughter tried to bubble up but I gulped it away. I just had to find my way back to the road and walk back into Minerva. We couldn’t have traveled far.
“I know what you’re going to say,” I told Devere.
He’d appeared a few moments ago, leaning against a nearby tree. Of course, he wasn’t real. This was a dream, or I was mad, or high, or all three. I wished I were high. Although, my body wouldn’t hurt so much if I had been.
