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“You’ll find the answers come easier if you open your mind.”
“Answers like who you are?”
“You know who I am, Valentine. You’ve always known.”
“Then tell me what I know.”
He stayed quiet. Of course he did. I couldn’t hallucinate something useful, like actual facts that I apparently already knew.
We trekked on, wading through snow. The coats kept me warm. But as night fell and darkness set in, the temperature began to drop. I’d hoped to find a way onto the road, but I’d lost sight of the cliff. Now, all around there were just trees and silence. Not even a single bird or critter scurried about, looking for berries. There should have been other signs of life, shouldn’t there?
“You think I’m mad, don’t you?” I asked Devere.
“I think you’re trapped. And trapped minds always find a way out.”
“I wish I understood half of what you’re saying.”
“Picture this.” Devere twisted his hand in the air and unfurled his fingers, revealing a toy bird in a tiny cage. “The bird does not know the world beyond its cage, because it has never seen it. Its world is the cage. It is content with that. But take the cage away, and it will fly, because that is what birds are meant to do.” The cage vanished and the toy bird hopped to the end of Devere’s fingers, then took flight and vanished into the dark trees.
I knew he was an illusion, a figment of my own damaged mind, but watching him talk and listening to his words filled me with a warmth the ice could not touch. He was brilliant, and poetic, and beautiful, infuriating and amusing. “You made that bird for me, didn’t you? The bird I found by my parents’ grave. The real toy, I mean.”
“I did.”
“Why?”
“Because you were always meant to fly away, Valentine.”
I laughed and shook my head. Clearly, he was the dreamer, not me. “If only this were real, then I’d tell you how sorry I am, and how I wish things were different…”
He’d gone.
I stopped, boots rooted in the snow, and searched the trees. “Devere?”
He had to be here. Couldn’t I just wish him back? But as my shout echoed into the quiet, it became clear—whatever power I’d used to dream him up had run dry. I was on my own.
A distant howl sailed through the snow-muffled quiet.
I had to find the road. Surviving the night depended on it.
Pulling my coat tighter, I waded on.
Another howl punctured the night. It seemed… closer?
I hadn’t survived falling from a cliff in a coach only to be hunted by wolves.
“Where’s the reason in that?” I whispered. “Why did Minerva bring me here if it’s all connected?”
Of course, Devere did not reply. He wasn’t real, and according to imaginary Devere, I already knew the answers. Good lord, I hated myself sometimes. Talking to imaginary people, dreaming them up, like Hush, like Devere. I’d hit my head. That was all. This wasn’t the same as when I’d been younger and I’d told my parents how I talked to voices in my head and learned that not everyone heard voices or saw people who weren’t there. Unsurprisingly, locking me in a cupboard hadn’t solved my troubles. If anything, it had made the voices louder.
I could have done with more of that insanity now, while trying to outrun the wolves and the impending night. Perhaps then I wouldn’t have been so damn afraid.
I hurried on, one step in front of the other, and stumbled onto a stretch of road carving a path through the trees. Snow had filled in any carriage tracks, but this had to be the way back to Minerva.
Another howl, but farther away. Hopefully, they’d caught the scent of the dead horses and were more interested in those than me.
Darkness pushed in, stealing away what little light I’d had, and without a moon to guide the way, my steps slowed, until night closed in and I had to stop to keep from walking in circles. “God, when will this nightmare end?”
As though in reply, the snowfall thickened.
