Page 44 of The Mask Falling

“What is it?” he asked.

When I just shook my head, he came to sit beside me. I braced my wrist and flexed my fingers.

“They broke me,” I said. “In that fucking basement.” The taste of salt filled my mouth. “I don’t know how to get back to being who I was before.”

“You never can. That person is dead. So is the person you were yesterday,” Arcturus said. “Death is not an ending. It is only a change of seasons. Passage from one state to another. Your new form is fragile, but in time, it will grow strong. Be patient with yourself.”

I managed a weary smile. “Patience isn’t always easy for those of us who won’t live forever.”

“I would like you to live for as long as possible, Paige Mahoney.” Arcturus rose. “When Ducos returns, you should ask to see the medical officer.”

With a reluctant nod, I took his proffered hand and stood. I felt like a fool for wanting to cry.

We went back upstairs together and sat in the parlor, where Arcturus opened a bottle of red wine.

“I’ll have one,” I said.

“As you wish.” He took another glass from the cabinet. “I did not know you cared for wine.”

“I can’t hold it to save my life,” I said ruefully, “but I’ll survive a splash.” I arched an eyebrow. “Can you . . . get hammered?”

Arcturus cast me a look. “Hammered?”

“Drunk. Battered. Ar meisce. In a state of alcohol-induced intoxication.”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Pity.” I put my feet up on the couch. “I’d have proposed a drinking game.”

“How does one make a game of drinking?”

“Well, Nadine and I once watched the news and had a shot of absinthe every time someone saidunnatural. We were absolutely locked.” I pulled the throw down over my legs. “I always meant to ask you.”

“Yes?”

“When you first trained with me, were you just running on instinct?”

Arcturus filled the first glass.

“In part,” he said. “It is easier now, since I can sense your spirit through the cord.” He poured again. “However, I based my initial approach on a dreamwalker I knew before you.”

I stilled. ‘What?’

“Did you never wonder how Nashira was so well-informed about dreamwalking?” He slotted the cork back into the bottle. “You are the second of your kind to slip between her fingers.”

This was unexpected. Even Jaxon, self-professed authority on clairvoyance, had never found living proof of other dreamwalkers. I had come to accept that my gift was a one-off.

Yet it did make perfect sense for there to have been someone else. Nashira had been consumed by her desire to dreamwalk long before I arrived in the colony. That obsession had to have grown from a seed.

“Emma Orson,” Arcturus said, seeing my face. “She was captured after the third Bone Season and brought straight to the colony.” He held out a glass. “In secret, we Ranthen contrived her escape. It was too dangerous to have such a powerful clairvoyant near Nashira.”

Gaze fixed on him, I took the glass. “You learned about dreamwalking through her.”

“Enough. Terebell and I were only able to speak to her twice. She did not call herself a dreamwalker, of course.”

Because Jaxon had coined the term. “What happened to her?” I pressed. “After you let her escape.”

“I have one theory.”

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