Page 114 of The Mask Falling

By the time I reached the roof, my shoulders were heaving. I shut the hatch behind me, hunched over, muffled a choked sound on my sleeve. When the knot in my throat loosened, I turned to see Arcturus at the edge. I should have sensed his presence.

“Sorry.” I blotted my face. “I didn’t realize you were up here.”

He was little more than a silhouette. “Are you well?”

“I just needed some air.” Slowly, I stood. “Can I join you?”

There was just enough light for me to see him nod. I sat beside him. Across the river, the Île de la Citadelle glimmered like a bed of fallen stars. A thinly sliced crescent moon hung above it.

“Is Ivy asleep?”

“Out like a light,” I said. I could breathe up here. “I can’t stand to think of her near Thuban.”

“Thuban will not touch her.” He looked at me. “Would you wish to destroy Suhail?”

The question sat in my stomach. For all I wanted justice, I had never really considered what I would do if I ever saw Suhail again.

“Will he be there?” was all I said.

“Possibly. Like Thuban, he is inclined toward violence, above all. Still,” he said, “Nashira may prefer to keep one of her torturers in London.”

Even if hewasthere, there was nothing I could really do to him. Not without an arsenal of weapons I didn’t have.

“You are troubled by what your father left to you,” Arcturus said.

“A box with no key. I think there’s a letter inside.”

“You could force the lock.”

“I’m afraid.” I stared into the middle distance. “Frère said he called me a changeling when they tortured him. A false child, left by the aos sí in place of a human baby.”

“Aos sí.” He took care with the pronunciation. “You have yet to teach me that phrase.”

“The people of the mounds. Fairies,” I said. “Why would he have said that, of all things?”

“Frère may have been lying.”

“She wouldn’t have known that word.” I propped my chin on my knee. “Whatever is in that letter, it won’t change anything.”

“You will not know until you look.”

“No,” I said. “Whatever it is, it will play on my mind. I’m about to be trapped underground for two full days, likely knee-deep in water. I can only think of surviving now.”

“You will. You always do.”

“Against the odds.” The lights across the water shimmered. “I can’t apologize for going into the Hôtel Garuche. To me, it was a risk worth taking. But I am sorry for putting you through that pain again.”

Even though he was silent, I felt his gaze.

“I think we all have this . . . one small part of us, buried deep, that fears death,” I murmured. “They shot that part of me in Edinburgh.” I looked at him. “I’m less afraid of dying now. That doesn’t mean I don’t have the will to live.”

“Good.” His eyes burned from the dark. “I would see you there when Scion falls.”

A breeze unsettled the fine curls at my temples.

“Oneiromancy is an unusual gift,” Arcturus said. “Clairvoyance, as you know, refers to clarity. Many find that clarity in glimpsing the future. I find mine in the past. Hindsight is both my strength and my burden, for while the past yields wisdom, I am powerless to change it.”

He was right about his own rarity. I had never met another oneiromancer. Perhaps he was alone in the world, like me.

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