The sight of it must’ve been even stranger to Oliver. He would’ve had no way of knowing what happened between me and his violent shadow self, since he’d left before that point.
I turned back to him, pressing my palms down harder on his chest, as if adding pressure to Oliver’s skin could ease the guilt I knew he was about to feel. “Your shadow came back,” I said quietly. “It tried to hurt me. It did hurt me. I put my hands on it and turned the entire thing to stone, but I don’t know how. In that moment, I just knew that I could.”
Questions pooled in the brightness of Oliver’s eyes, and I tensed. He noted my reaction—his gaze flicked downward as my muscles locked into place—and something nameless passed through his expression. Before I could identify it, Oliver raked his hair back and heaved a soundless breath, nodding slightly. “Okay, next question. What happened to you out there, Fortuna? I was on my way back here, and everything went dark. It felt like…” He shook his head. “It felt like I stopped existing.”
“Because you did. So did I, in a way.” I uttered a shaky laugh; I was giddy now. Since the day Oliver left, there had been a wound on my heart, aching with every beat. At long last, that ache had diminished into nothing. There was so much to tell him, so much to catch up on. Oh, God, how would he react to the news about Gil? On the plus side, maybe Oliver would have some insights on Belanor and the spell he was trying to do…
It took me another second to notice that I’d received no response—Oliver was silent. His eyebrows had drawn together as he watched me.
My smile faded, and I found myself staring back. He looked different, somehow. We hadn’t been apart long, yet Oliver had changed in that time. Maybe it was the way he carried himself, slightly away from me, or the leanness of his face, which made his cheekbones more prominent. As if my breaking his heart had removed what little remained of the boy I’d grown up with. Even his hair was longer—a thick strand of it fell over his ear.
I started to reach up, thinking to push it back. Oliver drew away, the movement barely perceptible, but I saw it. My stomach dropped and heat rushed to my cheeks. Somehow I had let myself forget how things ended. How we’d left things.
I’m done. Being your second choice. Waiting around.
Uncertainty flooded the space between us. Where did we stand now? Did he not even want to be friends anymore?
Regardless of our relationship status, I knew Oliver was waiting for an explanation. I cleared my throat and said at last, trying to sound unaffected, “I found a dragon, and I asked him to use his fire to make me human. Before you say anything, yes, I should’ve given it a lot more consideration. The process almost killed me, and I ended up in a hospital. That’s when the cherubim attacked again. I woke up in the Seelie Court, and Belanor—the new king, or he will be, at least—tortured me until it triggered my Nightmare abilities. And here we are.”
The past few weeks had been a little more complex than that, of course, but the tension radiating from Oliver made me eager to finish quickly. As I spoke, I gauged his expression carefully. His lips became thinner and thinner.
I should have considered how endangering my life would affect him, but in the turmoil of discovering Collith’s betrayal, I’d only thought about myself. Seeing Oliver’s reaction, I realized that it wasn’t just Cyrus I owed an apology to.
We sat beneath the oak tree, its leaves rustling softly over our heads. My hands rested limply in the lap of the sundress I always seemed to wear here. Seagulls shrieked from the cliffs, their hungry cries riding a salt-laden breeze.
“I know it’s not a good excuse,” I ventured, keeping my eyes downcast, “but the day I found out about Collith, I felt like… someone else. The pain made me forget everything that really matters. And I want you to know that, no matter how things are between us, I will never put you at risk again. You deserve to have—”
“Hold on. You think I’m angry because you endangered me?” Oliver demanded incredulously, making my head snap up.
“Yes?” I phrased it like a question, giving him a look of complete bewilderment. “We didn’t exactly leave things on a good note, Ollie.”
“That doesn’t mean I stopped loving you. That doesn’t mean I don’t think of you every goddamn second, you frustrating… infuriating…” A muscle worked in Oliver’s jaw. He looked away, his color high and his eyes blazing. When he refocused on me again, several seconds later, he’d made a visible effort to calm. “The next time you feel like gambling with your life, come talk to me. Please.”
I heard the softening in his voice, and the lump of ice in my chest thawed further. Don’t ever leave me again, I wanted to say. But I still didn’t know where we stood, or how we should act toward each other. Instead I asked, “Earlier, did you say you were coming back just before the dreamscape went dark? But why? The last time we spoke…”
Oliver’s eyes darkened. I instantly regretted bringing it up when the glimpse of my best friend faded, and the cold stranger looked back at me again. Now I knew that he wasn’t punishing me, or angry that I’d chosen Collith. Oliver was just protecting himself, as any person would when they needed to move on from something. Or someone.
Suddenly I was very, very absorbed in taking the petals off a small wildflower.
This time, Oliver was the one to end the silence. “I was coming back to tell you about a place I found,” he said.
My eyebrows furrowed. A place? Inside the small world we’d spent our entire childhoods running, climbing, and swimming through? At that moment, I realized I’d never given much thought to what lay beyond our seaside nook. It had simply never interested me. My voice was unintentionally wary as I asked, “What do you mean?”
Oliver’s gaze shifted, and he peered at the horizon as if he saw something there I didn’t. He sat with one wrist resting atop his knee. “I’ve been exploring the dreamscape,” he answered finally. “I went farther than I’ve ever gone before. There’s something I think you should see—that’s why I came back.”
Why was he being so vague? I tried not to let my impatience show. “What is it?”
Oliver turned back to me, still hesitating. “I’m not sure I can answer that, actually.”
“Let’s go, then.”
He glanced toward the sun. “If we leave now, we might be able to get there by tomorrow morning.”
Tomorrow morning? Frowning, I made a vague gesture between us. “Can’t you just… snap your fingers, and get us there in a millisecond?”
To my surprise, Oliver shook his head. Strands of his hair caught the sunlight, flashing like faded gold. “It seems those days are behind us. My abilities have been changing just as much as yours,” he said.
As I listened to his words, fear took root inside me—changes in the dreamscape were never good. My mind went back, remembering the night I’d been bitten by a butterfly. Butterflies couldn’t bite, but in the dreamscape, details like that didn’t matter. It had been one of the first signs of a disturbance in our perfect world of pretend. Signs I’d ignored.
“Do you know why?” I asked bluntly. I was tired of making the same mistakes. No more pretending or being afraid.