“What’s wrong?”

Lu gritted her teeth and closed her eyes. They really had to stop saying the exact same thing at the exact same time; it was getting weird.

She opened her eyes and tried again. “Hi. How are you?”

He stared back at her as if he wasn’t entirely convinced he was awake. His dark brows pulled together. His gaze darted around the room, scanning for danger.

“Well, hello to you, too, Lumina! I’m great, and how are you?” she said, more than a little sarcastically. Sarcasm was practically a given when you were mocking someone else’s silence while he had a kung fu death grip on your leg. Magnus’s only response was to tighten his grip on her ankle.

“So . . . has my leg offended you in some way? Or is this some kind of Ikati wake-up greeting I’m not familiar with?”

Magnus frowned at her. Then his gaze slid to her bare ankle, wrapped in his warm, rough hand, and he snatched his hand away as if her skin burned him. “Sorry. Reflex.”

Lu arched her brows. “That’s some reflex. I’d hate to see what you do when someone sneezes. Reflexively punch him in the face?”

He didn’t answer, concentrating instead on getting to his feet, turning his back, and gathering his figurative armor. She felt his withdrawal like the tide going out, a swift, inexorable retraction. Suddenly weary in spite of just awakening, she sighed. Loudly, apparently, because Magnus turned and looked at her, his dark eyes cool and guarded.

“I wonder what time it is,” she said, avoiding his eyes to look around the room. There was no clock, and it was still dark outside, so she had no idea how long she’d been asleep. Magnus, however, answered with confidence as if he’d just looked at his wristwatch. The one he wasn’t wearing.

“Just before dawn. We’ll have to wait out the day before we get on the road again . . .” His gaze dropped to her legs, and his expression transformed from cold to something else. Something that looked suspiciously like anger. He growled, “What are you wearing?”

Lu looked down at herself. Realizing the T-shirt wasn’t exactly doing a stellar job of covering her bare thighs, she tugged at the hem. Heat rose in her cheeks. “I dunno. Night stuff.”

“Night stuff,” he repeated stiffly, his eyes unblinking. He swallowed.

“You told me to pack light,” she said defensively. “I found this in one of the drawers.”

“That’s a man’s shirt.”

Lu looked down at the shirt. It was a perfectly innocuous white short-sleeved T-shirt, utterly ordinary. It probably belonged to James. “So?”

His face grew more and more ruddy, his lips thinned to a pale line. Against his tanned skin, both his scars and the thin line of his lips stood out, and Lu thought she’d never seen him look quite so on edge. “So . . . nothing. It’s just . . . short. Just . . . get dressed, all right?” He turned away again, and Lu had the startling thought that it might be in order to hide.

From her.

Because she wasn’t fully dressed.

And there was that hope again, pushing up its stupid, green, cheerful leaves in the dark soil of her heart. Aggravating! Not helpful! But what to do about it? Ignore it, that’s what, Lu told herself, determined.

Inconveniently, her determination was sidelined by two things. “Do the thing you’re most afraid of,” and “Silence always speaks from the heart.”

Crap. Fine, then. Here goes nothing.

Ignoring the fact that she probably had hideous morning breath and her hair was sticking up around her head in spiky, unattractive clumps, Lu rose slowly from the bed, and went to stand directly in front of Magnus. He looked at her, startled, eyes widening, his cool composure cracking as fast as two hands clapping. He waited, watching her watching him, vibrating tension, until finally he couldn’t stand it anymore and snapped, “What?”

Lu almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

“I’d like to ask you a question.”

His nostrils flared. He nervously licked his lips. “No.”

“You don’t even know what it is yet! Just hear me out. If the answer is still no, then fine. I’ll never ask again.”

Her logic seemed to stump him, because there was no pithy comeback, no reply at all. Just that full-body tension and those dark, dark eyes, wary and undeniably heated.

“Okay, so here it is.” She tilted her head and looked up at him, watching carefully for any telling change her words might evoke. “Have I ever visited you in your dreams?”

Watching the cascade of emotion that poured over Magnus’s face while he struggled for words, Lu thought, Whoever said silence is golden was a freaking genius.

First, shock. Then a flash of something that was either embarrassment or chagrin that turned his face white, as if he’d been caught doing something bad. The color swept back in high spots over his cheekbones with the arrival of what looked like indignation. Then followed, in quick succession, longing, desire, and acute despair.

Then his face emptied, as if wiped clean by an invisible hand. He said, “What a strange question.”

Not a no, not a yes, just a simple deflection. Which didn’t matter because he’d told her everything she needed to know in his fraught silence, and everything that had happened between them in all her years of dreaming came back to her in a huge, burning rush, like a wave of lava crashing over her. Her lips parted on the only word that came to mind.

“Magnus.”

It was a whisper. It was a plea, soft and ardent, a plea for him to admit aloud what he’d just admitted in his silence. She wanted to hear him say it, to speak the words, Yes, I’ve made love to you a hundred times, yes, I loved every glorious minute of it, yes, I want to do it again right now, yes, you’re the only one and will always be, yes, yes, yes, yes, YES!

He said none of those things. He said nothing at all. Everything was there between them, bright as danger, electric and pulsing and true, but he held his tongue and Lu held hers, and they only stared into each other’s eyes, a new question burning the pit of her stomach like a swallowed sun.

What is this feeling? This violent, gut-wrenching ache?

She might’ve said it aloud, but a noise shattered their connection. It was a high, keening wail from somewhere nearby.

Magnus reacted instantly. He turned and bolted from the room, shouting over his shoulder, “Put some clothes on!”

Lu dressed faster than she’d ever dressed in her life. In mere seconds she followed in the direction he’d gone, her heart pounding, hands shaking with adrenaline. She found him standing down the hallway, outside another bedroom, its door open to reveal the scene inside.

Nola was kneeling on the floor beside the bed, crying and holding the hand of Grandfather, who lay peacefully in spite of all the noise she was making. James stood behind her with his hand on her shoulder, watching Grandfather with a look of grim resignation.

Magnus murmured, “He’s gone?”

James glanced at them and nodded.

It’s time for me to go, little dragon.

All the tiny hairs on Lu’s body stood on end. She raised a shaking hand to her mouth, stepping back with a cry.

Nola lifted her head and looked right at Lu. Her face was streaked with tears. She said, “I had this awful dream where he came to tell me good-bye, and I woke up so scared I had to come check on him. And when I did, he . . . he just wouldn’t wake up. He was lying here, like he is now, his hands folded over his chest, holding this.”

She held up a trembling fistful of wheat. “Where would he have gotten this?”

Everyone looked at Lu, as if they knew she already knew the answer. Which she did.

Lu lowered her hand from her mouth, took a deep breath, and whispered, “In the field near where he grew up. I was there with him, last night.”

All the air went out of the room. No one moved. No one spoke. Only Grandfather looked peaceful, a small smile playing at the corners of his lips.