Page 110 of The Bone Season

It wasn’t an apology, but I decided to let it go. Nuala gave my hand a lick.

‘She’s beautiful.’ I stroked her. ‘Why isn’t she at Magdalen?’

‘Animals are only permitted in the city as livestock. The fallow deer at Magdalen are reared for venison and buckskin. To spare her that fate, I brought her to these fields.’

‘Dare I askwhyyou saved a random deer?’

‘For company. And for you.’

I smiled thinly. ‘Is this your way of telling me that I need to be tamed?’

‘Not at all.’

Warden walked back outside, letting Nuala run towards the River Cherwell. He sat on the crumbled remains of a wall, facing me.

‘You are a dreamwalker,’ he said. ‘What does that mean to you?’

‘We’ve been over this several times, Warden.’

‘Indulge me.’

I sighed. ‘I can sense the æther for about a mile outside myself.’

‘Yes. That is your foundation, your starting point – a heightened sensitivity that even Rephaim do not possess,’ Warden said. ‘Your silver cord is flexible, allowing you to dislocate your spirit from the middle of your dreamscape – an act that widens your perception.’

‘Yes.’

‘Perhaps, before you even knew what you were, you could hurt people. Perhaps you could put pressure on their dreamscapes, causing nosebleeds and headaches.’

I frowned. ‘How could you possibly know that?’

‘I am entertaining a theory.’ Warden held my gaze. ‘Something changed on the train. No doubt you feared you would be executed. For the first time in your life, that power inside you broke into the world.’

‘So it did.’ I perched on the wall, keeping my distance. ‘Did you suspect before I even arrived?’

‘Nashira received an urgent report that an Underguard had been killed – bloodlessly, without a single mark on his body. She knew it must be the work of a dreamwalker,’ Warden said. ‘What is the next stage of your gift?’

‘Leaving my body,’ I said. ‘I can push my spirit into the æther without my cord breaking.’

‘And the next?’

I said nothing.

‘You forced your spirit into Aludra. You have done the same to me. Even when you fail to break into a dreamscape, you can collide with it,’ Warden said. ‘What is your intention?’

‘I don’t always have one. It just happens,’ I said. ‘In that case, I was trying to hurt Aludra.’

‘And when you enter a dreamscape, where do you instinctively aim?’

‘The sunlit zone.’

‘Indeed. The seat of the spirit. What could happen if you reached it?’

There was a tense silence, broken only by the reedy screech of an owl. I turned away to look at the moon, which sat in a smoking cup of cloud.

‘You’re talking about usurping a spirit,’ I finally said. ‘About … possession.’

‘Yes.’

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