Their Hidden Princess novel · Chapter 9 of 32

Chapter 9: Three Dreams

Footsteps crunched on the path outside.

Roan jerked his head at the racks.

Lysander pulled me off the bench and behind a hanging racing shell.

We crouched in the dark with tar on our hands and my dress gaping at the back.

Roan sat down on an upturned boat in the doorway and folded his arms.

Clarice's white silk came into the moonlight.

"Where's Ingleby?" she asked.

"Drowned," Roan said. "Tragic."

"Don't be funny, Dunstan. It doesn't suit you."

"Then go away, Varrick. That suits everybody."

She stood there a long moment. I could smell her rose water through the slats.

Then her steps went back up the path.

Lysander let out a breath against my neck.

I realized he'd been holding my laces closed the whole time.

"Turn around," he whispered, and tied them for me.

We came out from behind the shell.

Roan was still sitting on the boat, staring at the lake.

"Tell me the dream," I said.

He didn't answer right away.

"A black cliff," he said finally. "A white moon. A woman with dark hair coming up the path toward me. She had a scar through one eyebrow."

My hand went to my eyebrow.

"I reached for her. Somebody else reached at the same time." He looked at Lysander.

"I turned around, and it was him. Standing at my back. Like we'd always stood that way."

Lysander had gone white under his tan.

"Five weeks ago," he said. "A Tuesday. I woke up laughing because I thought it was the stupidest dream I'd ever had. I never told you."

"I never told you either."

"Why not?"

"Because I dreamed I was in love with an Ingleby." Roan's mouth twitched. "I thought I'd been poisoned."

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