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His eyes sparkled and Alex frantically tried to recall what kinds of thoughts she might have had. But it was impossible—she could have thought aboutanything.

… Including Kaiden.

Heat flooding her cheeks, Alex cleared her throat and tried to act unfazed. “If you read my mind and learned I was from Freya, why didn’t you say anything?”

“I figured you had your reasons for keeping it secret,” Kaiden answered. “And besides, we weren’t close, not back then.” A grin tugged at his mouth. “That, and it was hilarious watching you bumble your way through acting like you were from this world.”

“I did notbumble,” she stated with a frown.

Kaiden laughed. “You did. I have no idea how no one else noticed, especially on our SAS overnight trip.” He shook his head again. “I’ll never forget when you thought we had to hike our way across the Durungan Ranges before Jordan ‘reminded’ you that there were other options.” He laughed at another memory and added, “And remember when I used the Quick-Dry dust on you after the river rapids? There’s not a human in Medora who hasn’t experienced that powder before. You had no idea what you’d given away by saying it was your first time.”

Alex gritted her teeth and said, “Can we please get back to what you were saying earlier?”

If anything, Kaiden seemed more amused, but he did as she requested.

“What I was saying,” he said, “was that from the moment you first arrived here, you were a mystery. That mystery only deepened as time went by and strange things began to happen—strange things that revolved around you.”

Thatwas the story of Alex’s life.

“While it soon reached the stage where I couldn’t use any kind of gift on you, I could still use them on those you were close to,” he said. “It took time, but with enough access to the right people, including, or perhaps, especially, during our encounter with Aven and his followers at Sir Oswald’s, I was eventually able to put enough pieces together to come to my own conclusions about you—and everything happening around you.”

Alex didn’t want to ask, but she forced the words through her lips. “And those conclusions were?”

Kaiden shrugged, but despite the gesture, his body was lined with tension, like he was worried about her reaction. “Let’s just say I know more than you’d likely be comfortable with me knowing.”

That, Alex knew, was true. And yet…

You feel safe with me.

Those five words from imaginary-Kaiden whispered across her mind and she couldn’t hold up against the weight of them. Needing to escape his knowing eyes, she turned her back on him and looked down into the fire, allowing the hypnotising flames to sooth her spiralling thoughts.

You feel safe with me.

Imaginary-Kaiden was right—shedidfeel safe with him.

… And that absolutelyterrifiedher.

“There’s something else you need to know,” Kaiden said quietly, and Alex inhaled a fortifying breath at his careful tone. “And it may freak you out.”

A disbelieving laugh left her lips as she turned back around, finding him much closer than before—only a few steps away now.

“I doubt there’s anything you could say that would freak me out any more than I already am,” she said honestly.

When he remained hesitant to share, she mustered up the will to encourage, “Go on, sock it to me.”

“The reason I know you were in the past,” he said, “is because over the holidays, I had a dream about you.”

That certainly wasn’t what Alex had expected to hear. “You… dreamed about me?”

“D.C.’s gift,” was all Kaiden had to say.

“Oh,” she murmured. “You mean you had a true dream.”

Alex knew that Lena Morrow was still neutralising D.C.’s ability to access her own gift—something that frustrated the princess to no end—but apparently the same didn’t hold true for Kaiden.

“I only saw snippets of your time there, but it was enough to get an idea of what went down while you were ‘gone’, including flashes of the future you witnessed—cities burning, blurred faces of screaming people, so much death and chaos,” Kaiden said, his eyes unfocused as he recalled the memory.

Alex desperately wanted to know if he’d seen himself in that vision—the avatar of him guiding her through it, or the part showing his own death at Aven’s hands—but she couldn’t bring herself to ask.