He pressed his forehead to the bars. “The only thing I couldn’t bear is if he hurt you. I won’t allow it. I won’t let him find you, Kelsey. No matter what.”
“What do you mean?”
He smiled. “Nothing, my sweet. Don’t worry.” He moved back to rest his broken body against the wall of the cage. “It’s time to go, iadala.”
I got up to leave but paused at the door when he called out, “Kelsey?”
I turned.
“No matter what happens, please remember that I love you, hridaya patni. Promise me that you’ll remember.”
“I’ll remember. I promise. Mujhe tumse pyarhai, Ren.”
“Go now.”
He smiled weakly, and then his eyes changed. The blue leeched out, and they became gray, flat, and lifeless. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but it almost looked as if Ren had died. I took a hesitant step back.
“Ren?”
His soft voice replied, “Please go, Kelsey. Everything will be alright.”
“Ren?”
“Good-bye, my love.”
“Ren!”
Something was happening, and it wasn’t alright. I felt something snap. I gasped for air. Something was very wrong. The connection I felt between us was almost tangible, like a metal tether. The closer we’d become, the stronger the connection was. It rooted me, connected me to him like a telephone line, but something had severed the cable.
I felt the break, and sharp, jagged ends ripped and tore violently through my heart like hot knives through warm butter. I screamed and thrashed. For the first time since I’d laid eyes on my white tiger, I was alone.
Kishan shook me out of the fog of my dream.
“Kelsey! Kelsey! Wake up!”
I opened my eyes and began crying fresh tears that spilled onto my cheeks and followed the old trails left behind from my dream. I wrapped my arms around Kishan’s neck and sobbed. He pulled me onto his lap, pressed me close, and stroked my back, while I wept inconsolably for his brother.
I must have slept at some point because I woke tangled in my sleeping bag with Kishan’s arms around me. My fist was pressed into my cheek, and my eyes were swollen shut and crusty.
Kishan whispered, “Kelsey?”
I mumbled, “I’m awake.”
“Are you okay?”
My hand lifted involuntarily to the hollow, raw pit I felt in my chest, and a tear leaked out from the corner of my eye. I buried my head in the pillow and took deep breaths to calm myself.
“No,” I said dully. “He’s . . . gone. Something’s happened. I think . . . I think Ren may be dead.”
“What happened? Why do you think that?”
I explained my dream and tried to describe my broken connection to Ren.
“Kelsey, it’s possible that this is all just a dream, a very disturbing one, but just a dream. It’s not uncommon to have violent dreams if you have recently experienced something traumatic, like the fight we had with the birds.”
“Maybe. But I didn’t dream about the birds.”
“Even so, we can’t be sure. Remember that Durga said she would protect him.”
“I remember. But it was so real.”
“There’s no way to know for sure.”
“Maybe there is.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I think we should visit the Silvanae again. Maybe we can sleep in the Grove of Dreams, and I can see the future. Maybe I’ll see if we can save him or not.”
“Do you think it will work?”
“The Silvanae said if they had a desperate problem to work out, they went there for answers. Please, Kishan. Let’s try.”
Kishan wiped a tear off my cheek with his thumb. “Okay, Kells. Let’s find Faunus.”
“Kishan, one more thing. What does hridaya patni mean?”
“Where did you hear that?” he asked softly.
“In my dream. Ren said it to me before we parted.”
Kishan got up and walked outside the tent. I followed and found him staring into the distance. His arm was propped up against a tree limb. Without turning around, he said, “It’s a pet name our father used for our mother. It means . . . ‘wife of my heart.’”
It took a long day of hiking to reach the Silvanae village. They were overjoyed to see us and wanted to have a party. I didn’t feel like celebrating. When I asked if we could sleep in the Grove of Dreams again, Faunus assured me that everything they had was at our disposal. The