Phil stared blankly “Maybe it’s just an overactive imagination?”
“But they carry on from one another; every night I see the following time span. Dreams aren’t organised, are they?”
Charlie dipped her blonde head closer. “What aren’t you saying?”
I gulped in some air. This was the crazy bit. If I could just blurt it out, everything would finally be off my chest. “It’s me in the dreams.” I lifted my face to Tristan’s. “And Tristan, it’s us in a different life.”
Scratching her head, Phil pursed her lips. “Mae, the past is just the past.”
Charlie shook her head until it could have rolled off. “No, my grandma always believed in reincarnation. She was always trying to get in touch with her former self.”
“And did she?” I leant forward, maybe her grandma could help me.
“Not that I know of. She died when I was eleven.”
Falling back in my chair, I sighed before remembering my manners. “Sorry about your grandma.”
Charlie shrugged. “She was batshit crazy. Always going on about lives being linked.”
Phil scribbled on the sheet as Mrs Cox swept passed again. “I think it’s just dreams in that creepy as hell room, Mae.”
Tristan coughed. “No, I’m having the dreams too.” The table stared at him until Phil rocked back on her chair.
“Tristan 'I’m so Cool' Prince is having dreams about the past?”
His cheeks flared a little with colour under the golden depths of his skin and his mouth crimped into a line. I glared at Phil. “Are you up for helping?” I asked.
She shook her head again, giggling a low snigger. “Okay, okay, I’ll help.” She glanced at us all. “Let’s get this stupid quiz done and then everyone meet back at Mae’s.”
I shuddered at the thought of being back in that space and Tristan’s knee knocked mine. He nodded softly, and I breathed a low breath. “Okay, my room.”
“I’ll get my laptop and we'll see what we can find.”
Charlie slapped the table. “It’s town day on Saturday. We can look around that bookshop in the village.”
Phil nodded, hooked on the idea of research. “Yeah, that old lady has books in there no one has bothered to look at for hundreds of years.”
This was good. We were getting somewhere. “Everything I’ve dreamed of so far is linked to the girl in the dreams’ magic.”
Phil and Charlie’s eyes widened—honestly the way this conversation was going they were going to end up with headaches. Phil nodded thoughtfully. “Now we are getting somewhere. Magic history is such a niche. Of course real historians, like my parents, think it’s all coddlefoffle.”
“All what?” I sniggered.
“A coddlefoffle, you know, nonsense.”
Charlie laughed under her breath her shoulders shaking. “Phil, that’s not a word.”
Phil tilted her head to the side, “Who the hell taught me that then?”
I was in my room waiting for the others. All the lights were on and I was pacing the small cramped space. There was no chance I was going to risk sitting down in case I fell asleep again. Deep in my heart was an ache to know what happened next, to see the version of Tristan again from my dreams. But I had to stay here in the present. I needed to look at the past, to discover it from a distant perspective.
And. And… Far worse than time slipping away before I could discover the true identity of the people from my night-time experience, was the simple fact my heart already knew what happened to them. I knew that somehow they ended up on those stones together.
Time was ticking for them. I could sense it.
Was she really me?
My brain, the part of me who knew I was a girl from Queens with no possessions to my name said no. But my heart, pounding in my chest, said without any doubt, yes.
How, I didn’t know.
Why Tristan and I hated each other on sight—I didn’t know.
Why the necklace stopped us—I didn’t know.
There was a lot I didn’t know.
A gentle tap on my window made me jump out of my skin. It only took one step to cross the cramped space. I tugged on the handle expecting it to be stiff, but it unlocked with ease.
Tristan’s dark gaze met mine. “Move back so I can jump up.”
“Sorry, what?” I stepped back just as he curled his tall frame and launched himself onto the window frame.
“Hey.” He straightened, and we stood with a few inches between us. Hands by our sides, we faced one another. The air rippled and shifted. We were nothing more than two strangers placed together within the same school. Two people from different places. Yet, as I watched him—absorbing the smooth skin on his face, the hint of gold stubble along his cheeks, those dark eyes burning with a dense depth—I knew him more than I’d ever known anyone.
With a grin, I held out my hand. “Hi, I’m Mae Adams.”
Eyes crinkling with a smile, he met my hand with own. “Tristan Prince.”
Stepping back, I sat and patted the edge of the mattress. “A prince?” My tongue felt fat and useless as he settled at my side, our elbows brushing. It was silly when I’d woken tied within his arms.
He smiled, his face shifting to look at me fully. I basked under the intensity of his gaze. “At your service.”
“How did you end up here at this awful school?” I wanted to know everything about the guy I felt I already knew.
He shrugged, his wide powerful shoulders rising and falling. “I was told I was going to boarding school. I chose this one.”
“You chose this one?”
The expression on his face and his eyes as they danced over my lips made my stomach dip to the bottom of my feet. “I couldn’t explain it until now.”
“What’s that?” My words tangled in my throat.
“It’s like we’ve both been guided here.”
I gave a small snort. “I
