Page 311 of The Professor's Wife

His stomach grumbled. He placed a hand on it and sighed. “Nothing yet, but if my bitch of a student succeeds with her meddling, if her lies are to be believed by the masses, I will be ruined.”

“Ruined?”

“If I’m quick, I can manage it before it spirals out of control.”

“What are you going to do?”

His stomach grumbled again. He pushed the plate back and re-adjusted himself on the chair. “I’m going to silence her.”

As his ominous words hung in the air, I stared at the plate, knowing it needed to be collected, but my legs didn’t move. My attention drifted back to Oliver. I watched him for several moments, looking over his face and strong hands as he raked one of them through his short black hair. A strange emotion flitted through me. I felt…foreign, uncertain.

I don’t think this had happened before…

I breathed slowly, absorbing the moment because…it felt unfamiliar. That wasn’t a bad thing.

“What is in that head of yours?” Oliver asked just then. I didn’t realize he’d been watching me. He gave me that look. The one that yearned to break into my head.

“I’ve been having these dreams lately,” I admitted.

His eyes were glassy when he looked back at me. “What sort of dreams?”

“I’m in this dark cave, and I’m staring at a wall.”

“Let me guess, there are shadows on the wall.”

I smiled briefly. “A force is keeping me bound there, watching the shadows move.”

He smirked. “From the very start, you’ve always been taken by Plato. I’m not surprised you’re dreaming of the Allegory of the Cave.”

“I’ve had these dreams before. But it was different this time.”

“What made it different?”

“I got out.”

His brows shot up, and now he looked intrigued. “Did you really?”

I nodded. “There were other beings in there with me, trapped like I was. Most of them didn’t have faces. But then there were others… other beings that were made out of butterflies.”

“Butterflies?” he repeated strangely.

“When the butterflies didn’t move, I could see the faces of the people in the cave with me.” My voice tightened as I uttered, “One of them was Rowe.” Oliver’s brows pinched together, listening intently to me now. “They eventually scattered into thousands of butterflies and flew out of the cave. I followed because…because I knew that if I didn’t follow them out, it meant they were going to die.”

Oliver hummed softly. “The last time you had a dream like this, you wound up in this cabin.”

“I think in another life, Oliver, perhaps I didn’t end up in this cabin. Perhaps I kept my fears silent and watched my boy go.”

“It was a tragic coincidence, Daisy. Nothing more.”

I shook my head, smiling sadly. “He was a little boy in my dream, Oliver. I watched him break apart just as I touched him. I felt…a pain unlike any other. It was so real. So tangible. I can feel it now. That grief in my dream hasn’t left me.”

Oliver didn’t speak, but his thoughts fired through him. Eventually, he gave me an impatient look. “What was outside the cave? Was it Rowe?”

My body urged me to step back, but I didn’t. I was determined to remain still and look him in the eye with thebravery I knew I’d always had but never used.Fear isn’t welcome here.

“It was the other person you silenced, Oliver.”

Confusion crossed his face, and then, all at once, it faded into understanding. I expected fury, but it wasn’t there. His face went blank. With his layers stripped away, the man without a face of his own looked back at me. It should have startled me, but it strangely didn’t. “I see.” After a few more moments, he added, “You have an active imagination, Daisy.”