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His eyes shuttered. He fell still.

But his magic continued to work.

Gently, a wisp of his power stretched out from the steady stream of light travelling between his palms and her chest. It curled around the caenim’s wrist, holding it up as other, smaller beams of light shot out and wrapped around each of its five longfingers. Slowly, the strings of light removed the claws from my mother’s chest, and then her stomach. When they were free, the lacerations were filled from within by a shimmering light.

Wound by gaping wound, Wren’s magic stitched, pulled, and knitted my mother’s flesh and skin back together. Even the rips in her pyjamas were repaired, the stains burning away without singeing the fabric.

It could have been minutes, hours, or years that I spent standing with my sister in the doorway, watching his powers at work.

It was hypnotic.

Hewas hypnotic.

As if he heard my thoughts and had something to say about it, a long tendril of his light split from the others and stretched towards me. The beam radiated a corporeal warmth and softness as it stroked over my forehead and my hair. With a featherlight touch, it danced along my shoulders and arms to where my hands rested upon my sister before finally reaching my legs.

The sensation was not like being caressed by a physical or immaterial thing, but rather like the essence of something—or someone.

Wren’s essence.

As if in affirmation of my thoughts, I could have sworn I saw him smirk when he indulgently guided the tendril of light down my thighs. I didn’t dare move or speak to reprimand him lest I distract him from his continued work healing my mother. And when he pulled the extra thread of his power back, I decided I wouldn’t mention it at all—because he had used it to remove all traces of blood and gore from my body, clothes, and Brynn’s shoulders, upon which my hands had been resting.

At last, Wren reclaimed every drop of his magic and lowered his hands as the light faded. Gently, he eased my motherinto his arms while the pieces of glass from our window rose up from the couch and the carpet, levitating towards the broken frame before piecing themselves back together.

He lay her down on the couch as the caenim’s body and surrounding pool of blood burst into flames.

Brynn flinched.

The startling movement relieved me, and I released the breath I was holding hostage in my throat. At that point, any movement from her at all would have had that effect. I stroked a soothing hand down her arm while the fire hissed and whooshed, leisurely eating up all traces of the caenim and the mess it had made in our house.

“She’ll be fine,” Wren said, striding to the window to draw the curtains closed. It was utterly perfect, somehow in better condition than ever before. “You can go to her now.”

My little sister moved like a fairy—or a faerie—and crossed the room in the blink of an eye, throwing herself on the edge of the couch. She sobbed quietly into our mother’s chest while I hovered above them to check her breathing.

Slow and steady.

Her eyelids fluttered as if she were dreaming.

“She’ll sleep for an hour or a day,” Wren murmured. “She’ll wake feeling as if the injuries never happened.”

“But she’ll remember?” I traced calming circles across my sister’s back.

“Yes. Did you want me to make her forget?”

I sighed. Of all the memories my mother had from her life, that night would not be the worst, but I still wished that she didn’t have to carry it with her for the rest of it. Brynn, too.

“I’m going back to the bookstore,” Wren informed me. “Someone has to clean up and get the old man home. I’ll check on her again when I’m done.”

“Wait.” I kept one hand on my sister, who had mercifully stopped shaking, and inched the sleeve of my cardigan down to cover my free hand, wrapping that arm around my waist as I pivoted to face him. “Why did she look at you like that?”

Firelight danced across his face, within his eyes. “It explains why the fae-lily didn’t work.”

“What does?”

“If that mortal louse is not your father,” he elaborated softly, “and one of my kind is.”

No. No.

That mortal lousewasmy father. The alternative was unthinkable. I had not endured the abuse of a completestranger—