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“I’m here, Skye,” Taly choked as she took his face in her hands, turning his head to look at her. “Just stay with me.Please.”

“Taly?” he murmured again. His chest had been split open, and a sword pinned him to the ground. She could see his lungs, his heart. All struggling to hang onto the rhythm like a winding-down clock.

“Em.” His eyes drooped, and Shards, why wouldn’t he look at her? It’s like she wasn’t even there. “Em—Em, I’m here. I’m right here, so—”

“You left.”

He may as well have turned that sword on her.

“You’re gone.”

Taly closed her eyes, pressing a hand to her heart. A dream. The rain was cold, and his blood was warm, but this was just a dream. It had to be.

“Taly?” It wouldn’t be much longer now. Already his breathing was growing weak, rasping out of his chest. His heart struggled to beat.

“I’m here,” she whispered and took his hand. “I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I’m here, Em. I won’t leave again.”

“Taly?” he murmured again.

She lay down on the ground beside him in a puddle of muddy rainwater streaked with blood, surrounded by the screams of the dying. “I’m so sorry, Em. I promise—I’ll never leave again.”

Taly dropped the stack of books on the long library table, tugging her robe more firmly around her body as she took a seat. It was late—late enough that some might consider it early—and like so many nights before, she had lurched awake, sweating and shaking and still screaming Skye’s name.

Some nights were easier than others. A few generous pours of brandy and Calcifer’s soft purring were generally all it took to banish the nightmares back to the darkest recesses of her mind.

But other nights—nights like tonight when she had woken up with the scent of blood still in her nose and Skye’s voice in her head, when she couldn’t quite tell what was real and what wasn’t… she couldn’t stay in her tower.

So, she had come here. There were countless libraries in the palace, and this one was cramped and shabby with threadbare carpets and cracked firelamps. The light was dim, the chairs uncomfortable, but she still found herself drawn here night after night for the sole reason that this room housed the largest collection of birth records in the Fey Imperium.

Taly pulled the first book from the stack, an accounting of every birth in House Glimmerwood up until the Schism. Even with her mother’s spells gone, she didn’t remember much from before the fire. A few faces, snippets of songs, the smell of burnt stew—the few flashes of memory she had managed to recover in the past months were disjointed and scattered.

But she did have a name—Breena. And she knew that her mother had been a member of the Crystal Guard. The enrollment rosters had given her a good place to start, though it was possible her mother had enrolled after the Schism. If that was the case, she would eventually have to expand her search.

“What do you think?” Taly asked the fairy that had been shadowing her since she left her tower. She held out her hand, smiling when a flickering blue orb alighted on her outstretched palm. “Do you think my mother was from House Glimmerwood?”

“I would look farther south,” a soft, feminine voice suggested.

Taly jumped at the sound, turning to find Azura standing in the open doorway. Her hair was unbound and fell to her waist, and she wore a pale ivory dressing gown that shimmered in the dim light. Though she smiled, it didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“House Glimmerwood,” Azura continued, coming closer, “does not allow their women to be trained in the martial arts, and I’m pretty sure your mother was born with a sword in her hand.”

Taly sighed and closed the book, setting it back on the stack. That left 182 more options spread across all major families.

Breena was a common name among the fey.

Taly looked to the Queen. She had the answer. She knew exactly which book contained her mother’s name, but she wouldn’t tell her. Taly already knew that much, which is why she’d never asked.

“It bothers you,” Azura said after a moment’s pause. “Not knowing about your family.”

“Is that surprising?”

“A little,” Azura admitted. “As a time mage, you get used to seeing people out of order, but it never takes away the strangeness of encountering someone when they’re younger than you know them to be. Still grappling with issues you know they’ll eventually overcome. It’s like seeing a painting that’s not quite finished.”

It was an honest answer. One that caught Taly off guard.

“I have a family,” she said, because an honest answer deserved honesty in return. “Ivain, Sarina, Skye—because of them, I never felt deprived or alone or unloved. But there were times when I still wondered where I came from, who I would’ve been if Vale had never burned. There are so many things that get taken for granted: birthdays, number of siblings, which parent you take after…”

Taly shrugged, not sure how to explain the feeling of loss. “Everyone I ever met knew those things about themselves, but I didn’t. It was like there was this entire part of my life that had been excised, and no matter what I did, I was never going to get it back. Of course, it bothers me.”