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Skye wasn’t sure if he was breathing anymore. “So, are you saying… If it’s a matter of whereandwhen…” He closed his eyes, trying to collect his scattered thoughts. “How long have you been gone?” It seemed like a silly question, but important, nonetheless.

Taly turned to gaze across the pond. “Six months.”

Skye’s heart may have stopped then.Six months?How was that possible? It had only been two weeks since Ebondrift.

He opened his mouth, a million more questions already forming on his tongue, but then she was shushing him, looping an arm through his as she pulled his attention back to the pond.

“Taly, we need—”

“Shhh.” She pointed towards the pond. “Watch.Listen. This is the reason we’re here, after all.”

Skye followed her stare, straining his ears. He hated not having his magic—he felt blind and deaf, completely cut off. But eventually, slowly, voices trickled over the hill, along with the crunch of snow and the scrape of metal.

Two figures appeared, and Skye blinked, his heart giving a painful lurch. “Is that…”

“Yes.” He could hear the smile in her voice. “That’s us.”

The boy, a gangly dark-haired fey no older than fourteen, was laughing, walking hand-in-hand with a gray-eyed human girl that smiled up at him from beneath a wild mop of golden hair. They were both dressed for the snow, carrying skates and rucksacks and dragging an old wooden sled.

“Is this a memory?” Skye asked, nearly choking on a laugh when his younger self slipped on the ice. He had been clumsy at that age, always tripping over his own feet. But in this case, thattiny version of Taly—far too small to already be ten—haddefinitelypushed him, even if she tried to play it off.

“Yes and no,” Taly said from beside him. “It’s the past.”

“What’s the difference?”

Taly smiled, but instead of answering, she said, “You were all legs.”

Skye hated the heat he could feel creeping up his neck. She was right. He had grown five inches that year, and it was all in his legs. “I was awkward. And skinny.”

“You were adorable.”

Taly leaned her head against his shoulder, and for a little while, they simply watched. Occasionally making comments. Laughing when one of them would fall. When it came to ice skating—or anything really—Skye had always been fixated on speed, and unsurprisingly, his younger self was skating circles around the pond, trying to go faster with each successive loop.

Taly, however…

Well, Taly had always been good at anything that required rhythm, whether it be music, or dancing, or even singing. It was one of the reasons that after so many years, Sarina was still trying to turn her into a lady, despite a complete lack of enthusiasm for the feminine arts.

“Why did you stop skating?” Skye asked, watching as that ten-year-old girl executed some overly complicated series of jumps and twists that made his head spin.

“Do you really not remember?”

“No.”

She winced. “You’re about to.”

There was a yelp, and Skye turned just in time to see that little girl trip over a crack in the ice.

He tried to scream—from surprise, to warn her, he didn’t know—but she was already falling. Already skidding across rocks and twigs and ice.

She landed mere inches from their feet, face-down, panting and gasping for air as the snow around her began to turn red.

Skye was on his feet in an instant, but Taly grabbed him, pulling him back a step. “Just watch,” she said. “They can’t see or hear or feel us. This is the past. It’s already happened. There’s no point trying to intervene.”

“Taly!” Fourteen-year-old Skye was half-skating, half-running across the ice. When he hit the edge, he scrambled through the snow, reaching for the girl.

Taly slowly curled in on herself, clutching her leg as blood welled between her fingers. The fabric of her trousers had been slashed from ankle to knee, and a long, angry gash ran the length of her calf.

“Shit.” Skye gently removed her skate, then ripped away the ruined fabric. His hands were shaking as he prodded at the wound. The skin had been shredded, and beneath the smear of blood and mangled flesh—a flash of white. Bone. “Shit, shit, shit...”