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Aimee pushed herself away from the wall, only to fall back against it when there was nowhere to pace. She jerked her head, as if coming to a decision. “There’s something I need to show you.”

Reaching into her cloak, she produced two glamographs that she laid out on the stone ledge side-by-side.

The first, he recognized. It was their baby cousin sitting on the front steps of their family home. She had died during her Attunement Ceremony when she was only five years old. This glamograph had been taken a week before what would become her final birthday.

In the other, the child looked remarkably similar. Blonde hair, gray eyes, similar features, similar build. But she was human where their cousin was fey.

“Well?” she said when he didn’t say anything.

“Well what?” he asked, looking between the glamographs.

Aimee gave a soft growl. “Don’t you see it?”

“I see two children that look remarkably similar considering they’re two different species.”

She pointed to the picture of the human girl. “This is Talya.”

“I figured.” That was Harbor Manor in the background.

“And this is—”

“I know who that is, Aimee.”

“And?” Her voice became sharp, almost shrill.

Aiden sighed. This wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. She was always searching for ghosts where there were none to be found, holding on to the hope that maybe one of the people they had loved and lost might not actually be gone. Their father, their aunt, their baby cousin—Aimee had been so young when they died. They had all left for Arylaan on the same day, all said their final goodbye as they boarded the same train. In her memory, the loss had become compounded, each death connected in a way that simply didn’t exist.

All these years later, and she was still grasping at threads, hoping to find answers to questions that had already been settled.

“And,” he said pointedly, “people change as they grow. You looked just like Father when you were small, but now you’re the spitting image of Mother. I was born with blonde hair, and then itturned red. These two children look very much alike–I agree with you on that. But Taly was human. Our cousin was fey.”

Aimee’s hands clenched into fists. “But if Talya had—”

She slid her eyes to the ground below. There were only two shadow mages within earshot—Eula and Kato—but they were bickering, just like they had been all morning.

“—timemagic,” she mouthed; then continued out loud, “that would mean she wasn’t completely human.”

“Yes,” he admitted. “Most humans wouldn’t have that kind of reaction to harpy venom, and I’ve never heard of one surviving faeflower.”

Aimee let out a muted squeal. “You gave her faeflower?”

Aiden winced, but nodded. He’d taken a huge risk when he’d given Taly what, at the time, he’d thought was poison. It had worked—thankfully—but he still shuddered at the thought ofwhat if it hadn’t.

“That means she was fey,” Aimee insisted.

“Partly, yes. But shelookedhuman.”

Letting out a frustrated growl, she banged her fists on the battlement. “Why do you keep saying that? A glamour can easily make something look like a thing it isn’t.”

“Because it’s relevant. Think about what kind of glamour it would take to pull off what you’re suggesting. It would have to grow with her, change as she changed. I’ve never seen a glamour like that.”

“Father could’ve done it. Easily.”

And there it was. Aimee didn’t care about Taly. She didn’t care about their cousin. It alwaysled back to their father, the only person capable of liberating their family from the man who had taken his place—Lord Aris Thorne.

“Father,” Aiden said, “couldn’t have put iron in her blood. That wasn’t an illusion, else it would’ve snapped the moment I removed that blood from her body. Explain that to me. Explain why I could go right now and test one of Taly’s blood samples, and it would show me iron instead of aether?”

“I… I don’t know,” Aimee replied, frustrated. He could already see the inevitable pain rushing in to fill the space where that momentary hope had been. “It’s just…”