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“And? Did you not just hear what I said? We’ve got variants popping up already.”

“Yes, I caught that.” In truth, Sarina was surprised it had taken this long for the visits to start. Tess always used to say,If time’s a road, why not walk it?Before she died, she was always popping in and out, so many times and so often that Sarina never knew which direction she was going.

Their lives had been significantly quieter since the Schism. A time mage couldn’t travel past the point of their death, and they certainly couldn’t travel back from a future where they didn’t exist.

Sarina said softly, “It’s surprising the things you miss about a person.”

Ivain’s smile was a thin, brittle line trembling beneath the weight of old grief, and she knew his mind had gone to the same place, the same person.

“The boy’s chosen to be a bloodcrafter,” he said and cleared his throat, shifting away from painful subjects. “There’s no going back for him now.”

Sarina only shrugged and held out her cup for a refill. Tilting the teapot, he poured with a measured precision, the amber liquid cascading in a smooth, unbroken stream. “Skye always showed more promise for hemokinetics than he ever did for fabrication. Color me shocked he stumbled into his true calling. Though, I suppose it does explain what happened last night. I haven’t seen a mess like that since you were experimenting with crystal fusions into your nervous system.”

Her brother eyed her. “I expected you to be more upset.”

“Why? Skye turning that man into soup is all anyone is more excited to talk about than Kalahad’s grandstanding. And I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s made a few ambitious fools reconsider their delusions of grandeur—now that they’ve seen your watchdog in action. Just warn me if he starts sprouting armor from his skin. That’s going to be a little harder to pass off.”

“Point taken.” Ivain collapsed into his usual seat, dragging a hand over his face. “His mother is going to do to me what Skye did to that poor bastard last night.”

“Oh, definitely,” Sarina agreed, cradling her cup. The porcelain was cool, the tea inside lukewarm and tepid, at least for a fire mage. “But it won’t be because of the bloodcrafting,” she said, swirling a finger tipped with a tiny flame through the liquid. “We did allow him to bond with a time mage, after all.”

“A time mage named Venwraith. Considering how long Adriana has been trying to get close enough to kiss the High Lord of Water’s ass, I somehow think she’ll manage the loss.”

Perhaps. And it was certainly something Sarina planned to leverage when the time was right. “Does Taly know?”

Ivain laughed. “That boy set fire to his own future, and he did it in her name. Trust me. If she knew, we’d have heard the blast by now.”

Sarina grimaced. It was true. Their daughter would throw herself in front of a blade for Skye, but Shards forbid anyone do the same for her. “I think I’d like to be gone that day.” Ivain shuddered his agreement. “I suppose we’re a family of exiles now.”

There was the time mage, the bloodcrafter, the eccentric geezer who had gone and made himself a hermit—and her, the disappointment.

“Still, reasons aside,” she said, her voice turning pointed, “it would’ve been nice to have you there last night. To showcompetence. You may not care what Lord Ainsley has to say about you, but others do. And they listen when he tells them that you’re getting old.”

“Iamold,” Ivain muttered.

“Yes, well, he’s going around telling people that you’retooold to lead this city.”

That got a full-bellied laugh. “And who’s more apt?Him? Is he even out of diapers yet?”

“He is, actually,” Sarina said. “He’s old enough to have already taken a sleep, in fact.”

Ivain rolled his eyes. “Shards, not this again.”

As he was always ready to point out, her brother was old. How old, she wasn’t entirely sure. He’d spent most of his life hopping between realms with vastly different chronorates, having an adventure or two, then moving on. His trips homewere frequent but also scattered. For her, days would go by; for him, it would be decades. It wasn’t until he married that he finally settled down in one time zone, and even then, there were days when she suspected he’d snuck away.

Ivain slumped over the table, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. His hair had more white than yellow now, the only sign of the years to catch up with him. “For the last time, I’m nottired.”

Sarina refrained from pointing out the irony. “That’s not what I’m saying.”

Fey dreamwalked for a myriad of reasons: to avoid conflict or war, or sometimes to recover from emotional or psychological trauma. Shards knew, she’d been tempted after Madoc died. It would’ve been so much easier to sleep away the knot of grief in her chest.

Preserving wisdom, meditation, even boredom—many Fey dreamwalked to escape the monotony of immortality, leapfrogging through the ages. Whatever the reason, it was generally thought that the older one was, and the longer they went without sleeping, the more their mind began to slip.

Her brother never got tired of living. Even the slow parts, he said, he didn’t want to miss a second. He was still sharp, with more than enough laurels from all his many adventures to rest on. Still, his general disdain for common niceties and people in general had, over the years, shifted the public’s perception of him as merely eccentric to outright senile.

“People are worried that you haven’t taken a rest,” she said.

“Just becauseLord Ainsleydecided to whisper in a few of his fellow bootlickers’ ears—”