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Kato’s eyes stung, and the world began to blur. “I looked for you,” he said, because in the absence ofmeanness, anger, and jest,all he could do was deflect. “After my brother was born, I looked for you. I went to the mortal realm. To New York.”

Squeezing his eyes shut, he tried to shut out the memory of that bustling plaza—the way his heart had leapt at the first glimpse of her, breathless with joy, only to be gutted by despair a heartbeat later.

“You were married. You hadchildren,” he spat.

“You say that like it’s an accusation.”

Maybe it was. Maybe…

“I never stopped loving you,” he said, throat working. “Not for one moment. Are a few decades truly all it took for you to forget me? To stop loving me? Are mortal hearts really that fickle?”

Her lips twitched, and even that small ghost of a smile made the scant light inside the stable brighten. “When the love of my life told me that he didn’t want me in his anymore, I moved on. I keptliving, and you don’t get to blame me for that. Not when you were the one making all the decisions.”

Sarah pushed to her feet, white skirts rustling on an imagined breeze. She stared down at him, at the bruises and lacerations on his skin, the rips in his armor, the blood pooling around him, more black than red in the predawn light.

She was fading. Her features wavered. Brown eyes lightened, the tilt of her mouth changed, and for a moment she was someone else entirely—someone he shouldn’t think about as much as he did.

“This isn’t what she wanted for you, Kit. When will you finally allow yourself to live again?”

Never, he wanted to say, but the word got stuck, snagged on an inkling of resolve he thought had long since withered. The…hope? Yes, hope. That maybe there was still something worth trying for.

Kato breathed past the ache in his chest, tears welling. “Sarah, I—”

But when he looked up, she was already gone. He was alone in the dark.

The stable doors creaked open, letting in a thick shaft of moonlight that cut through the gloom. Kato’s eyelids fluttered, and he squinted against the brightness and the two shadows moving through it.

He heard voices, though the words were garbled. The blur of a man knelt beside him, his partner’s shadow leaning to peer over. A woman. She—held up a lantern, the light from the fire crystal inside illuminating their faces.

Skye.

And that was Taly behind him. Her face was more angular, and her eyes had a distinct glow that shone through the dimness. But it was her. She wasalive.

Darkness edged in, and Kato gave himself over to it. He stopped fighting.

The kid had done it. His idiot brother found the girl—and then he’d come back.

Somebody had actually come back for him.

That was Kato’s last thought before he knew nothing at all.

Prodigal

-From the personal diary of Corinna Venwraith, Dawnbringer

It began with a question, spoken to me for the first time in a dream.

Chapter 2

CRACK.

Talya Caro gasped awake to the growling echo of breaking thunderheads rolling outside the old palace stable. She sat up on her bedroll. Cold sweat beaded at her temples, soaking into her hair.

Kairó vuun’manii?

The dream was already fading, the details getting blurrier the harder she grasped. But those words echoed.

Kairó vuun’manii?