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“I’m sorry, si—” Taly caught herself. “I just… I wasn’t sure I still had the right.”

“The right,” he muttered. “Shards, where do you get these ideas? Of course, you have theright. Despite your attempts to distance yourself, you remain my daughter.”

Ivain finally rose from his chair to sit beside her on the bed. He took her hands in his much larger ones. “Family does not abandon family. Either we all march into hell together, or not at all. And we are ready to march, little one. You’re not alone anymore.”

He swept the hair back from her eyes, his hand settling on her cheek. Taly had expected anger or disappointment, but what she found in his eyes instead was understanding and love. Acceptance. More tears threatened to overflow.

“Now, now, none of that.” Ivain pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed beneath her eyes. “Besides, you’re not completely off the hook. If this happens again, Sarina says I’mallowed to drag you back by the hair, which was my original impulse. But no, she insisted that we needed to let you flex your human independence. I told her that was bullshit. Turns out I was right.”

Taly laughed as much as her ribs would allow.

Ivain touched her cheek. “I missed that smile.”

A year had come and gone since she’d last heard his voice or seen his face, and even longer than that since the walls had come down between them. “There’s so much I need to tell you, da’nan.[i]”

Ivain closed his eyes as if in relief. “Don’t worry about that for now. Skye already briefed us on the situation. All I want—”

The firelamps flickered. It was the only warning before a dark rift split open above the bed.

From its depths, a small feline head with too-large ears and luminous blue eyes peered down at them.

“What in the nine hells—” Ivain grabbed Taly from the bed and jumped back, violet flames erupting around them. Wind blew her hair as she was instantly transported across the room.

“Ivain,” Taly said mildly.

“Don’t worry, little one, I won’t let it take you—”

“Ivain.”

“Get back, foul demon—”

“What’s all the commotion—” Sarina froze in the doorway. She looked to Ivain, then to Taly in his arms, and finally to Calcifer’s head poking out upside down from the portal.

Oh no, this was about to get worse.

There was a sound like flint cracking as Sarina’s flames ignited.

“Wait!” Taly kicked and scrambled her way out of Ivain’s vice-like grip.

Through the miracle of Fey healing, her legs were sturdy enough to hold her as she threw herself between him, Sarina,and where a tiny, kitten-like Calcifer fluttered down from the portal, wings folding into his back as he landed on the bed.

“Please, Ivain, Sarina”—Taly held out a hand to halt them from advancing—“can we not freak out?”

Ivain’s eyes gleamed with an otherworldly intensity, piercing through the dense swirl of violet aether that cloaked him in shadows.

With a fierce snarl, Sarina’s flames surged, devouring the air with a heat so intense it threatened to choke the room.

That was a no.

“I guess Skye forgot to mention that I was bringing home a new pet,” Taly muttered dryly. Sensing danger, Calcifer glitched once, twice, as if he were a two-dimensional image being projected onto a faulty screen.

“Stay,” Taly said to the twin flames in the room, one like wildfire, the other a violet blaze. Then she rushed to scoop Calcifer from the bed, hissing under her breath, “Can you act less creepy? You’re not helping.”

He glitched again, splintering and reforming in her arms—readying to flee back between the threads of reality if necessary.

Someone had changed her into ivory lace-trimmed pajamas. Needle-like claws pressed into her skin through the fabric as he scurried up her arm to settle on top of her head.

“This is Calcifer.” His long tail curled around her neck, and his ears stuck up over her hair like a tufted black bow. “He’s not dangerous,” she explained quickly. “Skye, tell them.”