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“And we wanted you to hear this from us.” Sarina gave her arm an encouraging squeeze. “As much as we tried to keep it under wraps, one of the maids got wind. The whole house will likely know by tomorrow morning.”

Ivain reached inside his vest pocket and pulled out a folded slip of paper. Taly let Marshmallow squirm free before taking it.

It was a glamograph. Old, faded, and creased down the center. But the image was clear: a Highborn girl with shining gray eyes stood next to a wall covered in ivy. She wore pink roses in her hair, and a wide smile split her face. A face that, at first glance, Taly nearly confused for her own.

It took her a moment to see that the mouth wasn’t quite right, the jaw too square, the hair a slightly lighter shade of yellow.

Taly flipped over the picture. “Breena Bryer,” she read. It didn’t click at first. “Age 17.”

She turned the image back over. The realization came. It took a moment for her mind to conjure the appropriate word to accompany it.

Mother.

This was… her mother.

Chapter 14

She was younger than when she appeared in front of the palace gates, that last fading remnant of a soul Taly had carried with her unknowingly all her life. But it was still her.

Taly swallowed against the tightness in her throat. “I don’t understand. How do you have this?”

“Breena was my student,” Ivain said softly. “But she was also more than that. She—” He stopped to press a thumb to his eye like he was plugging a breach.

Sarina took over. “As you know, we had another sibling. Tessarin. She and Ivain were twins. She disappeared during the Schism with the other time mages.”

Taly nodded faintly. She remembered pictures from Harbor Manor of a lovely woman with the same pale blonde hair as Ivain, the same easy smile.

“Tess had a son,” Sarina went on. “And that son had a daughter, Breena.” She touched the glamograph in Taly’s hands. “And then Breena had… you.”

“We’re aware of the irony,” Ivain said, his voice just shy of level. “That by taking in what we believed to be an orphaned human, we were really opening our doors to family.Kin.”

Taly blinked at that word.Kin. It felt foreign, like trying on a coat that didn’t fit.

“We never met Breena’s daughter. No one did.” Sarina stroked Taly’s hair, fingers warming to curl the ends. “She kept you cloistered at her brother Esmund’s estate in Picolo. That’s where you were born, where you grew up. We’re told you had a very happy life there with Esmund and his family.”

A flash of memory, of soaring cliffs and rolling green hills. Taly’s fingers curled tighter around the glamograph.

Ivain looked worried, as did Sarina. The glance they exchanged screamed:why isn’t she talking?!

Then a tear dripped onto the image of Breena, still smiling. Then another.

“Thank you,” Taly whispered as more and more tears spilled over.

Sarina wrapped her in a hug. Ivain embraced them both with his long arms.

Taly cataloged each of their scents, so different from what she could remember as a human. Yet her new instincts immediately classified them as family.Kin.

It was a nice feeling.

She pulled back after a moment, roughly wiping the tears from her cheeks. “So, what… what does this mean, exactly?”

Caro didn’t show up in any noble records. She would know—she’d spent sleepless nights at the palace memorizing them. But Highborn eyes didn’t lie. Fey families were large, a natural result when its members continued to breed and nobody ever died. She’d just assumed she was too far down the ladder to waste the ink recording.

Ivain and Sarina, however, were worth recording. And if she was this close to them…

She sensed the next shoe dangling, waiting to fall.

Ivain and Sarina shared a look. They were worried. About her reaction—how she would take this newest piece of world-shattering information.