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Skye stood in the middle of the room, staring at the door across from his. Cracked open, light shone from the other side of it.

That door was closed the last time he was here. Strung with garlands of white chriselmynë and draped with a black mourning sash.

In his darkest moments, he’d thought it might remain that way—that her door would never open again, and he would be left here alone on an empty floor, sleeping next to an empty room while the scent of her gradually faded.

Would he have forgotten that scent?

A hundred years from now, would he still have been able to recall the freckles on her nose or that tuneless little song she was always humming?

How much of her would he have lost? How long would it have taken for that perfect image to blur, the details always slipping away… slipping away… each one like a grain of sand in an hourglass counting down the memories.

Skye took a shaky breath, forcing himself to inhale past the hollow ache constricting his chest—the final fading echo of a loss that had almost broken him.

Thatwouldhave broken him the first morning he woke unable to recall that scent.

His feet began to move, taking him to her door—drawn to that sliver of light, to life, toproof.

He pushed it open and ran straight into a wall of sound. Music blared from the other side of the privacy wards, loud enough to rattle his ribs.

Taly had always loved music. It didn’t matter what kind—Fey, human, he’d even caught her listening to Draegonian bell-gongs unironically. It followed her wherever she went in the house, and he’d admit—silently—that he’d missed the headache.

But that’s not what gave him pause.

Skye stood in Taly’s doorway, afraid to go any further. The white paneled walls and pale gray furniture; the candles flickering in glass jars above the natural stone mantle; the ivory hand-knotted rugs draped over dark hardwood floors—that was all familiar.

It was the layer ofstuffcovering it that confused him.

Haphazard stacks of books formed a maze in front of an already overflowing bookshelf, mounds of clothes blocked off the closet door, and from the table beside the window rose columns of chocolate bars nested between bags of coffee beans, tea, spices, candy... There were even bottles of expensive liquor stacked in the corner between the wall and the dresser, runoff from what was already piled on top of the dresser itself.

Luxury items, he realized. Things that might be subject to rationing during a siege, many of which were already becoming expensive and hard to find now that they had been cut off from Lycian supply lines for over a month.

Not even the bed—a heavy piece of furniture woven from living branches—was left untouched. The usual heap of cozy pillows and blankets had been replaced by bags upon bags upon suitcases, all in various stages of unpacking, and in the middle of it all, sitting cross-legged, was Taly.

Skye had only one thought looking at the chaos. “Where did all of this come from?” But the words were lost beneath the aggressive wail of human guitars and a man singing along ina language he could barely understand about a crocodile and a rock.

She glanced up from a sheet of paper—an inventory, perhaps? She would need one with this mountain of crap. He motioned for her to turn down the music. After a few moments of searching the mess of books and clothes surrounding her, she unearthed a small remote lodged beneath Calcifer’s big body, asleep beside her. She clicked a button, and sweet silence fell.

“I see you found your records,” Skye said. Were his ears ringing?

“Some,” Taly said, going back to her inventory. “Apparently, I was really into mid- to late twentieth-century human rock n’ roll and Nephilim synth the last time we visited the townhouse. Don’t worry. The Divine Apparitions won’t be making a comeback. I know how much you love them.”

And by love, she meant hated with a fiery passion. Nephilim sang in whispers. He’d spent the entire summer thinking he was being haunted by a ghost who refused to enunciate.

Skye stepped further into the room, dodging around cases of ammunition. “Where did you get all of this?” he asked again.

“Oh, uh…” She glanced around. “I didn’t know what I was going to need, so I just brought a little bit of everything.”

“From the palace?”

“Obviously.”

Except it wasn’t—obvious.

“You hadonepack.”

Taly laughed.

“What’s so funny?”