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Something laugh-like escaped me.

She waited another moment, as if she expected me to say more, then slowly added, ‘I imagine you might have some questions.’

Yes.

Questions.

Is this a dream?I wanted to say.

Why didn’t you tell me?I wanted to say.

I missed you before I knew I was missing anything, I wanted to say,needed you more than I needed even food in that small,barren place where I was always the problem, always too much – and you wanted me, didn’t you? You got me here? So where were you when I was told I cried too noisily, or when they locked me in my room whenever guests came over? Where were you when my world burned down?

Instead …

Instead, the first thing I heard myself say out loud was, ‘Who in hell shortens Rosalind toAllie?’

‘Oh.’ With a nervous chuckle, she turned to put the mugs down on the dinner table; she seemed more than happy to keep her gaze on her hands as she poured the tea, steam whirling from the cups. ‘Family name – they were forced to get creative. We had hordes of Rosies and Sallies and Allies and the occasional Lindie around.’

Agenor’s voice echoed in my ears, speaking of my name.A fae equivalent of one of your mother’s family names or the human equivalent of one mine …

Good gods. Why had I never asked what those human traditions had entailed – what my name would have been if I had been born with pointy ears and wings?

‘I see,’ I managed.

She put down the teapot, watching me expectantly with those bright blue eyes.

Zera help me, it couldn’t be this hard, could it?Tell me what you’ve been up to for the past twenty years– that was a reasonable question to ask.Tell me why you never wrote to Agenor. Tell me what game you’re playing now, giving up all you’ve built here for a losing war.But the words felt hollow and insufficient on my lips – what if those were not the questions she wanted to hear, not the questions she had expected from me?

Talking to Consul Rosalind had been easy. Hell, the worst I could do with a political ally was lose her. A mother, though …

A mother, I coulddisappoint.

‘Um,’ I started, desperately. ‘Um, I suppose you could perhaps—'

A sharp, ticking sound interrupted me.

I whirled around, alarmed – were the walls crumbling down? Had masses of furious citizens gathered to throw pebbles at the windows? But all I found, sitting small and fluffy on the sill …

Alyra.

Glaring at me with little dagger eyes as she pecked ferociously at the glass.

‘Oh, good gods,’ Rosalind said, a breathless laugh in her voice – like a sudden release of tension. ‘Is it here for you?’

‘Um, yes.’ I grimaced, stepping over a pile of books to make my way to the window. ‘Her name’s Alyra. You see, when Zera swore me in …’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I wondered about that. At least it’s not more of those bloody snakes.’

I laughed despite myself, swinging open the window. Alyra shot in with a shriek of excitement, landed on the back of an empty chair, and stayed there, hopping impatiently up and down – her thoughts flooding my own once again, more urgently now. Dangling worms. Warm, soft wings. Again that little nest, blue eggs on a little bed of moss …

Oh, gods help me.

Eggs.

‘You had already figured it out?’ My voice shot up a little. ‘You knew who she was and you tried to tell me by showing meeggs?’

Obviously, she informed me with a roll of her beady eyes. How else was I supposed to learn that I had crawled out of Rosalind’s egg twenty-one years ago? Granted, she wasn’t sure what human eggs looked like, but that seemed a rather minor detail; and had I really not seen the link between those lovely, tasty worms and whatever this woman had fed me in my earliest hours?