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‘Will do,’ Tared said dryly. ‘Although I suspect he might announce himself as soon as he hears of your latest shenanigans.’

Or as soon as Alyra tries to clip his wings, Creon added.

That at least pulled something like a laugh from my depleted mind. Then I staggered off and lay in a soft nymph bed for the rest of the afternoon, resting my limbs, staring at the roof of braided branches, unable to stop thinking of hands that could no longer feel.

I didn’t remember falling asleep, but it must have happened at some point, given that I was woken up abruptly by the double alarm of Alyra’s squealing and Agenor’s deep voice.

‘Whatdid she …’

I was given about half a heartbeat to jolt up in bed – ‘She might be sleeping!’ Lyn cried in that moment – before all six-foot-something of my father’s winged stature burst through the beaded curtain that covered the doorway of my nymph dome. With his smooth silk shirt and his hair brushed into meticulous locks, he looked like he’d been pulled straight from a routine day of meetings and strategizing – but his familiar green-brown eyes were wide like saucers in the low light of early evening.

And something about him was different.

Not the hard set of his jaw or the keys around his neck or the agitated spread of his wings behind his shoulders … but hishands.My gaze, travelling down, latched on to his fingers, or more particularly, on to the faint shine that glowed around the tips of them, shrouding his well-kept nails in a hint of gold.

Gold – the colour of the gods’ blood.

His gaze had hooked onto my hands, too, which lay curled into my blankets. I saw no trace of that strange glow around them, but his eyes grew impossibly wider.

‘Good gods.’ That tone would have been called shrill for any lighter voice. ‘Good gods.’

Alyra scurried in after him, shaking her little white-grey head irritably against the clay beads. The look she threw me was the look a weary governess might send the parents of her most hopeless subjects:I tried so hard to explain the situation, it said with an air of righteous indignation,but of course you can’t expect a fool with such an excessive wingspan to make sense of this.

‘Oh, good,’ Lyn said, a little out of breath as she slipped in after my familiar. ‘You’re awake.’

‘Not much choice,’ I said sourly, swinging my legs to the floor and rubbing the sleep from my eyes. ‘Evening, Agenor. I gather they told you about my latest feats?’

He just stared at me blankly – a little more blankly, really, than I thought reasonable for a male who had one day drunk Korok’s blood from his veins to achieve the exact same thing.

‘Just trying to fit in with the family traditions,’ I added, pulling a face and shoving to the edge of the mattress. With a fae lord, a phoenix, and a bird hovering beside the bed, the nymph dome was about as full as it could be without bursting at the seams. ‘Could you all give me a moment to get up, perhaps?’

Lyn modestly retreated, but Agenor seemed to have taken root where he stood, and Alyra merely fluttered up to the table containing my soaps and washing bowl. I snorted and got to my feet nonetheless. Smells of frying onions and fresh bread reached me from outside, and I wasn’t going to let a bewildered father stand between me and dinner.

‘What did Korok give you?’ I said as to him as I tugged the first sweater I could find from my bag. I might as well use the occasion to learn a little more about common divine practices. ‘You don’t have the other types of colour magic, right?’

He let out a baffled chuckle. ‘Othertypes of colour magic?’

‘That sounds like a no.’ I pulled the sweater over my head and beamed at him. ‘Surface magic, Zera called it. The Mother has it, too. It’s how she binds people. What did you get – just the snakes?’

‘Just the snakes, yes,’ he grunted, looking like he might faint any moment. ‘Em, do you have any idea … Zera has never sworn in anyone she hasn’t known for decades.Noneof them ever did something like …’

‘Well,’ I said practically, ‘shehasknown me for decades, hasn’t she? I just didn’t know her back. Also, this is quite an extraordinary situation, you must admit that. Also, I suppose it helps that I carried that bag.’

He went grey – actuallygrey– in the dimming light. ‘You didwhat?’

‘Carried the bag of grief.’ I flung some yellow at the shoulder of my dress, turning the light fabric thick and sturdy. ‘Let’s go get dinner. Alyra?’

The little falcon squealed and jumped from the table top, surged towards me, and landed clumsily on my shoulder. The warmth of her feathery body against my cheek was a comfort, the immediate connection so strong I almost flinched.

‘Em,’ Agenor said again, sounding like he was holding himself together with rapidly unravelling stitches, ‘lifting that bag is impossible.’

‘Yes, so it turned out.’ I stepped into the honeysuckle-scented world outside and held aside the bead cords for him. ‘She forgot to tell me that until I’d already done it, though. Oh, and she sends you her regards. And her compliments for that lovely spine you uncovered recently.’

Lyn laughed out loud. Agenor made a somewhat choked sound as he followed me onto the path, an unhealthy pallor still dulling the bronze of his skin.

‘Anything else?’ he said, sounding like he was telling a healer that he might as well amputate all his limbs at once, if they needed to be chopped off anyway.

‘Zera didn’t know where she is,’ I said. ‘Allie.’