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I love this version of Ruskin as much as the previous one. I wasn’t sure at first, but my feelings have carried on through the chaos, only growing stronger with each passing day. If Maidar’s plan doesn’t work, and Ruskin has to give up on ever retrieving his memories, would I feel any differently? I know the answer without hesitating.

“It’s your choice, Rus,” I say, facing him. “Whatever you want, it doesn’t change anything for me.”

He pulls me in for a kiss that takes my breath away, my head spinning by the time we break apart.

“This,” he says, stroking my cheek. “This is all so wonderful. If there’s more of it to remember, I don’t want to miss it.”

I make a face. “It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, I’m afraid. Even I can admit our past is…complicated.”

He chuckles as if this doesn’t concern him the slightest.

“I want all of it, Ella. All of you.”

When he talks to me like this, all my other problems seem to melt away. By the time Maidar knocks on the door, I’ve started to wonder what I was so nervous about.

The old tutor shuffles in with a stack of scrolls, immediately dumping them on the chaise.

“You know, my house used to be the perfect size to perform whatever activity I needed to. Then I started having to host so many people and conduct all these experiments and suddenly there’s not enough space. So I find myself spending half the week lugging my things from there to here.”

“We appreciate your help, Magister Cragfoot,” Ruskin says with a respectful nod, and Maidar eyes us, seeming to thaw a little.

“Yes, well, if this case wasn’t so interesting I wouldn’t bother,” he says. Ruskin and I exchange a look, knowing that as long as we keep needing his help, Maidar is likely to give it, no matter what excuses he’ll give as justification.

The old tutor begins unrolling his charts, explaining as he goes.

“We’ll need you here this time, Eleanor,” he says. “In fact, you’re going to be key to this experiment.”

“I am? Why?”

“I’m getting to it,” he grumbles, laying out a drawing that depicts the two realms—the human realm and Faerie—sat opposite each other in a vast universe, with a black, yawning space between labeled “Interra” in curling script.

“From my reading, Interra functions as a kind of warped mirror version of the two realms, but absent of the people and other creatures that make them what they are.”

I nod, remembering the parts of Faerie and Styrland that existed there in a kind of ghostly form, adrift from their whole.

“I think your visit, Stiltskin, and the attacks you underwent there, left your memory locked up within your mind, under the hold of Interra’s magic. In effect, your memories are trapped in the in-between, even if they never truly left your mind.”

“Is that why he remembers the realms themselves, and that there are different courts? Because Interra has parts of them?” I ask.

“Yes, quite probably, and hence why he also recalls very little about the people who occupy these spaces.”

“Forgive me, but when are we going to hear about this solution of yours, Magister Cragfoot?” Ruskin says impatiently.

But Maidar gives him a stern look. “That was always your problem, Stiltskin. Always more interested in the cure than the diagnosis. You shall know in good time,” he says. “Anyway, it was your phrasing that put me on to the idea: ‘Darkness calls to darkness.’ An old magical term to recognize the phenomena of like magic attracting like. For Evanthe, the dark magic she already carried attracted the darkness from Interra that you saw in battle yesterday.” He turns to me. “But your bond with each other survived the impact of Interra—you could feel him even across the divide of realms, correct?”

“Er, yes,” I say. “Painfully.”

“And even when it robbed him of all else, Interra could not take the bond from him. It is the opposite of dark magic—a pure union of power that Interra simply couldn’t touch, and so your connection remained, when all other points of familiarity were lost.”

Ruskin steps closer to me, brushing his fingers against my hand. I smile at him, proud that our bond cannot be broken.

“The bond was even strong enough to shape what Interra decided to gift you, Eleanor Thorn.” Maidar makes a point of meeting my gaze, and I wonder how much information he will mention in front of Ruskin.

“Her change in appearance?” Ruskin asks, looking between us.

“That, and more. Her heightened senses and her physical resilience, among other things.”

“I thought they were just from the bond,” Ruskin says. “After all, naminai bonds are rare enough that we’re not sure of the full consequences of them, correct?”