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I hiss out a breath. “You know, I can now remember almost everything about my past. And yet I’m still remembering my interactions with you. Why do you think that is?”

“Perhaps because you’re actively trying not to remember me. Why do you think you’d do something like that, hmmm?”

I know what he’s implying. That Iwanthim, but don’t want to want him, so I’m doing everything I can to suppress any thought of him.

Overconfident bastard.

“Or perhaps my subconscious knows you’re a threat,” I mutter, and he gives me a slow smile as he runs his gaze deliberately down my body.

“A threat,” he murmurs. “Hmm.” He releases my reins, and I take the lead, ignoring his low laugh.

“You want to renegotiate?” His voice is still filled with amusement.

“Yes. It just occurred to me that I’m helping you find something you’ve spent centuries searching for.”

“And preventing the grimoire from falling into Vicana’s hands isn’t enough?”

“No.”

“Let me guess. You want me to kill her.” Calysian rides up next to me. Hope throws her head, and Fox nudges at her with his nose, the movement oddly…playful.

“Yes.” I vowed to do so myself, but even I can admit that Calysian is more likely to succeed at such a task.

He ponders me for a long time. Long enough that I focus on the forest in the distance.

“This territory…it seems to enrage you almost as much as the mention of Kyldare.”

I shrug, but Calysian continues. “I can feel your rage increasing with each village we pass through.”

“I know what it’s like to have your kingdom stolen from you. When the Hybrid Kingdom was invaded, hundreds of thousands of our people died. Those who survived were forced to flee, spending their lives in hiding, until their descendants believed they were corrupt.” My stomach roils at the memory of keeping the dark secret that would have led to my death if I was discovered. My generation….none of us knew who we were or where we were from. All of us grew up hunted, without a home.”

“You could have stayed,” he says. “After the war.” There’s no blame in his voice, simply curiosity.

I swallow around the burning lump in my throat. “I spent my entire adult life away from my kingdom. Even now, I would die to protect it.”

“But?”

“But… it doesn’t feel familiar. I have no memories tying me to the land. I have no grandmother or great grandmother there to tell me our stories. Regner stole that from me. And when I was in Regner’s castle, gossiping about courtiers for hours with the queen, I used to dream I would escape. I fantasized about exploring this world.” I take a deep, shuddering breath. “Still, if the hybrid kingdom had felt like home, I would have stayed. At least for a while.”

“And you wouldn’t have been trapped in that tower.”

I shrug that off. “Vicana is doing that to these people. She’s ripping their land from them. Their home. She’s stealing their connection to their ancestors. She’s killing the neighbors they celebrated with, mourned with, survived with.”

My eyes burn, and I stroke Hope’s neck.

“We may have won the war, but the hybrids that returned…they were forced to rely on the kindness of those who had been lucky to remain. They were forced to integrate into a kingdom they should have always known but now felt foreign.”

Calysian doesn’t speak again. But each time we come across a devastated village, his eyes linger on the destruction. On the death.

Finally, the disputed territory begins to fall away behind us, the fractured earth swallowed by the dense embrace of ancient oaks. The air changes as we move deeper into the forest, the dry scent of dust gradually replaced with the heavy scent of damp greenery. Calysian’s body is tense, and a hard, furious light glints in his eyes.

“I will do this,” he tells me, on our fifth day of traveling. We’ve stopped to allow the horses to drink, and I’m stretching out my cramped legs. Just a few hours ago, we found recent signs of Kyldare’s soliders—a fire that hadn’t been properly put out. We’re catching up to them.

“You will do what?”

“I will kill Vicana. You are right—everything you said. I know what it’s like to have something precious stolen from me. Something that leaves your life in ruins. It’s not the same, and yet in some ways it is. I can see how some people would consider their homes, their land to be as important as the grimoires I seek. It’s a part of them, just as my grimoires are a part of me.”

My heart trips in my chest. The closer we get to the grimoire, the more Calysian changes. They’re small changes—the tilt of his head when he looks at something he doesn’t understand. The way he occasionally speaks, as if the common tongue is foreign to him. The slight pause before he reacts to something I say.