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“Have a seat,” she said, gesturing to the stool before the mirrored vanity.

I was eager to get back to Thalia, but I still sat.

Before arriving at this palace, it had been some time since I’d been fussed over like this. I’d never admitted it to Aveline or anyone else—and likely never would—but a part of me had missed my days of extravagant dresses and hairstyles, even though I hadn’t been overly fond of such things when I was younger. I guess it was true that you didn’t often realize what you had until it was gone.

“You have your mother’s hair,” Aveline commented under her breath as she tugged and twisted at the strands, attempting to braid them. “Beautiful but wild.”

I tensed, gripping the plush cushion beneath me. She clearly meant my realmother—but the wordmotherstill made me think of the Queen of Eldris.

Another thing I’d taken for granted for so many years.

It was difficult to imagine that there had ever been another in her place, but curiosity made me ask, “What happened to that real mother of mine?”

Aveline didn’t answer right away. I watched her in the mirror, her eyes scrunching and her lips pursing as she struggled to find words. “Most who give birth to one of the Vaelora don’t live to tell the tale. Your mother was no exception.”

“And my father?”

Another long pause, during which her hands became uncharacteristically clumsy as they continued to comb through my dark, wild locks.

“Aveline?”

“...I don’t know. The King of Rivenholt died long before you were born. No one knows who laid with Queen Isolde after him; she never revealed his identity—not even on her deathbed.”

My fists clenched tighter into the velvet cushion.

“If you had a father who loved you in the Above, as I understand you did, then I’d consider him your true parent and not worry about the rest.”

Ididconsider him my true father, even now that he’d been gone for years. Even knowing he shared no blood with me. He was still the one who had raised me, doing everything he could to protect me.

And he’d ended up dead because of it.

The mysterious circumstances surrounding his murder still needed solving, but one fact now seemed clear and undeniable: If he hadn’t been harboring me in his palace, he wouldn’t have ended up on the wrong end of Luminor’s blade.

The one I considered my true mother would not be frozen in that palace, either, a victim of my out-of-control power. Because Orin had clearly lied about this, too—he’d tried to convince me that all the things that had happened on the night of my birthday were not my fault.

But so much of itwas.

Ihad ripped open the earth. The darkness from Below had surged into the Above world because it was trying to get tome.

And now the only way to save the one I called Mother was for me to somehow balance and breathe life into Noctaris once more. Bastian was convinced that doing so would settle those restless shadows at Rose Point, allowing the victims there to break free of their curse.

But what if I couldn’t do it?

A numbness overtook my body. Aveline seemed to notice; her head came to rest on top of mine, her arms encircling me in a gentle embrace. Pulling back a moment later, she carefully stroked my hair, pinning it away from my face with a golden, orchid-shaped pin.

“You look beautiful, my lady.”

I managed a small smile despite the aching pain in my heart. “Thank you.”

My vision was blurry. I couldn’t make out my reflection through the emotion swelling my eyes, but I didn’tfeelbeautiful. I felt like a monster who brought death and darkness wherever I roamed—one who had done so from the second I’d been born, apparently.

Had my true mother even had a chance to know my face before my shadows swallowed her up? What about my brother’s? Had she heard my voice? Or his? Was she the one who had given us our names?

What if I ended up responsible for the deaths ofbothmy mothers?

They were heavy questions. And I understood why Orin had tried to protect me from their weight. But that didn’t make me any less angry about it.

All those years spent feeling like I didn’t belong in the Above, and nobody had bothered to tell mewhy. I hadn’t understood my magic, so I had grown to fear it.