Page 32 of Acolyte (Tempris #2)

-An excerpt from Pointless Battles in History

“To the fey, family is everything, though I wish a few members of mine would have the decency to die.”

Eyewitness accounts report that this phrase was first uttered by a patron in a bar of no renown. Relatively benign in isolation, it was followed by so many rounds of toasting, a drunken mob formed in the hours before dawn.

This, of course, led to the burning of Emir. The blaze was so impressive, the Fire Guild funded the reconstruction, and then promptly relocated their guild.

“Taly?” Skye’s eyes stared at the sky, pain-addled and blank. “Taly, are you there? ”

Taly was sobbing as she crawled through the mud, her nightgown soaked and transparent.

All around, people were lying on the ground, screaming out their pain as the camp burned.

Tents had been reduced to ashes, and the trees of the surrounding forest were still burning.

The sky had turned black with smoke as rain pelted down.

Della. They were in Della. The inn was gone, but she could still see the columns standing through the smoke.

“I’m here, Skye,” Taly choked as she took his face in her hands, turning his head to look at her. “Just stay with me. Please .”

“Taly?” he murmured again. His chest had been split open, and a sword pinned him to the ground. She could see his lungs, his heart. All struggling to hang onto the rhythm like a winding-down clock.

“Em.” His eyes drooped, and Shards, why wouldn’t he look at her? It’s like she wasn’t even there. “Em—Em, I’m here. I’m right here, so—”

“You left.”

He may as well have turned that sword on her.

“You’re gone.”

Taly closed her eyes, pressing a hand to her heart. A dream. The rain was cold, and his blood was warm, but this was just a dream. It had to be.

“Taly?” It wouldn’t be much longer now. Already his breathing was growing weak, rasping out of his chest. His heart struggled to beat.

“I’m here,” she whispered and took his hand. “I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I’m here, Em. I won’t leave again.”

“Taly?” he murmured again .

She lay down on the ground beside him in a puddle of muddy rainwater streaked with blood, surrounded by the screams of the dying. “I’m so sorry, Em. I promise—I’ll never leave again.”

Taly dropped the stack of books on the long library table, tugging her robe more firmly around her body as she took a seat. It was late—late enough that some might consider it early—and like so many nights before, she had lurched awake, sweating and shaking and still screaming Skye’s name.

Some nights were easier than others. A few generous pours of brandy and Calcifer’s soft purring were generally all it took to banish the nightmares back to the darkest recesses of her mind.

But other nights—nights like tonight when she had woken up with the scent of blood still in her nose and Skye’s voice in her head, when she couldn’t quite tell what was real and what wasn’t… she couldn’t stay in her tower.

So, she had come here. There were countless libraries in the palace, and this one was cramped and shabby with threadbare carpets and cracked firelamps.

The light was dim, the chairs uncomfortable, but she still found herself drawn here night after night for the sole reason that this room housed the largest collection of birth records in the Fey Imperium .

Taly pulled the first book from the stack, an accounting of every birth in House Glimmerwood up until the Schism.

Even with her mother’s spells gone, she didn’t remember much from before the fire.

A few faces, snippets of songs, the smell of burnt stew—the few flashes of memory she had managed to recover in the past months were disjointed and scattered.

But she did have a name—Breena. And she knew that her mother had been a member of the Crystal Guard. The enrollment rosters had given her a good place to start, though it was possible her mother had enrolled after the Schism. If that was the case, she would eventually have to expand her search.

“What do you think?” Taly asked the fairy that had been shadowing her since she left her tower. She held out her hand, smiling when a flickering blue orb alighted on her outstretched palm. “Do you think my mother was from House Glimmerwood?”

“I would look farther south,” a soft, feminine voice suggested.

Taly jumped at the sound, turning to find Azura standing in the open doorway. Her hair was unbound and fell to her waist, and she wore a pale ivory dressing gown that shimmered in the dim light. Though she smiled, it didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“House Glimmerwood,” Azura continued, coming closer, “does not allow their women to be trained in the martial arts, and I’m pretty sure your mother was born with a sword in her hand.”

Taly sighed and closed the book, setting it back on the stack. That left 182 more options spread across all major families .

Breena was a common name among the fey.

Taly looked to the Queen. She had the answer. She knew exactly which book contained her mother’s name, but she wouldn’t tell her. Taly already knew that much, which is why she’d never asked.

“It bothers you,” Azura said after a moment’s pause. “Not knowing about your family.”

“Is that surprising?”

“A little,” Azura admitted. “As a time mage, you get used to seeing people out of order, but it never takes away the strangeness of encountering someone when they’re younger than you know them to be.

Still grappling with issues you know they’ll eventually overcome.

It’s like seeing a painting that’s not quite finished. ”

It was an honest answer. One that caught Taly off guard.

“I have a family,” she said, because an honest answer deserved honesty in return.

“Ivain, Sarina, Skye—because of them, I never felt deprived or alone or unloved. But there were times when I still wondered where I came from, who I would’ve been if Vale had never burned.

There are so many things that get taken for granted: birthdays, number of siblings, which parent you take after… ”

Taly shrugged, not sure how to explain the feeling of loss. “Everyone I ever met knew those things about themselves, but I didn’t. It was like there was this entire part of my life that had been excised, and no matter what I did, I was never going to get it back. Of course, it bothers me.”

Azura considered her for a long moment, her expression carefully blank. “Yule,” she finally said.

Taly looked up .

“You were born in the month of Yule,” Azura clarified softly. “You were, and still are, an only child. You look like your mother, though you inherited many of your most prominent personality traits from your father.”

You inherited your father’s recklessness.

Her mother’s words. Something warm settled in Taly’s chest, glowing inside her like an ignited ember as a few more pieces of who she was and who she had been settled into place.

“Walk with me,” Azura said, and Taly rose from her chair, following her out of the library and into the hallway beyond.

“I prefer the art galleries on nights when I can’t sleep,” Azura said as they turned down a corridor that stretched away to the right. “The palace’s collection of Draegon art cannot be rivaled.”

“Sarina used to say that Draegon art was incomprehensible.”

Azura snorted. “I think the more political term would be ‘modern,’ but yes… she makes a valid point.”

More orbs of fairy fire trailed behind them now, drifting on an invisible breeze. Taly held out a hand, and the same fairy that had taken to following her landed gently on her palm.

“Who were they?” Taly asked, gesturing to the ball of light. It wasn’t the first time she’d asked the question, nor would it be the last. Azura and Leto were very good at giving answers that revealed nothing.

“They were friends.” Azura said. It was a dull, hollow answer, filled with quiet misery.

And… a kernel of truth .

Taly tucked it away with the other bits and pieces of information she’d collected over the weeks. She opened her mouth, another question already poised, but Azura held up a hand.

“Let us not speak of such things,” she said. And though her tone was mild, almost pleasant, Taly knew an order when she heard one. “Tell me, dear—what has you out of bed at such a dark hour?”

“I could ask you the same question.”

Azura smiled at the obvious deflection. “I often find myself awake until it’s over.” She glanced at one of the windows they passed, the rain of ash still pelting the glass. “This was the worst day of my life, after all. You try sleeping through that.”

Another honest answer. Taly eyed the woman. She had given up asking “why.” Why shut down the gates? Why kill millions of people? Why topple an empire?

Those were questions the Queen was never going to answer, so she tucked away that piece of information, and answered with a simple, “Dreams,” as they rounded another corner. “I keep dreaming about Skye. Almost every night now.”

“Judging from your expression, I take it these aren’t the good sorts of dreams.”

Taly almost laughed. “Not unless seeing the people you care about get ripped apart by shades counts as good. ”

Azura grabbed her arm, bringing them to a stop. “How long has this been going on? How long have you been dreaming about your island?”

“Since I got here.”

“And why is this the first I’ve heard of it? ”

Taly shrugged half-heartedly. “Because they’re just dreams.”

“Perhaps.” A pause. And a grimace, hastily concealed. “Perhaps not. Your premonitions, the visions you used to see—that was your Sight manifesting itself, but the Sight’s true power lies in dreams.”

Taly’s heart stuttered. “They aren’t real,” she insisted, as though saying it out loud could somehow make it true.