Page 54 of Acolyte (Tempris #2)

He took the dried meat first, savoring it. They wouldn’t have meat for very much longer. Ivain had decided that livestock were too inefficient for the number of people they had to feed, which meant that when their current stores ran out, it would be grain and vegetables and little else .

Aimee chuckled softly as she took up a spot beside him on the wall, leaning out so she could see the mages working down below. “I suppose it wouldn’t matter if I said you were pushing yourself too hard.”

He gave her a playful roll of his eyes. Leave it to his sister to worry. “Once the food supply is stable, Ivain said I can focus on healing.”

“And when will that be?”

“Soon.” He took another bite, chewing. The meat was tough, but the spices were good. “It should get easier soon.” He hoped. All their plans hinged on the Aion Gate opening. It was the only way off the island, and they just had to survive until then.

Aimee’s aether sparked blue around her gloved fingers, and a ribbon of water swirled through the air. “So what were you thinking about when I got here?” she asked, idly playing with that bit of water magic like one might a piece of string. “You looked worried.”

Aiden found his sister’s eyes, the same jewel blue as his. As their mother’s. “It’s nothing,” he lied.

Aimee’s lips thinned. “You frown when you’re worried, and it leaves these little marks between your eyes that look like italics.”

He snorted, saying around a mouthful of food, “Are you telling me I have worry lines?”

She nodded sagely. “Big ones.”

The ribbon of water formed itself into a hunched little man with a deeply lined face that he could only assume was meant to be him.

Aimee had always loved molding water, creating little creatures to do her bidding.

If their stepfather had allowed it, she could’ve done great things, maybe even surpassed their father.

As it stood, she’d only ever been allowed to study ladylike pursuits. Glamours. And she’d never fought back.

A small part of him still resented her for that.

Reaching out, he waved a hand through the spirals of water magic as they began to reform, turning them to mist. “It’s Skye.”

As expected, Aimee perked up. She was always more than eager to talk about the heir to Ghislain, though Aiden doubted that she loved him as much as she claimed. They had nothing in common, other than their parents trying to push them together.

“He’s not doing well,” Aiden went on. “And there’s a piece of information that I’ve been holding onto that I’m still not sure if I should tell him.”

“Let me guess—about Talya?”

He nodded. “When I was treating her for the harpy venom, I found something. Something big. I… I know why she left home last year.”

Aimee’s brows rose. Their aunt and uncle had never spoken openly about Taly’s departure, but it was clear to those that knew them just how devastating that loss had been.

“And you didn’t tell anyone?” she asked. “Why?”

“Because Taly begged me not to, and I couldn’t bring myself to betray her trust, even though I probably should have. For her own sake. Now that she’s gone, though...”

It didn’t matter. There was no trust to break. The information didn’t hold the same weight as it had before. The Sanctorum couldn’t hunt a dead time mage. They couldn’t execute the people that protected her, if only because there was nothing left to protect.

“Taly was having visions.” The words cracked out of him, and he hadn’t realized just how hard it had been to keep that secret inside. “Of the future. Fractions of a second, but still…” He took a breath, the few bites of food in his stomach turning to lead. “She had time magic, Aimee.”

Aimee’s eyes went wide. “That’s impossible,” she breathed. “Humans don’t have magic.”

“This one did.”

There was a pause as that information settled in, then she hissed, “And she told you?” The air around her sparked blue. “Why you? Why in Shards’ name would she tell you ?”

He wasn’t sure when they had started speaking in whispers, but the accusation in her voice was evident.

“I forced her to,” he said. By telling him this secret, Taly had put his life at risk.

She had made him a target of the Sanctorum, and that wasn’t something Aimee would forgive easily.

Besides their mother, they were all the other had.

“I backed her into a corner, and I forced her to tell me. She didn’t want to. ”

That placated his sister—somewhat. Her fingers gripped the side of the wall in what was no doubt a white-knuckled grip beneath her black gloves.

“That’s why you went to look for her. Because if she’s a time mage…

” She shook her head, sneering. “Shards, this was all because of your stupid duty to that stupid Crystal Guard.”

True—to an extent. As a time mage, Taly had been the closest living link to the Time Shard.

Which then made it his duty to protect her.

But he’d also gone into that forest looking for a friend, and the way his sister was glaring at him, her careless words, the memory of past arguments, and all those underlying resentments…

“Watch your tongue,” he snapped back. “The Crystal Guard was our father’s legacy.”

“And it got him killed!”

Aimee’s expression was thunderous as she stared him down, and how she did that, how she managed to look so much like their mother when all hell was about to break loose…

He looked away. Needless to say, his sister hadn’t been happy about his decision to join the Crystal Guard.

She’d been even less happy when he’d signed away his claim to their father’s lands in Picolo, in effect making her a future baroness.

He’d had to do it, of course. It was the only way their stepfather was ever going to let him go.

Not that any of that mattered now that Picolo and the Crystal Guard were literal worlds away.

He sighed. “I just… I don’t know if I should tell Skye. He’s not okay, and I don’t know if this information will bring him any comfort or if it will just make things worse.”

Aimee pushed herself away from the wall, only to fall back against it when there was nowhere to pace. She jerked her head, as if coming to a decision. “There’s something I need to show you.”

Reaching into her cloak, she produced two glamographs that she laid out on the stone ledge side-by-side.

The first, he recognized. It was their baby cousin sitting on the front steps of their family home. She had died during her Attunement Ceremony when she was only five years old. This glamograph had been taken a week before what would become her final birthday .

In the other, the child looked remarkably similar. Blonde hair, gray eyes, similar features, similar build. But she was human where their cousin was fey.

“Well?” she said when he didn’t say anything.

“Well what?” he asked, looking between the glamographs.

Aimee gave a soft growl. “Don’t you see it?”

“I see two children that look remarkably similar considering they’re two different species.”

She pointed to the picture of the human girl. “This is Talya.”

“I figured.” That was Harbor Manor in the background.

“And this is—”

“I know who that is, Aimee.”

“And?” Her voice became sharp, almost shrill.

Aiden sighed. This wasn’t the first time something like this had happened.

She was always searching for ghosts where there were none to be found, holding on to the hope that maybe one of the people they had loved and lost might not actually be gone.

Their father, their aunt, their baby cousin—Aimee had been so young when they died.

They had all left for Arylaan on the same day, all said their final goodbye as they boarded the same train.

In her memory, the loss had become compounded, each death connected in a way that simply didn’t exist.

All these years later, and she was still grasping at threads, hoping to find answers to questions that had already been settled.

“ And ,” he said pointedly, “people change as they grow. You looked just like Father when you were small, but now you’re the spitting image of Mother.

I was born with blonde hair, and then it turned red.

These two children look very much alike–I agree with you on that.

But Taly was human. Our cousin was fey.”

Aimee’s hands clenched into fists. “But if Talya had—”

She slid her eyes to the ground below. There were only two shadow mages within earshot—Eula and Kato—but they were bickering, just like they had been all morning.

“— time magic ,” she mouthed; then continued out loud, “that would mean she wasn’t completely human.”

“Yes,” he admitted. “Most humans wouldn’t have that kind of reaction to harpy venom, and I’ve never heard of one surviving faeflower.”

Aimee let out a muted squeal. “You gave her faeflower?”

Aiden winced, but nodded. He’d taken a huge risk when he’d given Taly what, at the time, he’d thought was poison. It had worked—thankfully—but he still shuddered at the thought of what if it hadn’t .

“That means she was fey,” Aimee insisted.

“Partly, yes. But she looked human.”

Letting out a frustrated growl, she banged her fists on the battlement. “Why do you keep saying that? A glamour can easily make something look like a thing it isn’t.”

“Because it’s relevant. Think about what kind of glamour it would take to pull off what you’re suggesting. It would have to grow with her, change as she changed. I’ve never seen a glamour like that.”

“Father could’ve done it. Easily.”

And there it was. Aimee didn’t care about Taly. She didn’t care about their cousin. It always led back to their father, the only person capable of liberating their family from the man who had taken his place—Lord Aris Thorne.

“Father,” Aiden said, “couldn’t have put iron in her blood. That wasn’t an illusion, else it would’ve snapped the moment I removed that blood from her body. Explain that to me. Explain why I could go right now and test one of Taly’s blood samples, and it would show me iron instead of aether?”

“I… I don’t know,” Aimee replied, frustrated. He could already see the inevitable pain rushing in to fill the space where that momentary hope had been. “It’s just…”

“I know.” Sometimes, it was hard not to hope.

They were quiet for several long moments. Eventually, she gathered up the glamographs, tucking them back inside her cloak.

“For what it’s worth,” she said softly, not quite meeting his eyes, “I think you need to tell Skylen about Talya.”

“I know,” he said again. Because he did. “I’m just afraid of giving him false hope. He’s grieving, and I don’t want to be the reason he goes off and does something foolish.”

“Then wait until after the funeral. Let them bury her, mourn her, but after that, you have to tell them. If not Skylen, then at least Uncle Ivain. It’s going to hurt, but they deserve to know.”

Aiden sighed and pulled the jug of wine from the sack. “I was afraid you were going to say that.” He took a long draught. “On a scale of one to ten, how dead do you think I’m going to be when Aunt Sarina finds out?”

It was a feeble attempt at humor. Aimee took the wine from his hands. “An eight. ”

“Only an eight?”

She shrugged and took a sip of wine. “You saved Talya’s life after the harpy, and then risked your own trying to find her. There’s a decent chance she’ll let you live. Though you’re going to get a little singed.”