Page 29

The fifth-floor common area was dark. The fire in the hearth had burned down to embers.

Skye stood in the middle of the room, staring at the door across from his. Cracked open, light shone from the other side of it.

That door was closed the last time he was here. Strung with garlands of white chriselmyne and draped with a black mourning sash.

In his darkest moments, he’d thought it might remain that way—that her door would never open again, and he would be left here alone on an empty floor, sleeping next to an empty room while the scent of her gradually faded.

Would he have forgotten that scent?

A hundred years from now, would he still have been able to recall the freckles on her nose or that tuneless little song she was always humming?

How much of her would he have lost? How long would it have taken for that perfect image to blur, the details always slipping away… slipping away… each one like a grain of sand in an hourglass counting down the memories.

Skye took a shaky breath, forcing himself to inhale past the hollow ache constricting his chest—the final fading echo of a loss that had almost broken him.

That would have broken him the first morning he woke unable to recall that scent.

His feet began to move, taking him to her door—drawn to that sliver of light, to life, to proof .

He pushed it open and ran straight into a wall of sound. Music blared from the other side of the privacy wards, loud enough to rattle his ribs.

Taly had always loved music. It didn’t matter what kind—Fey, human, he’d even caught her listening to Draegonian bell-gongs unironically. It followed her wherever she went in the house, and he’d admit—silently—that he’d missed the headache.

But that’s not what gave him pause.

Skye stood in Taly’s doorway, afraid to go any further. The white paneled walls and pale gray furniture; the candles flickering in glass jars above the natural stone mantle; the ivory hand-knotted rugs draped over dark hardwood floors—that was all familiar.

It was the layer of stuff covering it that confused him.

Haphazard stacks of books formed a maze in front of an already overflowing bookshelf, mounds of clothes blocked off the closet door, and from the table beside the window rose columns of chocolate bars nested between bags of coffee beans, tea, spices, candy.

.. There were even bottles of expensive liquor stacked in the corner between the wall and the dresser, runoff from what was already piled on top of the dresser itself.

Luxury items, he realized. Things that might be subject to rationing during a siege, many of which were already becoming expensive and hard to find now that they had been cut off from Lycian supply lines for over a month.

Not even the bed—a heavy piece of furniture woven from living branches—was left untouched. The usual heap of cozy pillows and blankets had been replaced by bags upon bags upon suitcases, all in various stages of unpacking, and in the middle of it all, sitting cross-legged, was Taly.

Skye had only one thought looking at the chaos. “Where did all of this come from?” But the words were lost beneath the aggressive wail of human guitars and a man singing along in a language he could barely understand about a crocodile and a rock.

She glanced up from a sheet of paper—an inventory, perhaps?

She would need one with this mountain of crap.

He motioned for her to turn down the music.

After a few moments of searching the mess of books and clothes surrounding her, she unearthed a small remote lodged beneath Calcifer’s big body, asleep beside her.

She clicked a button, and sweet silence fell.

“I see you found your records,” Skye said. Were his ears ringing?

“Some,” Taly said, going back to her inventory. “Apparently, I was really into mid- to late twentieth-century human rock n’ roll and Nephilim synth the last time we visited the townhouse. Don’t worry. The Divine Apparitions won’t be making a comeback. I know how much you love them.”

And by love, she meant hated with a fiery passion. Nephilim sang in whispers. He’d spent the entire summer thinking he was being haunted by a ghost who refused to enunciate.

Skye stepped further into the room, dodging around cases of ammunition. “Where did you get all of this?” he asked again.

“Oh, uh…” She glanced around. “I didn’t know what I was going to need, so I just brought a little bit of everything.”

“From the palace?”

“Obviously.”

Except it wasn’t—obvious.

“You had one pack.”

Taly laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

She gave him a sweet, sympathetic look of pity, but he still didn’t get the joke.

With a sigh, she pushed Calcifer’s limp bulk out of the way. Then, sliding off the bed, socked feet and bare legs emerged from underneath her. She’d changed into an oversized, cream-colored sweater that drooped off one shoulder and swallowed the rest of her body.

It was his, obviously. And try as he might, he couldn’t quite muster the same irritation he used to feel when she pillaged his closet.

She’d rearranged everything, most likely, and he would spend the next few days hunting for his shirts.

But still—something in him liked it. Her, wrapped up like she belonged to him.

Her arms slipped around his neck when she was close enough. His hands found her waist immediately, tracing the curves he’d memorized in dreams. The thin, worn fabric of his sweater let him feel so much more than the heavy winter layers that had kept them apart until now.

“Em.” She said his name in a tone that meant he was very stupid. “We just came from a mystical palace filled with infinite resources to an island with no supply chains, no army, and no communication with the outside world. And you really thought I only packed one bag?”

He didn’t have a response to that, so he pinched her, low on her hip, just to hear her squeak. She flinched into him, pushing their bodies together in ways he didn’t mind one bit.

“I’m going to need you to explain this one to me,” he said. “How exactly did you become the world’s best smuggler?”

Taly bit her lip, thinking. “Have I explained pocket universes to you yet?” He shook his head.

“Okay, time is like a tapestry, yada yada, where every moment is a combination of threads carefully woven together. When I create a pocket universe, I’m essentially pulling out a single loop of one of those threads to create a gap in the Weave.

Like a pocket. Inside, I can store items.”

She removed an arm from around his neck to hold out a hand. As if from thin air, a strudel dusted with chunks of rock sugar fell into it. She took a bite, then held it up for him to do the same.

“It’s still hot,” he said, puffing around the molten sugarberry filling.

“I stored them right after they came out of the oven.” She took one last bite before giving him the rest to finish, which he did happily. Sugar was already becoming hard to find.

“How much can you carry?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t hit any item limits yet. If one pocket fills up, I just open another one. The bigger issue is remembering what I’ve stored and where. I’m still working on building an indexing system.”

A hint of glee shimmered in her eyes. Leave it to Taly to get excited about organizing things.

“So, you can just pull stuff out of thin air?” His grin sharpened. “That’s… awesome. You’re like an interdimensional pack mule.”

“Kind of?” Her nose wrinkled. “Though I’m not sure I appreciate being called a mule .”

He opened his mouth—

“Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m stubborn as one,” she muttered with a roll of her eyes. A knock sounded from the door to the attic suite. She moved to get it, saying over her shoulder, “I’m disappointed, Skye. You had a whole year, and you’re still using the same material.”

“That’s not what I was going to say,” he called after her.

“Yes, it was,” she called back.

She wasn’t wrong.

“And no, I didn’t look into the future. You’re that predictable.”

Skye fought back a smirk, knowing she’d probably meant it as an insult. But if showing up for her, time and again, made him predictable, then he’d take the hit.

Voices filtered from the other room. Taly came back a moment later, looking more tired than before.

“Sarina?” he asked. He’d heard them talking in the hall.

Taly nodded. “She was just checking to make sure I’m still here and not ‘running away from all these big feelings she knows I must be having.’ ”

“Well, you don’t have the best track record.”

Taly huffed and rubbed at her eyes wearily.

“They told you, didn’t they,” he guessed. About her family, her father …

When Ivain had told him… well, shocked would be an understatement. Skye vaguely remembered stammering something that equated to, I guess that explains her expensive taste in liquor.

Since selling their lands on the Twin Isles and moving to the human realm, House Arendryl had made its fortune several times over distilling brandy and other luxury alcohols. Their champagne cognac was her favorite. She could pick it out of a line up blindfolded.

After all the years of searching, of wondering where she came from, he’d expected relief or even excitement to finally have answers to some of those questions. But mostly, she just seemed… tired.

“Sorry,” he said. “I would’ve said something. It just didn’t seem like my story to tell.”

“No. No, it’s not that.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Taly shook her head.

“Do you want to bury it in a deep hole, never to be seen again?”

That got him a nod. And a smile at his supernatural powers of deduction.

“That’s not the healthiest coping mechanism, but you’ve had a long day, so I’ll let you have it,” he said, closing the gap between them.

Her mouth quirked. “How generous of you.”

Leaning down, he stole a kiss. “I thought so too.” Then hitching his hands beneath her knees, he lifted a grinning Taly into his arms so that her legs wrapped around his waist. “We have a problem.”

“Oh?”

“You’ve completely destroyed this room.” He turned them in a circle so she could get a complete picture of the carnage. “Does that mean we’re sleeping in mine?”

“We?” Her cheeks flushed slightly. “Who said anything about a ‘we’ in this sleeping arrangement?”

They’d spent every night since the palace together, and Skye had no intention of going back to sleeping alone. So, he laid his cards on the table.

“I like starting and ending my day with you beside me. From now on, we’ll be sharing a room.”

Surprise sparked in those molten gray eyes. Straightforward sincerity wasn’t usually their thing. “Was that a command or a question?”

He sighed. “Taly…”

“I’m serious. Just because you’re a prince doesn’t mean you get to order me around.”

He gave her another pinch on the hip, and she gave him another squeal. And another when he leaned her forward far enough that her hair brushed the floor, holding her there until—

“Okay! Fine.” She was laughing and flushed when he raised her back up and into a kiss. “My room,” she conceded, and he kissed her again, delighting in the sounds of her trailing laughter and soft, panted breathing. “It’s bigger. And I have access to the roof.”

“Are we going to have to dig to find the bed?”

In answer, there was a soft whoosh , as if a gust of wind suddenly swept through the room. Or maybe that was the sound of air rushing in to fill the empty space left behind after the books, the clothes, the weapons, and the mountain of everything else vanished.

As in disappeared. As in suddenly gone.

Skye blinked. “Pocket universe,” he murmured.

It didn’t matter how often he saw it—Taly using magic would always feel a little unreal.

He resisted the urge to point out that she probably shouldn’t have wasted the aether, even as her breaths came shorter and faster.

She’d just burn twice as much to prove a point.

Taly had always been stubborn, even when they were children, pushing through broken bones and bloody knees.

The Queen’s training had only seemed to sharpen that edge, turning her persistence into a weapon she wielded against her own limits.

He’d seen it in the woods—how she pushed through pain like it didn’t matter. Clearly, he had his work cut out for him. Because if she wouldn’t look out for herself, then he would. It was a role he was used to filling.

And he knew exactly where he needed to start.

He turned them towards the bed, where Calcifer sprawled to take up even more of it.

“The mimic can’t stay,” Skye said. Taly pouted, but he remained firm. “ No .”

There were things he planned to do to her in this bed that he was pretty sure the mimic wouldn’t approve of. Tonight, sleep was the priority—they’d both had a hell of a day. But he figured better to take care of the problem now.

She must’ve been thinking the same, considering how easily she gave in. “I’m sorry, boy. You can sleep in the common area tonight. I’ll get your house set up tomorrow.”

“He has a house ?”

Taly’s mouth twisted. “Of course, Skye. Why wouldn’t he have a house?”

Calcifer slunk out of the room, tail flicking like a whip—glaring at Skye, who glared right back.

“Seriously?” she asked. “What is it with you two?”

“We’re each a threat to the other’s existence,” he said lowly, staring the beast down until he moved out of sight.

She rolled her eyes, and he punished her with a hard kiss. He didn’t feel like explaining the territorial instincts of two predators circling the same prey—even if one was after her blood and the other… something far deeper.

He walked them to the newly emptied bed, where he dropped her. Taly laughed as she bounced.

“Time for bed,” he announced. She opened her mouth. “Let me guess—you’re about to tell me you don’t need to sleep either?”

“I don’t feel— tired ,” she mumbled, stifling a yawn halfway through.

He climbed in beside her, pulling up the blankets to cover both. “You’re full of shit, Caro.”

She tried to kick him beneath the blankets as they settled into a comfortable tangle of limbs. “Am not.”

“Close your eyes.” If he could just get her to do that much, her own exhaustion would take care of the rest. He’d talked to Aiden. He knew how much blood she’d lost. Knew how many days it had been since she’d really slept. It was a miracle she was still standing.

Skye held her, his arm tight around her, and she just... let him. No hesitation, no second thoughts. Even though he could break her with an accidental sneeze, she had never once flinched from him. Instead, she snuggled closer, like he was the safest place in the world. He’d missed that too.

Her breath was steady. Strong. He let it fill the space between them. Let it drown out the ghosts in his head.

She was here.

She was safe.

She was home .

And at last, so was he.