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She was starting to lean back towards her original hypothesis, despite Skye and Ivain’s endless optimism: maybe she was just a shitty time mage.

The thought burrowed deep, coiling under her ribs where it festered. The gifts were still coming, and she was still no closer to finding Bill.

She told herself she wasn’t trapped. She told herself again. Louder. And when that still didn’t stop the shake in her hands, or her breath from suddenly snagging mid-step, she turned to what always worked—staying busy.

If she couldn’t fix this, she had to find something she could fix. Because stillness had never done her any good. It made her think too much. And Bill would love that, wouldn’t he? If she unraveled herself for him.

So, when Aiden mentioned they needed a new brewsmith, she practically vaulted over the breakfast table to volunteer.

The human sickness was still spreading, and supplies were running low—especially pain potion. After a year living and training with Azura, Taly knew the recipe by heart. As well as those for regeneration elixirs, most major antidotes, and she made a mean wound salve, if she did say so herself.

Shivering beneath the warming lamps that had been dragged into the cramped canvas tent, Taly sprinkled a light dusting of gaderee root over the bubbling cauldron.

An enchanted cauldron, of course. Not iron like in the human legends, but burnished viridian with green and violet wires veining the sides.

The herbs had also been specially prepared—harvested and dried before being allowed to rest in a bin with earth crystals for a period of exactly six days and six hours.

“Is that the next batch…?” Aiden asked, ducking in out of the mist. Outside the potion tent, people milled about, standing in lines, some carrying crates or medical supplies, others sitting or lying on the ground, huddled against the cold while they waited for the healers to assess them.

Taly nodded at the rows of vials and carefully labeled wire baskets on the shelves behind her.

She’d spent most of her first week organizing supplies.

“Pain potion, fever sip, and sleep tonic—all brewed fresh. The wyrmwood broth is already spoken for, but I have two more batches that should be ready soon.”

“Good. Whatever you’re doing, keep it up. You’re the most popular brewmaster we’ve had so far,” he said and shrugged off his healing smock before tossing it into one of the newly-labeled bins along the wall of the tent. “Also, here, I found you a mask.”

The device consisted of a domed air crystal with a metal backing, no bigger than a pushpin. An air mask. Attaching behind the ear, it generated enough magic to create a thin veil of air that covered the nose and mouth.

“Now you can deliver potions to where they need to be, and I can stop playing errand boy.”

Eyeing the blue-ish color of the liquid, Taly added a dusting of black salt, then a pinch of red. “If it makes you feel any better, you were the best errand boy.” He gave her a look. “A little reluctant and mouthy, but I’ll still put in a good word with management.”

“You’re too kind.” Aiden stood in front of the table. “So, I’ve got another one for you.”

“Okay,” Taly said, stirring. Since learning they were blood relatives, Aiden had been on a mission to jog her memory.

“When we were little,” he said, holding up his hand so she could see the skin beginning to darken, “all I wanted was to be called Oak. I thought it sounded strong, like I wanted to be.”

A creeping wave of bark surfaced on his skin, spreading across his knuckles in jagged, textured patterns.

“However, it never quite caught on,” he continued, “because you decided Petal was better, and it stuck.”

A bud appeared at the tip of his index finger, blooming into a vibrant yellow flower. He grinned and held it out for her to pluck.

Taly took the flower, turning it over in her fingers. She studied it like it might unlock the part of her mind that refused to remember. But the answers weren’t there—only the faintest flicker of longing for something she couldn’t name.

“I’m sorry, no,” she said. “I… I don’t remember.”

Aiden’s sigh was quiet, but the disappointment in his eyes was harder to hide. “It’ll come,” he said, but the truth hung between them, unspoken but clear.

The reasons memory magic wasn’t used on children were well known. Their minds were too fragile, too ready to accept lies as truth—or to accept the absence of memory as if it had always been that way.

“I’ll keep trying,” Aiden said.

Taly gave him a faint smile. “Of course you will. Stubborn as a root. You’d make a great tree, Oak.”

He pressed a hand to his heart, tilting his head back with a sigh. “Ah, there it is. Sweet, sweet validation.”

Taly smirked, giving a little flourish with her spoon as if to say, you’re welcome . It was the least she could do, considering she’d made fugitives of them all.

She tried not to think about it—everything she’d taken from them.

Everything she couldn’t undo. Even if she weren’t such a shitty time mage, she couldn’t change the past. She couldn’t bring their father back.

And as she’d been told repeatedly, she wasn’t allowed to judge what others considered worthy of sacrifice, misguided as they were.

With a final tap of his knuckles to the table, Aiden rose, moving to the shelves where he began pulling supplies. The stiff white cuffs of his shirt were clean. There was no blood beneath his fingernails. His boots were spotless, like his magic had somehow repelled the mud and muck.

Neat, tidy, quintessential Aiden. However, it did nothing to hide the fact that he was exhausted.

“Sarina came by with lunch,” she said and eyed the two baskets resting on the edge of the table. Hers was empty, the napkins inside folded to make a bed for Calcifer. He’d taken the shape of a small kitten, sprawled on his back with one leg occasionally kicking.

Aiden glanced over his shoulder. “I’ll eat later.”

Taly frowned. “You said that about breakfast too. Aiden, you’re no good to these people if you collapse.”

His face was turned away, but she could feel him rolling his eyes. “You sound like my sister.”

“Well, I guess Aimee and I agree then. You’re working too hard.”

Aiden stopped. Then slowly turned, brows lifting.

Taly rapped the side of the cauldron with her spoon. It was the best way to tell if it was done. “What?”

“You really need to stop doing that.”

“Doing what?”

“ Agreeing with my sister. It’s freaking me out. Freaking Skye out too. He asked me yesterday if I was absolutely, 100% certain you hadn’t sustained long-term brain damage.”

“So, let me get this straight,” Taly said, stirring the cauldron. “I’m nice to a person, and you two assholes immediately jump to brain damage?”

“Yes,” Aiden said simply. She snorted. “Taly, I’ve known you for a long time.

You’re not nice. And neither is my sister.

Don’t get me wrong, I love her. But Aimee is, quite frankly, a despot.

An overbearing tyrant. An unholy terror, and as I say that I’m actually seeing now how the two of you might get along. ”

Taly chucked a roll of gauze at his head, but Aiden flinched away, laughing.

Bubbles began popping in the cauldron, and she turned down the heat, reaching for the bundles of yellow lusica flowers drying overhead. The stalks needed to be wrapped in gauze and allowed to soak. The petals were ground up and stirred in at the end.

Aiden placed a handful of vials on the table. “Your shift is over soon, right?”

“I leave in an hour,” Taly said.

“Could you let the kitchen know not to set a plate out for me tonight?”

“Why?” Not that she needed to ask. The mixture of shame and trepidation on his face gave it away. “Shit, you volunteered for another overnight shift, didn’t you? Seriously, how many is that now? Three this week? When do you sleep?”

He muttered, “Now you really do sound like my sister. And it’s not my fault we’re short on healers.

And menders. Everything really.” Back at the table, he sorted through the vials.

“Believe me, I would much rather be at home eating food that didn’t come from the commissary, but it’s unavoidable.

I need to meet with a colleague, and tonight was the only night—”

Someone knocked on the bookshelf next to the tent’s entrance, and they both turned.

“Hi, um… Sorry.” The woman was Highborn with deep brown skin and lavender eyes.

Her black hair was loose and draped over one shoulder, long enough to skim the healer’s smock she held folded over an arm.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt, but…” She looked at Aiden.

“My shift ends at 6bells. I just wanted to make sure that still worked.”

“Uh, hi. Yeah.” Aiden dropped a vial. It bounced off the wooden slats that had been brought in to protect against the mud, rolling beneath the table. Taly stopped it with the toe of her boot. “Six is…” He cleared his throat. “Six is fine. Perfect.”

Taly eyed him, tying off the sachet of stems with absentminded fingers.

“Great.” The woman smiled back, hugging the smock close to her body. “I was thinking that tonight, maybe…” Her eyes shifted to Taly then, widening like she was seeing her for the time. “Wait, are you…?”

Aiden rounded the table. “I’ll see you tonight, Mina.”

“But isn’t that…” Mina stepped around him. “You’re the Savior,” she said to Taly, who gave a baffled smile and a feeble wave of her spoon. “I remember seeing you in Ebondrift. I was there when the abomination—”

“Hit my poor friend here on the head,” Aiden interjected, herding Mina out of the tent. “Yeah, I remember that too. So tragic. Taly, she’s never been the same since.”

Taly arched a brow.

“But—” Mina tried.

“No, you don’t want to talk to her,” Aiden said. “She’s crazy. And if you get too close, she will try to organize you.”

“What does that mean?”

“You don’t want to know. It’s why we put her in this tent.”