ELENA:

Elena scanned the rows of phials and scrolls before her, dust motes dancing in the shafts of yellowy light seeping through the papered windows. Her fingertips traced the knotty edges of the shelves as she half hummed to herself. The air in the ramshackle antiquities shop was so thick that her eyes watered even in human form. Thank gods for her current lack of Fae senses.

Elena stood on tiptoe, cerulean skirts rustling as she peered at the label of another vial. Dust stirred and she sneezed, setting her sparkling earrings swaying. The substances here were dangerous, yes, and the collection of scrolls and worn books frowned upon, but none of it was as troublesome as Lena would have liked.

"Can I help you?" came the raspy voice of the grizzled shop owner. Lena sank quickly back down onto the balls of her feet and batted her eyelashes prettily at him. "I still can't find what I'm looking for," she admitted, near hum. She glanced at him, scanning him from tufty grey hair to muddy shoes, and drew her velvety cloak closer around herself. She leaned forward conspiratorially. "I wonder… if there might be more to your shop?"

When the Shadow Market burned, it had become clear who else in the city could be counted on for the distribution of illegal goods. The Market now thrived again, a favourite haunt of Lena's-a territory her uncles and cousin actively entrusted her to keep an eye on. But the shops had remained, longstanding pinnacles of illegal activity, having weathered the worst of the storms.

The keeper glared at her. Studying her-a pretty wealthy blonde girl, who would go to great lengths to hide her illicit habits by shopping deep within the slums of Rifthold. Elena had spent about two days camped on the roof opposite, and she knew girls like that accounted for a strong percentage of his clientele.

This building's roof tiles still had scratches from wyvern claws. Rifthold had been sacked over thirty years ago, but Elena still came across wyvern damage from her viewpoints on gargoyles and mansion roofs, and still found ciphers and schuyler locks guarding magical goods from burning eyes. Damage lingered. Haunting remained. And it manifested in the wariness of the gaze before her.

Elena blinked at him with innocent green eyes, and something flickered in his.

He said, "Additional stock is costly."
"I'm willing to pay," she said evenly.

He scanned her again, apparently deciding that she was out of place enough in the slums not to be able to defend herself-or to be aware of what he'd do to her if she misbehaved.

He jerked his head, a wordless gesture, and Elena followed him deeper into the shop. Her gown rustled and her footsteps echoed over the floorboards, the keeper's own shuffling gait echoing before her. They wove through the stacks to the back wall, wherein he glanced around as if ensuring the shop was in fact empty, then shoulder-checked a seamless panel in the back wall.

Out of Elena's many options within the space, allowing the shopkeeper to simply open up the vault for her was by far the simplest.

The panel swung inwards, and Elena did her best to look as if she and Sarai hadn't marked the dimensions of the building from above and knew the space was here. The keeper bought her shock, and led her inside.

Now here was the illegal trade she had heard so much about.

The room was packed with enough illegal goods to supply half of the Shadow Market. This room was why Uncle Chaol, in a more specific aspect of his duty as Hand of the King, had been hunting down this dealer for three years. Neither he nor Fletch had quite been able to source out where the drugs and the illegal books and weaponry were coming from, popping up at odd intervals to cause trouble, none of it from the same place twice. They'd come closer than they'd initially thought. Elena had tracked their leads just a few steps further down the highly illegal line. As long as her law-keeping family had deniability, they didn't put her off of her more criminal habits, and Elena had every intention of handing this place over to her uncle for his Solstice present.

But oh, how lovely it would be to have her fun with the place first.

Elena's fingers itched for the rack of illegally poisoned blades on the southern wall, the vials of poisons harvested from the Dead Islands, enchanted maps from Skull's Bay, shifting histories penned by fickle pens that could be changed at the author's behest. The drugs were the least interesting things here.

Elena's eyes caught on the hidden Schuyler safe, a mere seam in the panelling between two ancient artworks lifted from a manor home several months earlier. So that was where they'd gone. All her hard work, and they ended up here. Elena had already removed the troublesome cipher from the frames, but she hadn't put that much effort into lifting them off of their bastard of an owner not to see them hung up somewhere else.

The keeper lifted a crooked finger towards the shelves of narcotics. "You might find what you're interested in over there."

Elena bristled, lifting her nose. "I may have a look about," she said shortly.

The keeper didn't roll his eyes and risk losing her purse, but he clearly wished he could've.

Elena's heeled steps echoed within the space. Dust motes rose and stirred. She stared openly at a statue she did not recognize. It might have been Eyllwe in origin, though the multiple eyes of the figure wasn't from their mythology.

"Where's this from?" she asked.

"No questions," the keeper said shortly.

Elena raised her hands in mock surrender and kept walking the aisles, clearly a woman used to everyone working around her schedule.

The door to the main shop clattered open, and Sarai's voice-shrouded in a far thicker accent than the usual delicate lilt to her words-drifted towards them. "Hello?" she called. "Hello? Is anyone here?"

The keeper glared at Elena, then glanced anxiously back towards the main shop.

If he didn't already have magical precautions marking the building's entire perimeter, he would never have done what he did next.

"Hello? Please help?" called Sarai. "Is this-food store?"

Sarai was many things, Lena decided, nearly smiling to herself. A particularly gifted actress may not have been one of them.

The keeper hesitated. Then glanced back towards the thickly accented voice coming from his shop.

"I'll be just a moment," he growled. Lena nodded, and watched him disappear, swinging the panel shut behind him.

In the next heartbeat, she hitched up her skirts, crossed to the safe and got to work.

Elena lifted the framed art straight off of the wall. "Hello, old friend," she murmured, setting it against the wall. She ran her hands over the panelling, finding the seams by touch, and pressing down with firm movements. The panel popped and swung free, revealing the gleaming silver plates of the Schuyler safe.

"Hello, pretty thing," Lena breathed, and reached into her boot for the lockpick.

These lockbox safes operated much like ciphers, only a series of numbers connected to latches and notches in metal, instead of numbers to letters. The lock had three numbers. Here Lena could've used Gav or Mary-they could've melted it free, but Elena was also attempting to go unnoticed. She slipped her enchanted lockpick, acquired in another place such as this, into the bolt.

The lock fell free. Lena was in.

"-lost my father among docks," came another snatch of Sarai's voice, followed by the keeper's indignant but muffled reply. Elena eased open the safe door and found herself facing a collection of documents so ancient and so illicit they could've turned all of Rifthold on its head.

Oh, was Uncle Chaol ever going to love her for this one.

Elena shifted quickly. Fae senses gave her a sense of touch her human form couldn't compare to. She had precious seconds-Lena thumbed through the ancient documents. Paper crackled. The eldest stood out to her, the grain of the paper raised against her fingertips. She slipped it into her hands. A log, yes, perhaps a hundred years old, yellowed with age. She scanned the titles quickly. Illegal and illicit, but not what she needed. Lena cursed silently, returning the sheet carefully to its place.

"-my parents have such difficulty," Sarai was saying.

Lena inhaled, focusing. Next document. The slip of papers against her fingertips, the softest crackling-the second eldest page was identified by the fade of the ink. She slipped it free.

Another log, but lightning flashed through her veins in realization. Gods above, this had been a good lead. She scanned the list quickly and went inhumanly still.

That name.

Oh, gods, if that name was right…

"-lady, please," the shopkeeper snapped, ever closer.

Lena shifted in a brief flash of light, moving as she did so, rolling the ancient document up and slipping it into a fabric sleeve that was overlarge for it. She slipped the sleeve into her boot and shut the safe. Panel shut, shoved to be secured, painting back on the wall-

"-now get out," the shopkeeper snapped at the door.

The painting frame caught its hook. Lena released it and grabbed hold of the nearest sparkling bottle. She raised her head as the keeper returned.

"What's this?" she asked brightly.

He snatched it out of her hands. It was, in fact, the extremely rare tonic of liquid nightshade. "Get out," he snapped.

"But I haven't finished my shopping!"

"I've had enough of blathering young girls today," he ground out. "Find another shop for your filthy habits."

Lena's mouth fell open, then snapped shut. "I-I don't know what you're talking about."
"I know your type." His fingers dug into her wrist. "Clever girls with empty heads and pretty gowns."

Lena considered ruining her uncle's solstice gift and slitting his throat on the spot. But no, Sarai was waiting. "Out," the keeper bellowed, yanking her from the secret room and slamming the door behind them.

"This is shameful," Lena snapped. "I cannot condone this behaviour."

"Whoever you are, pretty thing, I doubt you'll risk telling anyone you were here. Now, go," and she shoved her clear out the door.

The door slam shut behind her, the forbidden log still secure in her boot. Sarai's lovely face flashed up ahead, a cautious peek-

Blood poured forth in an absolute downpour and soaked Elena to the skin.

For an instant fear shot straight through her, until she realized the blood came from above, not from Sarai-from the doorframe.

Wards. Elena choked through the sheet of thick red, and the door swung open, the keeper roaring "Thief! Thief!"

Sarai disappeared. Elena gasped, sputtering on red as the keeper's hands closed around her wrists, yanking her down to his height. "What did you take?" he demanded.

"I didn't-I couldn't-oh gods," she choked through the red. She'd thought it would be tar or thiefstick, not, oh gods, blood. When she'd watched an unwitting fellow trigger the wards from the nearby roof, it had been tar coating him head to foot. This was horrible.

"What did you take?" the keeper bellowed.

"Let me go," she pleaded, shuddering. The oozing red blood had coated her to the skin. It wouldn't be human, but it was utterly disgusting.

"What did you take?"

Elena yanked the ring off her finger and hurled it at him. He caught it, beady eyes glimmering. "The other thing."

Elena stilled, heart pounding.

"Give it here, miss," he breathed. "Or I'll send my dogs after you, and it will be your blood you're covered in."

"I hate you," she spat out.

"All the better."

Elena pulled the small vial from her corset and hurled it at him. He blinked. Now that had been mildly clever.

"Go," he snapped. "And if you ever come back, my wards will burn you to ashes."

"I hope you burn to ashes," she spat, then turned and ran out into the night, trailing blood.

That had gone wonderfully.

Sarai met her four blocks away at the carriage, driven by Elena's usual well-paid driver, who took one look at her, turned white and cursed filthily.

"Adam, I'm fine," Lena exclaimed.

"Milady-"
"It's not mine, Adam," she sighed. "Promise."

"You are absolutely covered in blood," Sarai exclaimed, appearing with shining eyes, still simply dressed for her excellent means of distraction.

"I know," Elena groaned, tugging at sticky fabric. She clambered up into the carriage. "Is it human?" Sarai asked as she followed Lena inside.

"No." Elena wrinkled her nose. "Pig's, I think." She could have said for certain in Fae form, but then Sarai was not aware that she had a Fae form.

"This is not the first time you've been covered in blood," Sarai said. An observation. She had taken to voicing what could have been questions as observations. She'd chosen her single question with great care every day for the past two weeks. Every one of them sent a shiver down Elena's spine. Sarai learned her, and she learned Sarai-like a beautiful new song.

"How many sisters do you have?" Sarai had asked. "How many brothers?" Then, "How many illegal antiquities shops do you know of?"

"How many weapons do you have on you?"

"Is Elena your real name?"

Sometimes the questions asked too much.

"Do you know someone from Eyllwe, or were you made to learn my language?" Sarai had asked, as they moved carefully along the edge of a rooftop, wind tugging at them both and setting Sarai's braids tinkling.

Lena shook her head, arms slightly extended for balance as she set one foot in front of the other. "I can't answer that."
"That is not too prying," Sarai exclaimed.

Elena half smiled, turning to face her friend. Sarai was dressed for climbing, pants and a shirt, at ease on the rooftop. "I grew up in the banyan trees," she'd said, reaching down to give Lena a hand up. Elena usually batted any helping hand away, but she took Sarai's, the musician's skin calloused against her own.

Maybe she'd imagined it, but Sarai had held her gaze for perhaps a heartbeat too long.

Elena had shaken her head, Rifthold stretching below them. They were spying on the antiquities shop-scoping out the wards. "If I knew someone from Eyllwe," she said, "being up in the north, then I would, perhaps, have known a person of exception-a noble or a servant. If I was taught Eyllwe that far north, it would be because I would have been a person of exception."

"So either question would give me too many clues of your identity," Sarai said.

Lena nodded.

Sarai had shaken her head. "Elena, I do not know if there is anyone in the world you could be that justifies your being so paranoid."
Elena had laughed out loud.

"No," she said now, tugging at her sleeves. "Not the first time."

"Here," Sarai said, and then her hands were unbuttoning Lena's bodice.

Elena was currently human, but she still went preternaturally still.

The world narrowed to Sarai's fingertips at her back, the gentle tugs sending shivers down Elena's spine. Sarai's breath brushed the back of her neck.

The buttons fell free. Elena moved, her heart pounding, and pulled her arms free of the long-sleeves bodice. The corset she wore beneath was splotched from where the blood had seeped through. She had to peel off the sleeves, and her skin was patchy with drying blood.

"Here," Sarai said, offering her a rag and the cask of water. Elena scrubbed at her face. Blood disappeared achingly slowly. She wrung out the rag outside the window, rivulets of crimson water streaming down her arms, then soaked it again and kept scrubbing.

"Was it there?" Sarai asked.

Lena nodded. She scrubbed at her neck. "It's-incriminating."

Sarai arched a brow.

"I need to give it to someone," Lena said. "To check if it's real. Are you coming?"

"I have an appointment with one of the healers, but I'll ride with you. Here," Sarai said, soaking a second rag. She began wiping at Elena's shoulders. Elena immediately lost the ability to focus.

Gods, who was she becoming?

"Where are we going?" Sarai asked.

"You'll see," Lena managed.

By the time the carriage rolled up the drive to the Westfalls' house, they'd managed to get all but rusty streaks off of Lena's shoulders and arms. She got out of the carriage and dumped the rest of the water over her head to rinse out as much of her hair as possible, wringing out the long blonde strands and then knotting up the rusty mass of sticky strands to be dealt with later. Lena pulled on her coat, freed the scroll from beneath her bloody skirts and tucked it into her weapons-laden pockets, then started up the drive without further regard to her appearance. It was clear she hadn't been stabbed, so she was decent enough.

"Whose house is this?" Sarai asked, falling into step with Elena.

"Is that another question of the day?"

Sarai rolled her eyes. "That is common courtesy."

"It's the Westfalls'."

Sarai blinked, but remained silent. Elena asked, "Aren't you going to ask why we're here?"

Sarai inclined a shoulder. "If you are on close terms with Yrene Westfall, why would you not be in her house?"

She had a point. Elena said, "Yes, but I am turning up bloodied on her doorstep."

"She is a healer."

Elena sighed.

Sarai smiled. "You are perhaps not as mysterious as you may think. Though in fairness I am thinking you are less mysterious with me than anyone else."

That was true, but Elena was unsure of which words with which to refute it or confirm it. She knocked-or rather, banged-on the door, making it rather clear that she was kin.

Sarai said, half to herself, "I wonder if your whole family is like this."

Elena's reply faded on her tongue as the door swung open."Lena," Fletch said without surprise, blinking at her. "If anyone else showed up at my door covered in that much blood, I'd be far more concerned."

"Where's your parents?"

Fletch leaned against the doorframe. "Try that one again."
Lena glanced skyward, then ground out, "Lovely to see you, Fletcher. All the best to you and your personhood. By any chance does your family happen to be in?"

"Your sarcasm wounds me."
"Fletcher."

"My parents are not home," he said. "I, however, am making dinner."

Sarai said softly, "If you are staying, I may be taking my leave."

Elena didn't know if she was staying. She hesitated. "Reve's home?" she asked Fletch, who nodded. Reve, and his love of illegal books, was really who she was here for-it just betrayed too much to admit how close she was to this family, and how illegal some of Reve's activities could be.

"Any friend of Lena's is welcome," Fletch offered.

Sarai smiled at him. "Thank you, but I have an appointment."

Elena turned to her. Sarai was all light, sincerely unoffended, and unworried. "The carriage will take you back safely," Lena said.

"I know," Sarai replied. "Will you get home safe?"

Lena nodded.

Sarai, already knowing Elena well enough, accepted this. "Nice to meet you," she told Fletcher. "Another time, perhaps." Then she smiled at Elena and turned back down the path, walking to the carriage whose windows winked in the darkness.

Fletch blinked after Sarai. "Who's that."

"Sarai," Elena said.

Fletch studied her. Then he glanced after Sarai. Then he looked back at her and demanded, "Who is that?"

"I just told you," Elena exclaimed, shoving past him into the house.

Fletch shook his head, shutting the door behind her. "You have wreaked havoc on an entire city. You're feared from this end of the coast to the next without even using your given name. All the powerful men in this city see you as a ghost story. So who, Lena, is this girl who has absolutely twisted you around her finger?"
Lena's mouth almost fell open.

Fletch broke into a wild grin. "Oh, this is going to be fun. This is going to be so much fun."
"I will take a knife to your balls."

Fletch just shook his head, grinning. "Eighteen years and she finally gets felled by romance."
"You're one to talk. Raya can sneeze wrong and you'll come tripping after her-"
"Ah, but I am a romantic," Fletcher said. "You are a stone-cold legend."

"I hate you."
Fletch laughed out loud. "About time, Elena. It only proves you're human."

"I am not human."
"Not technically. But the Fae possess human souls, no matter what the legends say. Only humans love so messily and with such abandon."

Elena blinked. Then, "When did Yrene say that?"

"Sometime last week."

Lena shook her head, fighting a smile.

"It is true," Fletcher said. "Our parents became friends as humans. They stayed friends because Aelin never lost that part of herself."

"My mother was someone else then."

"We were all someone else once. Even you."

"Those were your words."

Fletch gave her a half smile, reminding her distinctively of Chaol. "I've got seven years of wisdom on you, Lena. Now tell me more about Sarai."

"She's from Eyllwe. She came to be a musician and a slaver plucked her off the streets." All the words came breathlessly and tasted like stars; she had never spoken of Sarai to anyone and everything was golden and exciting and strange. "She plays strings and she has beautiful hands."

"You are smitten."

Elena said, "I feel eighteen years old."

She had never had any recollection of feeling young.

"Does she know?" Fletch asked. "About everything you are?"

"She's still here, isn't she?"

Fletch almost smiled. "How did you meet?" he asked.

Elena said, "I was strangling her former master with my skirt at the time."

Fletch laughed. "Then she already knows most of what she should know about you. Everything else-it's just facts, Lena. They're just details."

"You make it sound so easy."

"In family experience, the sooner she knows you're a Galathynius, the better. But everything else-we are not the ones in on the thrones, Lena. We are not the ones who live amongst burden. Our families gave us legacy and they gave us freedom. Not all of us are so lucky."

Now he was speaking of Ander and Illia. The thought of them pulled slightly at Lena' chest, an unfamiliar sensation, but it would seem she was opening doors all over her heart. No, she was not the legend, not the one with the cataclysmic power, the nation's worth of expectations, the love that could never be wholly hers.

She was not afraid.

Elena looked up at him. "Thank you, Fletcher."

"Anytime." Fletch smiled. He reminded her, in that moment, so distinctively of his father that her heart ached just a little.

"So," Fletcher said. "Why are you here?"

Elena lifted the log from her coat. "I wanted the resident student to have a look at this." "Do I want to know where this is from?"

"No," Lena said. "You probably don't."

Fletch shook his head. "And what would you have done if my parents had been home?"

Elena shrugged. "Come back after dark. Where are your parents?"

"The Torre and the castle, respectively. It's my night off and Raya is working, so I've been tasked to feed the boy." Fletch gestured magnanimously into the house. "Reve awaits."

Elena rose on tiptoe, kissed his cheek, and brushed past, leaving him staring after her in near shock. She's never kissed his cheek like that in her life.

"Reve," Lena shouted, banging twice on her cousin's door before barrelling in. Reve jumped, a hand at a blade, then cursed mildly at Lena's appearance. "Do you bathe in blood, cousin?"

"I drink it for the good of my skin," she replied. "Would you like to see something stolen?"

"Always."

Reve was still technically Elena's senior by a scant year, but he was someone who acted his age, a fact Lena was generally unfamiliar with. Being divided between studies, training, and the odd girl, Reve was permanently smiling and messy-haired. Lena might have found him the perpetual annoying sibling had he not possessed something of his father's sharp understanding in his gaze, and his mother's acute sense of everyone. Reve reached for the scroll and unfurled it.

The room was comfortably messy, arranged in vast part around the massive oak desk stacked with books on continental history and magical herbs, ink and broken pen nibs, stories with odd receipts and oak leaves marking pages, and scratched architectural drawings, some of which were pinned above the messily made-up bed. There was a box on the nightstand of letters from faraway places and a collection of weapons hastily arranged on a stand by the door. It had a different feel than Brigan's room, centered as that was around maps and so utterly stocked with books that Elena never navigated it without her Fae senses.

Reve blinked at the scroll, then promptly picked up a mass of books, dumped them on the bed, and unrolled the scroll, pinning its edges to the desk with stones clearly set aside for this purpose. Reve cursed, and cursed again. He plucked a candle from the nearby stand and examined the page under its' light.

"Can you not read it?" Lena asked, amused by his frown.

"This is ancient Adarlanian, not Eyllwe," he shot back, but he was still cursing. "Lena. Where the hell did you get this?"

"You don't want to know."
"I don't want to know as in my father and brother are in charge of Rifthold security or as in I, Reve, would be better off having no affiliation with this particular brand of nonsense?"

"Take your pick."
Reve cursed again. "This is-"
"A log of forbidden occult books hidden within Rifthold," Lena said.

"This-I feel dirty touching this." Reve shook out his hands. "Not just because of the dust. Good people do not associate with this manner of list."

"Look at the sixth entry."

"Manifestationes of Evil Spirites," Reve read. "A History and Guide. As in a guide to summoning them? But-"
"Reve. Look at the authour."

Reve looked, and immediately began cursing again.

"Language," Fletch yelled from below.

"This is-if anyone ever finds this-we cannot have this, Lena. This cannot exist-"

"And it won't," she said serenely.

Reve cursed. Then he was moving, suddenly hunting through the disorganized stacks of texts and study materials. "I just had it."
"What are you looking for?"

"This." Reve pulled a thick blue volume from beneath a stack which promptly toppled onto his bed. "I have an evaluation on this next week. Here." He opened it and flipped hurriedly through the pages, flipping to index and then back several dozen pages, to a page with a carefully inked genealogy. Reve flipped the book, the family tree spanning from the furthermost edge of the left page to the right, so it stretched tall across the length of the open book. It was a recent genealogy. Lena spotted their authour's name right away, and scanned down four generations, to the latest addition.

Ander Chaol Havilliard, First of His Name, Crown Prince of Adarlan.

"Ander's great-great grandfather wrote a book on summoning evil spirits," Reve said.

"Perhaps."
"Perhaps?"

"Have you seen this apparent book full of answers and demonology?"
"Well, here it is on a pretty fucking incriminating list, Lena," Reve said drily.

Lena tilted her head. Reve blinked. "Stop. You're Illia's twin when you do that."

The faint sense of Illia brushed against Elena's awareness, brought up by the mention of her name. Elena said, "An entry on a list does not prove the volume exists."

"If it does," Reve said, and tapped the genealogy-the entry above Ander's name. Dorian, linked by a slender line to the first written entry of Ander's mother that Lena had ever seen. Proof Anna had, in fact, existed beyond spoken memory. There were other records of her, but Lena had never needed to see them. Lena put aside her curiosity to say, "Writing a book about summoning demons is far from the worst thing a Havilliard has done."

"They're an interesting line," Reve said. He brushed his fingers over the page, tracing up and up to where their own lines of genealogy met: Gavin, and Elena's namesake. They were both quiet looking at the scant pair of names. Such a vast amount of history lay in such a small entry. The Havilliards and Galathyniuses had long since branched off, with no blood between them-though Mary's eyes, everyone said, harkened back to Gavin. It was a strange reminder of how the two lines could never quite extricate themselves from each other.

Elena's eyes scanned downwards, to the name of the king who had murdered her grandparents. Two lines below, Ander, who lived and breathed by a Galathynius' side.

History was a strange thing.

Elena glanced to their authour's name-Stevar Havilliard, a king who was one of a line of generally dastard fellows. How had Dorian-brave, level-headed, inclined to falling asleep while reading-come out of this line? Elena glanced at Hollin's name. Dorian's own brother was an insufferable man who lived on an estate on the coast, financed by Dorian's money, making one unreasonable demand after another-blood money to keep him out of a fragile kingdom. Lena was fairly certain her mother, and likely Manon, were major reasons Hollin stayed where he was. Both of them seemed to have a little too much knowledge of what he was up to.

Of course after Dorian had come Ander-who was, by all accounts, a noble-hearted ray of sunshine. Even if he did have the gold eye he thought Elena didn't know about-the demon eye from the dormant Valg bloodline, which had mingled with Ander's two generations before. It had skipped Dorian entirely, but as Mary's blue eyes also reminded them, some things never faded entirely. Elena didn't think Ander was actual part demon, just as Mary didn't actually have Havilliard blood in her veins, but as Ander and Illia proved-Elena's eyes glanced over Gavin and Elena's linked names. Why was history so determined not to let them go?

"We have to find this book," Lena said. "Have you heard anything about it?"

Reve shook his head. "You just pointed out that this book may not exist. Where did you get this log?"

"A highly illegal antiquities magic shop that survived the last king's entire ban."
"Magic was outlawed."

"Wyrdmarks, potions, opioids, forbidden texts-some things outlast everything. The shop owner is extremely wanted, by the way."

"Is he the one my father has been helping Dorian hunt for-"

"Five years?" Lena half smiled. "I'm giving his information to your father for his birthday."

"Oh, he'll love that. That does credit this list. Did the owner read it?"

"Why do you think I'm turning him in?"
"Nice change from killing him." Reve sighed. "This family is insane."
"You mean deadly."

"I said what I said. Are you staying for dinner?"

"If I'm welcome."
"Of course you're fucking welcome, I baked my own bread," Fletch yelled, as he passed the doorway in the hall.

Lena smiled. "I love bread."

Reve tapped the scroll. "Where are you going to track this book down?"

"Anything that incendiary, especially anything with an actual name attached to it, would be kept close to home."

"That rules out the study libraries, though I'll check with the handlers...But of course the most likely place would be the palace."

"Hopefully not within the glass castle that was destroyed."

Reve exhaled. "Hopefully."

Fletch ducked his head in. "Am I going to be implicated in anything drastically illegal if I ask how many pear tarts you both want?"

"Are they from the Faliqs' Bakery?" Lena asked.

"Of course."
"Five," she said.

"Seven," said Reve.

"Children," Fletch said drily.

"How accurate is your map of the castle?" Lena asked him.

Fletch sharpened, leaning against the doorframe. "Extremely."

"By official standards?"

"Yes," Fletch admitted. "But Ander has an-unofficial map. We started when we were about ten. I think he and Illia finished it the summer he turned twenty."

"It took you ten years to map the palace?"

"You are aware," Fletcher said, "of the actual centuries worth of history buried down there?"

"Where's the map now?" Reve asked.

"In Ander's room, I'd imagine," Fletcher said. "And before one of you goes tearing his things apart, allow me. He won't mind my being there, I know where he hides things, and I'm the only one of us who can get caught up there by Dorian without suspicion."

"Why are we hiding this from Dorian?" Reve asked.

"Name one thing there is for him to know," Lena said.

"That there's been an uprising in attacks and general misdemeanor?"
Fletch said, "Uncle Dorian is definitely aware of that."

Lena nodded. "He's busy running a country. All of our parents are. We have the time and capability for this. It's better we give them information when we actually have solutions. Until then all any of us can do is what they're already doing-damage control."

Fletcher glanced at Reve's desk. "Should I be more concerned?"

"We may have a lead," Elena said, something alighting in her chest.

"Good," said Fletcher. "Let's eat."