“Would your library have anything?” he asked.
The book.
I straightened. “I have one. A history of omegas. It’s old, but there might be something in it.”
Malric nodded once. “Good. That gives us somewhere to begin. Thane will search the rest of the library for anything related—bonding, siphoning, suppression.”
Suppression. The word landed harder than weapon had.
“We don’t have much time,” Malric continued. “Another spike could hit without warning.”
He paused then, as if hesitant to speak. It seemed to cost him something to bring it forward.
“Aveline,” he said at last, his voice lowered, “what was your mother’s name?”
The question slipped between us without warning. I blinked at him, trying to understand why that was the thing he wanted now.
Her name.
The memory was not gone. It was simply distant, as though it had been wrapped carefully and stored somewhere out of reach. I reached for it anyway. I had always called her Mother, or Mama. Nothing else. But others called her…
“Mairead,” I said slowly. The name seemed both strange and known. “Yes. Queen Mairead.”
Malric stopped moving. He did not look confused. He did not look surprised. He simply went very still.
“Are you certain?” he asked.
“Of course I am. She was my mother,” I snapped before I could take the words back.
Thane shifted beside me. The air around him tightened, charged the way it did before a storm rolled in from the sea.
“And how old are you?” Malric asked.
Thane’s jaw flexed. “What does that have to do with?—”
“It’s fine.” I reached for Thane without thinking.
My fingers brushed his arm. The muscle beneath my palm was drawn tight. He stilled when I touched him, the tension easing only slightly, as if he were choosing not to react.
Time.
That was the problem with time.
“There are no markers in the tower,” I said. “No bells. No servants. Sometimes I look outside and the leaves have changed, and I cannot remember when they began to turn.” I tried to count backward the way I had done a hundred times before. “I was sixteen when my father brought me here. I believe I have been here ten years.”
Maybe. But I was starting to doubt that.
“So I am twenty-six.”
The number sat heavily between us.
Malric inhaled and released it slowly. His gaze did not leave my face. He was measuring something, fitting pieces together in silence.
Then, I noticed the subtle change in the atmosphere. It felt wrong, even though I didn’t grasp its significance.
“What is it?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he lifted his hand. The movement was unhurried. Deliberate. He brushed a strand of hair back from my face, his knuckles grazing my temple. The contact was warm. Solid. Nothing like the distant, careful touches I had known before.
