Page 147 of Taken By Shadows

“That doesn’t mean you don’t belong here. With us.” Audrie chewed the inside of her cheek when she’d finished.

Maybe she was right. Could I find a place here? Would Kaed even want me after he’d had his fun? I didn’t know what it was we were doing.

“I …” Where to begin? I’d already told the last person I thought I would ever tell about my family. Telling Audrie should be easy.

I blew out a breath and tried again. “I don’t know my family,” I blurted, and dragged my eyes to Audrie to read her reaction. But she just waited. I cleared my throat to continue. “I need to find them. This is all I have.” I held out the necklace. “And Kaed, he’s promised to help me.”

“I can help too!”

My lip trembled as I smiled up at her. No hesitation. No restraint. Just a beaming smile on her face.

“You’d help me? If I stayed, you’d be my historian?”

Audrie leapt from the bed and threw her arms around me. Thankfully, the tea was long since drained.

“I can’t tell if you’re happy about the research or that I will try to stay longer.”

“Both.” Her rosy lips were joyous on her face. “What specifically are we researching? I mean, it does complicate things that Aurora is gone. Timing-wise, it’s unfortunate. But it’s still probably a good place to start in the library. Though …” She was talking mostly to herself at this point as I was beginning to lose my grasp on what she was rambling about. “The king took all the Auroran books to Hayden. I don’t even know what records he’d have allowed to survive. You said you had a book?”

She was pacing and looking at her ceiling like it held answers to her musings.

“Audrie”—I took hold of her wrist to slow her steps—“what are you talking about?” Why was she suddenly going off about a lost city?

“You’re Auroran. And I know the city is gone. But there should still be some records. Maybe Ash can get some from Hael’s—”

The room was buzzing, and Audrie’s voice was far away. There was a ringing in my ears that felt like needles.

“Imogen?” Audrie stopped in front of me. “What is it?”

“I’m … I can’t be. How—” A high-pitched note rang in my ears, drowning out the sounds around me.

Audrie clasped her hand over her mouth slowly. “You didn’t know?”

I blinked.

“How? How could you not have—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to blurt that out. I …”

I thought I might cry, but there was only a strange hollow feeling inside me.

If I were Auroran … the book Eryk had given me. Had he known? Had anyone else known?

“How can you be certain?” If I were Auroran, that meant my family, everything I’d hoped for, was already gone. So long ago.

Audrie chewed the inside of her mouth as she debated how to do this. The heaviest blow had already been dealt. Being delicate wasn’t necessary. “Pale hair and violet eyes aren’t exactly common in the Corners, Imogen.”

My gut went cold, but I think I already knew that truth. People had always looked at me differently. I thought it was my fae heritage. My lack of magic. But even here, where people didn’t know me, they’d looked. Their gazes lingered.

“Why would no one tell me?” My voice was barely audible. Someone could have told me … Kaed could have told me.

“We … we thought you knew. I-I …” She swallowed. “I suppose …” Audrie hesitated. “It’s unusual not to know where you come from ... And that Aurorans are mostly blonde. Maybe everyone assumed you knew already. And …”

I swallowed against it all but it kept landing on me like earth being shoveled onto my chest.

“To most people, the Aurorans lost the war and literally disappeared. Maybe it’s superstition, but people don’t speak about Aurora … They don’t want to disappear in the blink of an eye too. On top of that, they were labelled traitors to the Crown once it was won by Tir.”

Kaed’s crown.

Settling the two pieces of information I had beside each other was like trying to plant an oak tree in a flower pot; it just didn’t fit. And something was going to break.