Malachar considered this, then nodded. “Goddess. So almost all of us have found our mates. You, me, my brother, Xander. The goddess must be onto her games again.”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
We stood in companionable silence for a moment before Malachar spoke again.
“The portal that brought you here. The one connecting to Duskmere. When did it open?”
“Recently. A few months ago. I was sent to investigate. The opening was unexpected, the stability uncertain.” My mouth curved into a ghost of a smile. “I found more than I expected.”
Malachar nodded slowly. “The portals have been behaving strangely. New ones opening where there shouldn’t be any. Old ones becoming unstable. The fabric between our worlds is shifting.”
“You’ve noticed it too?”
“Hard not to, when you’ve been living between realms for years.” Malachar crossed his arms. “There are theories. That the goddess is weaving a pattern. That the separation between realms is weakening for a reason. That the human mates, all of us finding them at once, it’s part of some larger design.”
I considered this. I’d had similar thoughts. The coincidences were too numerous to be random.
“Come,” Malachar said. “Let’s see if the archives have yielded anything useful.”
We followed the sounds of rustling paper and murmured conversation into the back room. Wen and Riley were surrounded by boxes, journals, letters, bundles of documents tied with ribbon. A paper explosion.
“Any luck?” I asked.
“We’re getting there,” Wen said, not looking up. “Gran really did keep everything. Birth records, death records, correspondence going back decades...”
Riley was flipping through a journal, her brow furrowed in concentration. She looked tired, determined, beautiful even covered in dust. My wolf rumbled with the urge to go to her, but she wasn’t ready for that yet.
Instead, I joined her and started helping sort through the nearest box. Malachar did the same, working alongside Wen.
We read.
The first hour passed in silence punctuated only by the rustle of pages and occasional murmurs of “nothing here” or “not this one either.” Wen made coffee that went cold before anyone touched it, then made more.
The second hour brought frustration. Riley’s shoulders grew tenser with every dead end. I wanted to touch her, comfort her, but I held back. She wasn’t ready. Instead, I focused on the documents in front of me, reading letters about mundane things: book orders, supplier invoices, a dispute with the landlord in 1987. Riveting stuff.
The third hour, the light through the windows shifted from afternoon gold to evening amber. Empty cups accumulated on every surface. My eyes were starting to blur from reading faded handwriting.
“This can’t all be relevant,” Malachar muttered, setting down a stack of tax documents from the 1970s.
“Gran kept everything,” Wen repeated. “I mean everything. There’s a box over there that’s entirely receipts for cat food.”
“Did she have cats?” Riley asked.
“No.”
Naturally.
We kept looking.
The fourth hour brought desperation. We’d gone through nearly a dozen boxes with nothing to show for it. Riley was flagging, exhaustion written in every line of her body. She’d been running on adrenaline and anxiety for days, and it was catching up.
I was about to suggest we take a break when Wen made a sound.
“Wait.” Wen had a different journal in her hands, older than the rest, the leather cover cracked and worn. “This one is different. It’s personal. Not shop records.”
She started reading, and her expression shifted from curiosity to shock to grief.
“Oh,” she breathed. “Oh no. Oh, Gran.”
