Eimarille frowned, hiding her displeasure against her lover’s hair. “You saw the face of the man with them, did you not?”
“Yes.”
“Then we’ll have a magician use mind magic to retrieve your memory of him and draw a portrait. We’ll send the sketch to the Collector’s Guild and have them issue a warrant. He’ll be able to tell us who she is.”
Innes had promised her that no one in Ashion with even a hint of the ability to command starfire had survived the Inferno. The girl could not be Ashionen. If she belonged to a member of the nobility or ruling class of another country, then Eimarille would take the foreign interference as the threat it was and act accordingly.
Thirteen
CARIS
Caris woke to a pounding headache and the familiar feel of her mother’s hand on her forehead. She squeezed her eyes shut, swallowing back the taste of bile. The stabbing pain right behind her left eye pulsated at the exact rhythm she would keep when using a mallet in her workshop.
“I have your headache medicine with me,” Portia said.
Caris’ head was lifted off the pillow so she could swallow the pill with a few careful sips of water. Portia laid her back down, and Caris tried to breathe through the nausea. It took a few minutes for everything to settle before she risked cracking open her eyes.
The familiar ceiling of her bedroom in the Auclair estate met her blurry gaze. The curtains had been drawn over the window, dimming the sunlight. She blinked slowly, trying to kick-start her brain the way she would a machine whose components weren’t working in sync.
“Oh,” Caris said, eyes going wide as memory came back to her like a punch to the gut.
Her gaze cut to her mother, who looked more worried than relieved. “The duchess called me this morning to let me know you were unwell. Your father is filing some patents today, otherwise he would be here with you.”
Caris licked her lips, gaze flicking back to her mother’s face. “I’m all right.”
“You used starfire. I recognize the signs.”
Portia’s voice was hardly louder than a whisper, her lips barely moving with the words. Caris heard her anyway. “I had to.”
Portia set the water glass aside before wrapping both her hands around Caris’, fingers cool and shaking just a little. “You know you shouldn’t. You know youcan’t. What were you doing that you felt you had to?”
Caris opened her mouth, and then closed it, uncertain as to what she could say without revealing secrets that weren’t hers to give.
“She was saving me when I should have been saving her.”
Professor Arquette’s voice cut between them, causing her mother’s head to snap around. Caris followed her gaze to the doorway, finding him standing there, doorknob gripped tight in his hand.
“This is a private conversation,” Portia said flatly.
Professor Arquette stepped inside anyway, closing the door behind him. “There is no privacy in a house full of spies.”
Caris’s tongue tripped over the words she wanted to speak, and the only thing that came out was a strangled sound that made her head hurt worse.
“I don’t know what you mean.” He came closer, and Portia let Caris’ hand go, standing to her full height to face him. “Come no further.”
“We haven’t been properly introduced, Lady Dhemlan.” He sketched a bow to her, even if his gaze remained on Caris. “I go by Tristan these days, but my name was once Blaine Westergard.”
Portia went so still it was difficult to tell if she was breathing. “The Westergard bloodline is dead.”
Professor Arquette—Blaine—didn’t even blink. “As Lady Lore likes to remind me, I am very much alive. I have your daughter to thank for that after last night’s run-in with a Blade.”
“And before?”
Blaine’s gaze shifted to Portia, an intensity to it that Caris didn’t like. “The Dusk Star, in her infinite wisdom, asked that I bear witness when we fled Amari with Ashion’s heart during the Inferno.”
Her mother’s face bled of color, washing out to a sickly hue. Caris got an elbow underneath herself, hating how the room tipped at the edges. “Mother?”
Portia reached behind her with a shaking hand until she could grip the back of the chair she’d been sitting in. She stared at Blaine with such raw emotion on her face that Caris didn’t know what todo.
