As I stepped out from under the overhang of balconies and spires above, I didn’t bother to pull up Fen’s cloak hood. Instead, I savored the feeling of the rain that gathered on my forehead and dampened my hair. Rain slid down my cheeks as my legs carried me in a blissful daze toward the maze of hedges that snaked through the garden’s center.
Puddles gathered in places where the garden path was worn. It felt childish, but an urge to jump in them overtook me, so I did. My velvet slippers were soaked through. I was too distracted by the scent of wet soil, grass and honeysuckles to care.
Amara used to grow honeysuckle vines just like these along the walls of the South Tower. She taught me to place the sweet nectar on my tongue.
My hand trailed the hedges, which were trimmed below the eyeline. As I walked, my fingers slid over the delicate yellow silk blooms.
“Ouch!” I withdrew my hand—the bushes had transitioned to roses.Damned thorns.
Then my mind collapsed in.
“It hurt me, Momma!” A boy no older than four scurried across the South Tower’s balcony, holding his right hand. Tears streamed across his tanned cheeks, and dark curls topped his head. He ran to a woman I didn’t recognize. She was silver-haired, yet no older than thirty.
“Oh, my dear, let me see. The roses got you, didn’t they?” the silver-haired woman said to the child.
Darker fingers than my own stretched out before me. I longed to comfort the child but stopped myself. The unfamiliar woman looked at me with a sad smile as she cupped the boy’s head to her hip.
“A prick from a thorn can mean good luck—you can make a wish. Come now, let me have a look.”I would recognize that voice anywhere. Amara—I was in Amara’s memory. It was as clear as the other prophecies, no—memoriesof the fall of Phynx.“That will certainly leave a scar—let’s get it bandaged up. Now, what will you wish for?”
I picked up the boy, and he looked at me with tear-soaked golden eyes and said, “All Knights have scars, right, Aunt Amara?”
“Mhm—most of them do.” Amara’s soothing tone was the same she’d once used to comfort me as a child. “Why do you ask?”
“I wish to become a Knight,” the boy said triumphantly, wiping the salt from his face with his sleeves.
Amara’s pride and fear of his sweet dream mixed. “You will be one of history’s greatest Knights if you choose it, my love. Run along.”
The fair-haired woman stepped closer. Her expression grew sadder with each step.
“You’re sure this has to be the last time?”
“Yes.” Amara’s voice cracked in repressed agony. “And we must wipe his memory of me to be safe. No one must know, Angeline. I’ll need to erase your memory too. If Firose finds out Mattock has an heir, she will kill him. It’s not safe for you if she knows he is ours.”
Angeline nodded.
“I will raise him in a way that will make you proud, Amara. He will want for nothing and always be loved like our own.”
Amara’s heart broke.
When I came to, I grasped my bleeding finger with my other hand.
“Everything alright, Asterie?”
Emmerick had been quiet in his approach. Or maybe I’d simply been too lost in the memory of tear-soaked golden-brown eyes filled with innocence and determination—Amara’s son.
I was met with a gaze that held the same determination.
Amara’s eyes.
Amara’s child.
Mattock’s child.
The heir of the North Corridor.
Immortal.And he had no idea about any of it.
“You’re walking in the rain, hood down, in nothing more than slippers and a nightdress. And…bleeding. Should I bother to ask?”
