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“Something about this stuck out to you?”

The column of her throat moved as she swallowed. “It’s the picture he showed me in the dream, the place he said he’d take me to see.”

Holy Persynthia.

Her eyes filled with tears, and I quickly set the book on the table in favor of pulling her into me. She trembled against me, silent sobs wracking her as she pressed her face into my chest and dug her hands into my back, trying to dig herself closer.

“It’s a real book,” she whispered. “It was a memory. That man… that man was my father.” She sucked in a breath. “What if the other dreams are real, too? Does that mean he’s alive somewhere here?”

“I don’t know, Sterre.” I pressed as much croon into the words as I held her to me. “I’ll put in a request for the history of the text within the Atheneum. The librarians should be able to tell us who gave the text over to the library.”

AMETHYST

Callum kissed my temple before releasing my hand and putting several feet of space between us. We were in the larger garden, the sun now sliding toward the horizon. After we’d left the Basilica, Callum had made good on his word to put in an inquiry about the book’s origins. The librarian had informed Callum it would take a few days to search the archives but that they would send word of the information as soon as it was reviewed.

It felt like ages, but I reminded myself that it wasn’t like I was going anywhere. I could wait two weeks to find out if my father was somewhere in Marish.

“Vincent said you made a lot of progress,” Callum murmured. “And that you seemed to have more of an affinity for plants than for things like fire.”

I pulled myself from the thoughts of the mysterious man in my dreams. “It seems to be. It doesn’t take long before I’m exhausted, though.”

“He mentioned that, too. It’s normal. Stamina comes with practice.” He gestured to a limb on the tree to his left that was barren while the rest of the tree grew. “Can you make the leaves on this limb grow?”

“Not with you so close,” I admitted.

His eyebrows furrowed, and I blushed.

“The last time Vincent had me practice with a flower, I made it explode just like all the jars.”

Callum nodded and took up a position a bit to my left instead. “I don’t think you’ll be able to make a tree do the same. It would take a lot of raw power to be able to do it. I don’t know of anyone capable of it, even the mages with their amplification components. Regardless, I’ll move so you don’t panic.”

With a deep breath, I closed my eyes and focused on the feel of magic. It rippled along my skin, an energy happy to be noticed. I tried to coax it into my palm, but it resisted, jumping away and onto the ground. I sighed and stretched my neck. Callum hummed.

“Settle your mind. It’s responding to your disquiet.”

My response was sardonic. “I’ll just forget that I had a dream about a memory I don’t actually remember that shows I lived here at some point before ending up in another realm.”

His chuckles skated across my skin and warmed my belly.

The energy slid closer, crawling up my legs like caterpillars in search of food. I held out my hand, palm up, shoulders loose. It inched closer, over my shoulder and down my arm. I kept my breathing steady, willing my body into stillness. For some reason, I had the unshakeable thought that if I so much as twitched, it would skitter away again. It felt more alive than it had before.

At last, it gathered in my palm. I breathed deeply, centering myself as I opened my eyes, and then directed the magic toward the tree. An ear-splitting explosion happened a moment later, the leaves shooting into the sky and falling around us like it was fall instead of spring. I screamed and dropped my hand, retreating several steps. Callum pulled me into his arms as he fell, covering my body with his. Around us, splinters of wood landed, some bouncing off a wall of air that Callum managed to produce. His eyes were wide, his breaths sawing out of him.

When the last of the debris fell around us, he eased to his knees and helped me sit, the wall of air disappearing. I couldn’t look away from the remnants of the tree.

“Callum,” I whispered.

He circled my wrist. It had been so long since he’d done it, I glanced down at the contact. Small cuts covered his hand and wrist from the shattered wood before he’d blocked it.

I voiced the question that was running through me, had been running through me since realizing that dream was a memory in truth.

“What if I am Alholím?”

He tightened his hold on wrist and then set a finger under my chin, urging me to look at him.

“That’s not possible,” he said. “Your Arizona⁠—”

I cut him off. “Isn’t even mine. Not if that memory is real. That man had hair like mine, pitch black, and magic, too. What if he…”