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Jagaros—wearing all of Fabian’s features—stood staring at Chrysanthia as she raised her crescent knife from the other end of the classroom. Wings rustled from overhead, several vampire bats hanging upside down in the shadows. Neither of them glanced up, too transfixed in the gaze of the other to move.

“Who are you?” Jagaros whispered, something deep in the trenches of his voice cracking wide open. He didn’t wait for her to answer, the questions rushing out. “What are you doing here? Are you okay?”

Chrysanthia’s eyes widened. Her hand fell. The knife clattered to the floor.

“Is it you? Is it really you?”

And she launched herself at him, all those years of separation melting into nothing the moment he caught her in his arms. The memory itself blurred, as if Jagaros had viewed it through a film of tears that had refused to fall until now.

I looked away when they pressed kisses all over each other. This would definitely look like love at first sight to an outsider.

Or an upside-down bat who had no idea what was actually going on.

“Where have you been?” Jagaros finally asked against her neck, each word rough and jagged. If I’d ever needed more proof that this wasn’t actually Fabian, it was the way he spoke. Not soft or gentle like the man who had raised me, but tinged with an eternal growl. A tiger-like snarl.

“Everywhere.” Chrysanthia pulled back to cup his face, her own voice softer and quieter than it had been before: the wind that swirled silently around bells and chimes. “I haven’t dared stay in one place for too long. But I heard… I heard what Dyonisia d-did to this island. I-I’m so sorry, Jagaros.”

Like so long before, Jagaros caught her tears with his thumb.

“It wasn’t your doing. I’m just glad I had Yenatin check the new map of the island every day. Too much has changed out there for him to get a good reading on your location… until you sailed here. To the Institute.”

A question lurked beneath his words. Sniffing, Chrysanthia glanced at the classroom window cloaked in moss and algae.

“I had to check this place out for myself. See what Dyonisia’s playing at. At first, I thought she did all this to create her own version of Sorronia to rule over, but it’s nothing like Mother’s original institute here.” Chrysanthia blinked and refocused on Jagaros. “You had Yenatin check the map every day?”

“Of course,” Jagaros said without shame. “It was the most he’d go for, actually, or else it would’ve been a lot more than that. It would’ve been every time I thought of you. Every time I wondered where you were. If you were still alive.”

His pain leaked out, and Chrysanthia caught it by pressing her lips to his.

The mist changed.

Days and weeks swirled by, flashes of Jagaros and my mother twined in each other’s embraces, murmuring in low voices, eventually laughing and dancing again. Jagaros pretended to be a student at the Esholian Institute in case the Good Council was spying, oftentimes proclaiming this or that about his classes or tests in a loud, booming voice that made the vampire bats rustle their wings.

Secretly, he hunted and foraged, bringing my mother food, helping her set up a livable space with buckets and blankets.

There weren’t any bloodstains on the floor yet. Not until ten months later, when my mother sweated and muffled her screams and welcomed me to the world.

The mist solidified.

Jagaros was holding me in the crook of his arm, pointing at an iguana crawling up a kapok beyond the classroom. I couldn’t have been more than a month old, only a few wisps of bright blond ringlets crowning my head, my eyes lazy and unfocused and definitely not looking at the iguana.

It didn’t matter. Jagaros still spoke to me as if I could understand, cooing out, “You see that spot on the top of its head? That’s like a third eye so that he can detect light and shadows. And see the coloring? It’s that exact shade of brown right now to help it blend into its surroundings—much like your mamay.”

A distant scream cut him off. The iguana darted up the kapok, disappearing among the leaves, and I emitted a high-pitched warble.

Jagaros had frozen in place. Slowly, he turned toward the direction of that abandoned classroom, holding me closer to his chest.

Then he ran. I jostled against his chest as he broke through the trees, onto the dirt road, and into the classroom with terror slashing across his face.

Chrysanthia stood at the other end, turned away from him, her crescent knife clasped firmly between her hands behind her back. When she pivoted to face him, there was no hint that she’d heard the same scream he had.

She merely smiled.

“Ahh, you’re back!”

Her eyes fell to me in his arms, a hungry sort of yearning unspooling in them as she held out her arms, knife still clutched in a hand.

Jagaros didn’t move. A beat of shuddering silence passed before he asked, “Who are you?”