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“Don't. These antiques look valuable.”

If they belonged to Alarik, I certainly didn't want to damage them.

My gaze lingered on a slightly smaller white mask with gold antlers, and I dared to trace my fingers over the delicate antlers with their golden water lily decorations.

The metal felt familiar under my fingers. As if I had touched this mask before...

“Bayla... You should take a look at this.”

My head spun around.

Larissa was still standing in front of the fireplace.

With growing curiosity, I walked over to her, hearing footsteps following me. Emely.

I stopped next to Larissa and let my gaze wander over the huge painting depicting nine people. Men and women in pretty dresses and suits from the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, even though some of the garment styles and tailoring also hinted at the Victorian era. A transitional period, perhaps? The founding period?

It could have been the family portrait of a Blairville dynasty, but the people depicted could not have looked more different from one another.

Five extremely attractive men, four pretty women.

“Tayen and Jeremiah,” Emely whispered, confusion in her voice and expression, and I followed her gaze to the right edge of the painting, where a brown-haired man in a brown coat and suit, holding white flowers in his hands – which I recognized from the Vanderwood crest – stood diagonally behind an indigenous-looking woman in a pretty dark green dress, her lips marked with several small, irregular scars. She was holding small red flowers that I couldn't identify with my limited knowledge of botany.

“The son of the first Copeland, right?” I asked, remembering the bronze statue downtown. Cornelius Copeland. His... father?

Emely nodded absentmindedly.

I examined the three people on the left edge of the painting. On the far left, an African American woman in a black dress, holding vervain. Next to her, a petite-appearing woman with half-pinned, wavy, light blonde hair, dressed in white, her light blue eyes fixed on the man next to her, a water lily in her hands.

Narrowing my eyes with a feeling of irritation, I inspected the woman, because I was sure I had seen her in another painting before. But where?

Almost automatically, my gaze shifted to the handsome man next to her, and the feeling only intensified.

The man smiled gently, wore a green waistcoat with his suit – almost the same green as his eyes – adorned with a silver snake-shaped pin, had messy dark brown hair, and held a white lily in his hand.

There was something about him that I couldn't describe. Something that made me want to stare at him. And the longer I stared, the closer the quiet pounding in my chest crept into my consciousness, along with a longing tug in my stomach that begged me to delve even deeper into the town's history.

Where in this town had I already seen a painting of him and that woman? In Moenia?

No matter how hard I rummaged through my head, there was no useful memory, so I let my gaze wander to the center of the painting.

There was an armchair. Behind it, a man in a bronze-colored waistcoat and chestnut-brown, copper-red hair. I didn't know whether to focus on the cross-shaped scar across one of his gray eyes or on his prosthetic metal arm resting on the armrest. The bronze one-shoulder cape on the shoulder of his other arm made him look more authoritarian and festively dressed, especially with the thin golden chains crossing his chest. In his scarred hand, adorned with those strange runes he held an orange orchid.

To the left of the armchair stood a man with very light, angelic blond hair, a blue vest and coat, holding a blue hydrangea...

My gaze froze, lingering on his water-colored eyes.

Something deep inside my chest tightened longingly once again. But this time it was different...

This man. I was sure I had seen him before in another painting. It could only have been Moenia.

I tried to eradicate the burgeoning unease within me and looked further, to the right side of the armchair, where a brown-haired man with a black waistcoat and a serious expression stood, holding a myosotis flower.

Who did he remind me of?

The longer I stared at this painting, the more uneasy I became.

Even though all the people in this picture seemed to belong together, it was the three men in the middle who seemed to belong primarily to the pale woman sitting in the armchair.