I sighed at her dourness but nodded, taking my seat just as I heard Papa descending the stairs. He looked weary, and even though he had just taken a bath, his fingernails were still dirty from working in the mines. I tried to imagine what it would be like, laboring from dawn to dusk, hidden from sky and sun. Working by the strained light of a lamp, swinging a pick and forgetting that you had once been a great magician.

It is almost like he is hiding from something, I thought as he sat across the table from me. And while questions swarmed my mind, I held my tongue, waiting.

“Is something wrong, Clem?” he asked. He was grumpy, which meant this conversation might go south if I wasn’t careful.

“No. I’m here for my weekly dinner and check-in, remember?” I replied, explaining that I now had a room. He nodded, and while I talked, Papa noticed my nice clothes. He scowled but said nothing about them, to my relief.

Dinner wasn’t what I expected. I thought it would feel effortless to return home and be with my family, in a place that felt more familiar than Phelan’s town house. But to my shock, the air was tense, and conversation felt unbalanced, as if the four of us didn’t know what to speak of.

I waited until dessert and tea before I brought up my news.

“The Vesper brothers were sent to Hereswith to find Mazarine.”

Imonie nearly dropped the teapot. My mother froze with a fork in her hand, and Papa merely stared at me, as if he had imagined my announcement.

“Lennox is currently irritated,” I continued, “because you have made it difficult for him to find who he seeks, all due to how you withheld more dreams from your ledger than he expected. Nineteen dreamers total, in fact.”

My father raised his hand. I sensed my comment had offended him, and he said, “I have broken no laws of wardenship. I have recorded every nightmare that was dreamt during the time I was guarding the residents.”

“That may be so, Papa. And perhaps you anticipated this happening someday, and you prepared years for it. But I want to know why. Why are you protecting Mazarine?”

“Mazarine Thimble?”

“Don’t pretend. I know she’s the spymistress of Seren. She’s a wraith, and I want to know why you were shielding her.”

“I was ordered to.”

His quick response shocked me. “By who?”

“That I will not tell you, Clem.”

I held his stare, suspicious. I had never doubted him before, and my breath turned shallow.

“Both Lennox and Phelan are hunting us, Papa, with the hope that we will identify the troll. And I think the countess ordered her sons to find Mazarine by November seventeenth,” I said. “Does that date ring any bells to you?”