I was beginning to understand why their marriage had unraveled all those years ago. My father was deathless, dreamless, cursed. A magician of the mountains. And my mother wasn’t. She was of Bardyllis; she would age and die. She could dream.

And yet she had guarded his secret.

As Phelan was guarding mine.

I slipped into their tent without stirring the canvas.

They had not gone to bed yet, to my vast relief. But they sat close to each other, a few candles burning around them, casting monstrous shadows on the tent walls. My father startled when he saw me materialize.

“Clem,” he rasped, and I held my finger to my lips, silently rebuking him.

“Anna,” my mother said. “We were just speaking of you.”

I drew a deep breath, burying the resentment and bitterness that bloomed within me. I told myself that I would handle this conversation as Anna would, as an outsider with little emotions attached, and whispered, “I don’t have long, but we need to talk, Ambrose.”

He nodded, glancing at my mother. She rose, brushing the wrinkles from her dress, and said, “I’ll keep watch.”

She departed, touching my shoulder on her way out, and I took her place on the ground, facing my father.

He cast a quick spell; I sensed his magic drifting around us like feathers. Enclosing us in the tent, so our voices couldn’t be overheard.

“What can I expect when we stand in the mountain fortress tomorrow?” I asked.

“I don’t know, but I imagine my brother will greet us.” He paused, his gaze drifting to my neck. He was remembering the bruises that had been there, inspired by Emrys’s hand, and he said, “I’m deeply sorry that he hurt you on the new moon.”

“I thought he was you.”

My father smiled, but it gleamed with pain. “You would have known who he was if I had told you the truth from the beginning.”

“Yes, the truth would have been nice,” I said, my skin flushing. “You and your brother are the twin boys in Imonie’s story.” I remembered that tragic tale of hers. At the time, I hadn’t realized she was sharing a glimpse into her own past. “You and your brother . . . she raised you, didn’t she?”

“She did.”

I studied my father’s face in the candlelight—lean and handsome and yet creased with sorrow. I wondered if he had been Imonie’s quiet boy. The lover of books and knowledge. Or if he had been her wild boy. Reckless and untamed and full of challenge.

“How old are you, Papa?”

He chuckled. “Well, I was twenty-five when the curse fell. But I’ve been alive for nearly one hundred and twenty-seven years now.”

“Can I see your true face?”