“Where is the countess?” Imonie asked with a concerned frown.

“And Lennox?” Nura added, noticing that he was also missing.

“They are exploring the fortress,” I replied, and I saw the suspicion in my father’s face.

“We should not progress without them,” said Mr. Wolfe, rushing his hands through his wispy hair. “We need to make plans as one.”

And so we waited.

I was beginning to wonder if Emrys had slain them both in some shadowy corridor when the countess and Lennox appeared, no longer toting their bags.

“Ah, good,” Lady Raven said, taking note of everyone. “We are all gathered here.”

“Where were you?” my father snapped.

She cast him a surprised glance. “I was reacquainting myself with my old home, Ambrose. My former quarters are exactly as I left them.”

Papa opened his mouth to say something else, but a loud bang stole our attention. We glanced to the dais, where a hidden door had been opened and shut without our notice. There stood Emrys, watching us with jaded eyes.

He wasn’t wearing his enchanted armor, as I’d half expected him to. He was dressed in blue robes stitched with silver moons, with a dark shirt and trousers beneath. His auburn hair fell across his brow, just like Papa’s, and his mouth was set in a firm line, also like my father’s. I stared at him, amazed by the resemblance. If my father dropped his aging glamour, it would be difficult to tell them apart from a distance.

“Emrys,” Papa greeted him, slowly approaching the dais.

“Hello, brother,” Emrys said, gazing down at him. “It has been a long while. And yet look at you. Wearing an old face like a man with something to hide.”

My father’s shoulders drew back, tense. This reunion felt fraught, icy. I swallowed and hoped I could evade Emrys’s attention.

“I see you have brought your companions,” Emrys continued, regarding the rest of us. We remained close together around one of the tables. No one spoke; we hardly dared to breathe.

Emrys’s gaze found Imonie and lingered on her. His mother. Imonie, who stood quiet and still, as if she had anticipated this moment for years and now that it had come . . . she didn’t know what to do, what to say to him.

She remained silent, and I ached for her. I wanted to wrap my arms around Imonie and bury my face in her dress, to breathe her in as I had done as a child. Oh, how she had loved me, the granddaughter she could not claim in word because of her and my father’s secrets, but she had claimed me in love. And that love had given me a warm, safe childhood, despite the pain of my parents’ separation. That love had clothed me and fed me and raised me, protected me.

I hadn’t fully appreciated her until this moment.