The duke gasped his name, a name that rose like a hiss of smoke, the sound of a curse sparking—“Emrys”—before he sank to his knees, his blood pooling on the floor. Hunched but still breathing, Isidore held out his hand and called to the moon, to nightmares. He cursed his court and died facedown in his blood.

Emrys ran the halls, his heart beating in his throat. A woman with long brown hair and a scar on her face was waiting for him in the courtyard. The stars bled in the sky as she embraced him, and her voice trembled when she said, “We have to go. We cannot stay here.” She took the dagger he had slain the duke with and threw it over the balcony. It clattered among the rocky slopes.

The dream took us to the mountain passage, to the opening in the foothills. Two wide doors that I had passed through days ago.

The court was fleeing. I saw them all—the master of coin, the heiress. Mr. Wolfe. Mazarine. My father holding the hand of the woman named Lora. His wife, I realized, and my alarm began to swell.

The only member of the court who could not pass from the mountain was Emrys.

Emrys in his blue robes.

“Come, brother.” Ambrose beckoned him, frowning. He stood in the grass and the sun, but his twin remained in the shadows of the passage.

“I cannot, Ambrose,” Emrys said. “The mountain holds me captive.”

Ambrose passed over the threshold and took his brother’s hand, struggling to draw him out, into the light. A sound of pain rose from Emrys. Steam began to rise from his garments, as if he was catching fire.

“Go,” he cried, shoving Ambrose into the grass. “Go and forge new lives. I will hold the curse.”

The doors closed.

Both Imonie and Ambrose stood in the foothills for a long while, staring at the wooden doors that had sealed. The place where they had been separated from Emrys.

Lora eventually drew my father away, but she had grown old. Her hair was gray, her body withered. She was old but my father was not, and he wept over her grave when she died. It was Imonie who pulled him up and led him to Endellion.

“Death follows me, Mam,” my father said to her. “Nothing good comes from my hands.”

“Then you must determine to make something new with your hands, son,” Imonie replied.

He heeded her, and magic bloomed in his palms.

Imonie turned away and my mother appeared, young and bright and alive, her beauty like a flame that my father couldn’t look away from.

Sigourney tore the fabric from her skirt and wrapped something small within it. A baby, and she extended it to Ambrose.

“Your daughter,” she said, and my father took me in his arms for the first time.