She wanted to kiss him. To pull their bodies together in the stacks and get lost in him entirely. Their bodies hovered in that space, a beat between them. She moved a few inches forward, and he mirrored her. She could have reached out, but she couldn’t keep asking for something that he wouldn’t reciprocate. And here they were, in this moment, and all they had to do was finish, push their lips together and forget the world.

Just as she was about to say screw it and dive in anyway, Fordham closed his eyes for a second and then pulled back. He took his hand with him, and suddenly, she felt bereft.

Kerrigan crossed her arms over her chest and turned away from him. Her eyes struggled to focus, accept what had almost happened. She was so stupid. Why did she keep putting herself in this position with him? He’d made himself clear.

“Kerrigan …”

“What’s this?” she asked, focusing on the book instead. Anything to keep him from saying whatever was next going to come out of his mouth.

“What?” He saw what she was looking at and then said, “Oh. It’s records from the Great War. I was working with Gelryn to see if I could get information about your vision, but he had no interest in talking about the war.”

“Unsurprising,” she said, paging through the book. “Considering what he went through there.”

“Yeah. So, I thought to see if there were records for all of the Society members at that time, but there were just long lists of names. They were almost indecipherable.” He shook his head. “I decided to try to search through the Great War rosters and see if I could find anyone by the name of Trulian or Mei.”

“Any luck?” she asked.

He shook his head. “About what I expected. Trulian is a pretty common name. I found five of them so far. Four Fae commoners and a Society general. The general seems pretty important.”

Kerrigan wracked her brain. Trulian had looked like someone important in her vision, but with five options already, she didn’t know if that was right.

“And Mei?”

“No. Plenty of Mae spelled M-A-E but none M-E-I.”

“Huh,” she said. “Thank you for doing this. I never would have thought there would be records.”

“We keep them in the House of Shadows, and sometimes, as a child, I had to copy them word for word as punishment.”

Kerrigan frowned. “That sounds torturous.”

“It was,” he admitted. “Who knew it would be useful?”

Kerrigan pulled the book closer to her and paged absently through it. She didn’t know what she was looking for. If there were that many Trulians, she wouldn’t find them, but a Mei might be the key. She had been the one to put up the wall around the House of Shadows after all.