That made Storme look at her.

“What are you talking about?” he asked, wide-eyed.

“He got me alone once,” said Ayla, unwilling to go into the details. “I thought he was going to hurt me, but he just asked where I was born. He asked about my—our parents. Our grandparents. Then later, I found a hidden safe in his study. Inside was a sole piece of paper with the words Leo, Siena, Tourmaline. He had spies in the sovereign’s palace, I think it was meant for one of them. Either way, we got to it.”

Storme sucked in a breath. “Leo and Siena? He knew their names?”

“Knew a lot more than that, I think. I just don’t know how much. Or exactly what our grandparents have to do with Tourmaline.” She bit her lip, thinking about the memory she and Crier had fallen into: a young Leo and Siena in the woods, embracing. In retrospect, Ayla should have pressed Crier for more information. Crier was the one who’d figured out how the locket worked; she must have seen other memories. But . . . right before they used the locket, they had kissed. (Fiercely, angrily, desperately, pulling at each other’s hair and clothes, Crier inexperienced but so eager, so breathlessly open.) Right after they used the locket, Rowan had died. And Ayla had thought of nothing else. Nothing but taking the palace. Nothing but Crier’s heart in her hands.

She touched her sternum. The spot where the locket should have been. A tiny inorganic heartbeat echoing her own. Once, there had been two lockets. Storme should have inherited the other one, the other half of the matching set, as Ayla inherited hers, but it had been lost years before. They never knew what happened to it—the one time Storme had asked their mother, she’d refused to answer. Ayla had always thought it was just . . . gone. Destroyed, maybe.

But, she thought now, but . . .

She remembered being dragged to Kinok’s study, the shock of seeing her own necklace—which she’d lost just minutes before—sitting proudly on a bookshelf behind his desk. Then, later, Crier’s confusion, her claim that the necklace had been in her possession the entire time.

Sometimes the simplest explanation was the right one. If the locket in Kinok’s study wasn’t Ayla’s, it must have been the other one. The one that was lost.

Her stomach twisted. What if Kinok had figured out how to use the locket like Crier had? What memories had he accessed? What had he learned about Tourmaline? Ayla’s necklace had belonged to Leo, Storme’s to Siena. The idea of Kinok sifting through her grandmother’s memories sickened her. It felt like a violation.

“How would our grandparents be connected to this?” Storme asked.

“I don’t know,” Ayla murmured, far away.

Lost in thought, they rode on. Until Ayla couldn’t bear it anymore.

“Seven years ago. That day,” she said. “What happened to you?”

Winter wind. Rustling grass.

He didn’t answer.