“Thank your father for his concern, but I’m not hungry.”

Lips pursed in an expression of disbelief too old for her face. “I don’t believe you.”

“I’m truly not.” Josiri wondered why he justified himself to a child. “I need rest, that’s all.”

“I don’t believe you.” Sidara nodded past his shoulder. “Neither does she.”

Josiri frowned and cast a long glance around the bedroom. He saw no one. “Aren’t you a little old to have an imaginary playmate?”

“She’s not my friend. She’s yours.”

Once again, he had the distinct feeling the girl was playing a game of some kind, but there was something in her voice . . . “What does she look like?”

“She’s all hollow, with dark eyes like a cyraeth. But she has beautiful white curls. I sometimes wish my hair was curly.”

Anastacia. Or at least, Anastacia as she’d once been. “Can I speak to her?”

An eye narrowed in thought. “I don’t think she’s for talking to. She’s more like . . . a memory.”

“I don’t understand. My memory?”

“Her memory. She left it with you for comfort.” Sidara stared down at her feet as if suddenly aware of the conversation. “Please don’t tell Mother. She’ll only get upset.”

Josiri blinked away his confusion. How could a memory express disapproval? Probably Sidara had invented that detail in the hopes of getting him to eat. But how had she known Anastacia’s appearance? He’d been careful not to speak of her in front of Malachi and Lilyana, for fear of their reaction. What was the alternative? That Ana had indeed left a “memory” with him? An afterimage of the magic that was her flesh? It almost didn’t matter. She didn’t seem so far away any longer, and he no longer felt as alone.

But one thing was clear: Sidara had been blessed with magic and didn’t want her mother to know.

“Uncle Josiri? You mustn’t tell her. Please.”

A few hours, that was all. He’d been in Tressia for a few hours, and already he was invited to intrigue. Not by Malachi, as he’d feared, but by a girl who looked very much as if the sky was falling.

“What manner of uncle would I be if I couldn’t keep a secret?” he said. “Tell your father I’ll be down shortly.”

Viktor’s shadow moaned at the touch of silver, the low, breathy wail more sensation than sound. It wasn’t pain – pain he could have ignored – but a crawling, gnawing discomfort that permeated every inch of his being, ephemeral and eternal alike. It hadn’t been so bad at first, but after hours in the darkness without other stimuli, it had worn Viktor ragged.