“Maybe.” He subconsciously melted against me. “The pattern just seems irregular. Typically, anyone who goes through the Veil either doesn’t return at all, or they come back after a while and stay in the Otherworld. They don’t really keep making the journey, so…” He leaned forward to snatch up the farthest open book before nestling back against me. “I checked the most recent ledger on the shelf, just to see how far the pattern continues, and he is the very last entry. The script is different, as if written by someone else, but it’s dated eight months before I was born.”

My brow furrowed, and I peered over his head at the book. “What was his name?”

“Zadok Velarde.”

Without warning, a gasp escaped my mouth and my entire body jerked forward, swaying as if hit by an invisible force. I squeezed Luca tightly for balance as a shooting pain pulsed from my nape to the middle of my forehead, my vision blurring as memories flooded me.

There was a Fae, tall and slim with twisting black horns and kind, familiar eyes. He threw his head back and laughed heartily as tendrils of magic flowed from his fingertips, bathing the palace in a violet hue.

I knew him.

Small hands cupped my cheeks, and once I blinked away the fog, I realized Luca was in my lap, staring up at me with concern etched on his face. “Are you okay? What was that?”

“I… I know him,” I said, voice slurred as if I were intoxicated. Luca dropped his hands to my chest. I mourned their loss on my overheated face. “He was my father’s adviser, and the main Fae representative in Edenglas.”

“What?”

I groaned in discomfort and pinched the bridge of my nose, the headache lifting the harder I rubbed. “He disappeared without a word after years of service to the king. In the back of my mind, I thought it was strange, but we learned not to question my father’s methods and, in truth, the details were always hazy.”

How did I forget him?

“If he was your father’s adviser, why is he in these books?” Luca chewed it over, biting his cheek and gazing off to the side. “Why was he a person of interest while still in your father’s service?”

“Perhaps because he was powerful.” I unbuttoned the top few buttons of my shirt to cool off. “And Father wanted to keep tabs on him, just in case.”

Luca’s eyes returned to mine. “Powerful?”

“Zadok opened the portal five hundred years ago.”