Jax blinked at his visitor. “. . . Elara?”

She stopped in the doorway, not even trying to disguise her surprise. “Goddess, are you glowing?”

He quickly crossed his arms over his chest, hiding his hands, although he couldn’t hide the rest of his skin, which did . . . glow. It let off a soft yellow-white light.

“Never mind, we don’t have time. You glow, that’s fine.” She shook her head and bent down to the longer Solgard, grabbing him by the arm to drag him into the ward. “Help me get this armor off him.”

“What? Why?”

“Because—”

“Ana’s gone,” he interrupted, the light inside him flickering, whispering her words to him a moment before she said them, like he could see brief shadows of the future a moment before it happened. His throat tightened in panic. “She’s gone to the ruins.”

“Um . . . yes. She has. You can’t read minds or anything, can you?”

“No. I just knew what you were going to say—and she is gone? She left?”

“Yeah, Sparkles. She’s gone to the ruins.”

“Ak’va!” he cursed, and snapped at her in the Old Language, “Why did you let her go?”

“Let her? She said she’d go either way! Don’t blame this on me.”

“Oh, I’m blaming you,” he replied, and helped Elara quickly undress the guard. The guard’s armor was a little tight on him as he laced up the breastplate and fit on the pauldrons and greaves. He finally stood and began looking through the drawers for a pair of gloves. He couldn’t go anywhere without them—what would happen if he touched someone?

Last time, he almost died.

He didn’t want to die again. At least not in the same way.

“Sparkles, hurry up,” Elara urged. “Someone could come by any minute.”

“I can’t go anywhere without gloves,” he singsonged, and noticed that the more anxious he grew, the brighter the light under his skin seemed to flicker.

“You would make a good flashlight.”

“Shut up.”

“Is that what our light used to look like? In the old kingdom?” she asked seriously, and he thought as he shuffled through the final drawer and pushed it in.

“I . . . don’t know.”

“It is indeed beautiful.”

That was not Elara’s voice, and his heart stilled at the sound.

Slowly, he glanced over his shoulder. It was his mother, her hands clasped together in front of her, silver hair short and eyes like raw amethyst.

Ten years had barely changed her. She looked almost exactly the way she had the night he left—her chin high, her eyebrows arched, her lips pursed into a thin and often-disapproving line. His memories didn’t do her justice. He had forgotten how she stood like an unbent tree, and how her hair was whiter than silver and shimmered like spun glass. How she commanded the attention of every eye in the taverns down by the docks, and now he was sure she caught the eye of every person in the Elder Court. While the years flying with Siege had been kind to him, the years in the Spire had whittled her down to a point. She was nothing but edges now.