She leaned forward to kiss her—their tongues twined and then Vada pulled her down so that Agnes fell on top of her on the bed, laughing as Vada left a trail of kisses down her neck.

There was a light tap on the door.

“Pardon the intrusion,” Ambrosine said, and Agnes scrambled to her feet, her cheeks burning as she adjusted her dress and smoothed back her hair.

“Um, oh no, it’s fine,” she said, completely mortified and trying not to show it.

“I was wondering, Agnes, if I might speak to you in private,” Ambrosine said.

Vada was on her feet in an instant. “I will go find Sera and Leo,” she said. “We did not get to have a proper welcome.”

She gave Ambrosine another awkward bow and left.

“How do you find your accommodations?” Ambrosine asked.

“It’s a very nice room,” Agnes said. “This whole estate is beautiful.”

Her grandmother smiled. It wasn’t the sort of smile Agnes had pictured, full of warmth and joy like her mother’s smile in the photograph. There was something sly and almost aggressive about it.

“Why don’t we sit,” she suggested. There were two brocade armchairs nestled in a corner between the stone wall and the grass one, and Agnes took a seat opposite Ambrosine, her heart skipping erratically.

“Leo informed me your father told you nothing of me, or your mother, or this side of your family,” Ambrosine said.

“No,” Agnes said. “We weren’t even allowed to mention the Byrne name. Eneas would sometimes slip and give me little details, but nothing concrete. Nothing that made her feel real.”

There was a darkening in Ambrosine’s eyes at the mention of Eneas, but then her expression smoothed out. “She was very real, I promise you that,” she said. “And she loved you very much.”

“She never even knew me,” Agnes said.

“She held you in her arms,” Ambrosine said softly. “And kissed your tiny little hands and whispered your name.”

“But . . .” Agnes tried to swallow the lump in her throat. “But how could you know that? Leo and I were born in Kaolin, in some private facility outside Old Port.”

Ambrosine traced the pattern on the arm of her chair with a finger. “No,” she said. “You were not. You were born right here, on this estate.”

If her own chair were to suddenly swallow her up, Agnes could not have been more surprised. She . . . was born . . . in Pelago.

“Why would my father ever agree to that?” she said.

“We made an arrangement,” Ambrosine said. “One that he did not honor, of course.”

Agnes recalled the words from the letter Eneas had written Phebe. A deal was made and a deal was broken.