“I can feel it. It hums when I touch it.” He felt the shell, and when he didn’t react, I added, “Kiva couldn’t feel it either, but I swear it’s there.”

“I believe you.” Caylus sat back, rubbing the side of his face with one massive hand. “Well, what do we have to go on? Don’t they have to hatch on the winter solstice?”

“That’s just tradition.” The words came quickly. I felt jittery and unsteady. Was he actually agreeing to help? “They can hatch anytime. But something makes them hatch, and I don’t know what.”

“Are you…asking me to experiment on it?” he asked.

I nodded. “Chemicals. Herbs. Anything that’s not likely to damage it. Maybe the egg will react somehow.”

He hesitated, and my heart seized. “Will you help me?” I asked.

He ran his fingers over the egg. “I don’t know if I can do much, but I’ll try.”

Relief swept through me in a cool wave. “Where do we start?”

An hour later, I sat beside Caylus with a paper and pen in hand. He alternated between laying out ideas and allowing the kitten to attack his fingers while I translated everything into an actual plan, taking quick notes.

With every new idea one of us suggested, the mountain we had to climb grew taller. By the end of our discussion, the idea of hatching the egg felt impossible. One step at a time. The familiar phrase calmed me. Right now, we planned. Then we tested.

We started with herbs. Murkwood root and dried delladon vine, lavender and monkshood. We crushed them before laying them on the shell, Caylus watching for physical indicators while I focused on the humming. Then we cleaned the spot and tried the next one, moving on through powdered metals and basic liquids.

I’d told him that it seemed to have something to do with the royal family, but simply willing the egg to hatch didn’t have an impact. So either it was something else about me or there was another factor. With each new thing we tried, I focused on willing the egg to hatch, but nothing changed.

As we worked, we talked. Or rather, I talked. Well, asked questions that Caylus answered in as few words as possible. He didn’t seem to mind them; he just didn’t have much to say. He was nineteen, his mother taught him to bake, the kitten’s name was Gio, and yes, he made his own vests. Even getting that out of him was like prying open a crow’s beak.

I also learned he was from Seahalla, the capital of the Ambriels, where the corrupt remnants of the high council still pretended to rule under Razel’s control. The real power there was the Drexel family. They called themselves rebels, but they were just a vicious gang profiting off the slowly crumbling nation.