“My mum was just a magician,” I remind her, just like I’ve reminded her dozens of times. “And my dad was as well. Perfectly normal. No blood curses. Cormac would have told me.” I sigh and close my eyes. When it comes to my nightmares and visions, it seems like it’s always the same conversation. “Faz, thank you, but I’ve done about sixteen rituals to cleanse a blood curse, and none of them worked.”

“Maybe we’ve been approaching it the wrong way.” She chews on her bottom lip and avoids eye contact, and worries at a bangle on her wrist, and I can tell that she’s thinking six steps ahead of this conversation. “You know, some of the most powerful magicians in history have had visions and visitations. Maybe this isn’t necessarily a curse. Maybe it’s just a way of expressing your power.”

“We both know when it comes to active magic I’m mediocre at best,” I argue, trying to keep my exhaustion and annoyance from my voice. “And those magicians were crackpot weirdos who drank Seelie blood for breakfast and did that shit to themselves. We both know I didn’t.”

“You always insist it’s not Seelie blood, but I really think—”

“Fadwa,” I interrupt. “It’s not Seelies. It’s never Seelies.”

Everything comes back to faeries with Fadwa. She lives and breathes them: she’s spent years researching Seelies and Seelie blood and Seelie myths for her thesis, so now she sees them around every corner. I know she means well, but I’m sick to my fucking oxters of having everything bad in my life blamed on fucking faeries.

For three months after I first met her, she wouldn’t even tell me her full name. When we met, I genuinely thought her name was Hermione. She just let me believe it. For three months. And she wonders why I have trust issues.

“I really wish you would just let me—”

“What’s going on with me is different, and you know it,” I say softly. “Thank you, but it’s not faery stories. You know this is something else, and it’s getting worse.”

“Is it just the visions?” Fadwa asks, lowering her voice. I can clearly see Rimi and Resha watching us from the other room, craning their necks to hear. A small tendril of smoke is rising from what appears to be the ashes of their paper. The smoke twists and turns in on itself until it takes the loose outline of a bee. “Or are you seeing Kit again?”

I try not to flinch at Kit’s name. He shouldn’t scare me still. But it’s hard to move past the terror and pain associated with him when I’ve had to deal with visions of him every night this week.