“She was strong enough to kill your mother and sister, two powerful Ice elementals in their own right, and melt that silverstone spider rune into your palms. I doubt she’s dead. People like that don’t go quietly,” Finn said. “Besides, it was only seventeen years ago. Most elementals live to be well over a hundred.”

A cold smile curved my lips. “Can’t blame a gal for dreaming, can you?”

I stared at the folder, and my smile flipped into a frown. “I just don’t understand why Fletcher did it. I was there. I lived through it. Nothing in that file tells me anything I don’t already know.”

“Except that your sister’s alive,” Finn said in a soft voice.

Bria. Blond hair. Big, blue eyes. A child’s soft, sweet, innocent face. A delicate primrose rune hanging from the chain around her neck. She’d been eight the last time I’d seen her, the night I found her blood in the hiding place where I’d left her. The night I thought she’d died.

“Fat lot of good it does me to know she’s alive, since I can’t find her. That picture could have been taken anywhere, and Fletcher wasn’t kind enough to scribble a location on the back of it.” Emotion tightened my throat, and I had to force out my next words. “I don’t—I don’t even know if I want to find her.”

“Why not?” Finn asked. “She’s your sister.”

“She was my sister,” I replied in a husky voice. “I have no idea what she’s like now. If she remembers me, if she’d even want to see me. Hell, she probably thinks I’m dead, just like I thought she was. Then there’s the small fact of what I’ve been doing with my life. Call me crazy, but I doubt anyone would want an assassin for a big sister.”

Finn was silent a moment. Then he raised his head and stared at me with his bright green eyes—eyes that were so similar to Fletcher’s it made my heart crack. “You might not have been his biological daughter, but Dad loved you just as much as he did me. You said it yourself. He loved knowing other people’s secrets. He probably started digging at first just to see who you really were and whether or not he could trust you.”

“And then?”

Finn shrugged. “And then you became his daughter, his protégé, and he loved you. Maybe Dad wanted to find the Fire elemental for you. Maybe he realized Bria hadn’t died that night. Maybe he wanted to make up for everything that had been done to you and your family.”