Astyu knocked on the door with confidence, unwilling to let anything stop him from finally getting answers. And he knew that this is where the answers would be—he didn’t need any more reassurances or signs of that.

  There was silence for a moment, before he heard shuffling on the other side of the door.

  “I’ll be there in just a minute,” a woman called from the other side. She mumbled something else, too, that he couldn’t quite make out. But he knew that it was Jasmin’s voice, and he glanced over at Loraena and nodded so that she knew the same thing.

  He felt like he was waiting for more than just a minute by the time Jasmin finally opened the door.

  All things considered, she looked quite similar to what he remembered; she didn’t seem to have aged at all, though perhaps looked a bit more tired. Of course, the similarities between her past self also meant that she still seemed rather threatening, despite knowing—maybe—that she wasn’t harmful. Something still felt wrong about her, like she was hiding some kind of deep and ancient secret, but he decided that was just his younger self reemerging. That secret, he thought, would be answered as soon as he was let inside.

  Her smile was no less unnerving, either, even if he still knew that it was meant to be comforting. “It’s been quite a while, little Astyu. And I see you’ve brought a new friend with you. No need to keep standing here, why don’t you both head inside? I’ve got some tea ready for you.”

  “Did you, uh, know we were coming..?” Loraena prompted as they came inside. “I hope you don’t mind that we were following you the whole way here…”

  “Oh, I don’t mind at all. In fact, I knew it was the best way I was going to guide you here. Call it a… hunch, if you must put a word on it.”

  Jasmin guided Astyu and Loraena into the living room and gestured for them to have a seat. Four cups of tea were already laid out so, seeing that everything was in order, she sat across from them and beside Kiara.

  “These are our guests,” Jasmin said softly to Kiara, touching her shoulder. Kiara put down her knitting to listen. “Astyu is here—he looks so much like Eme now, even more than he did before, if you can imagine it. His friend… she seems to have siren blood. She has their eyes. Quite lovely, I think.”

  “She’s Loraena,” Astyu explained. “She’s… a friend. A close one. She helped me a lot over the past few years…”

  Loraena sheepishly chuckled. “I think the others helped, too. There’s no reason to give me all the credit…”

  “Well, if you’re here with him now, that means you’re part of the reason he’s here at all,” Kiara remarked. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  Astyu decided, however, that they had had enough casual conversation for now. “I’m here for answers,” he said. “It’s… been a long time. I haven’t been able to figure out anything on my own. I want to know what happened. I want to be able to make sense of what I remember…”

  Jasmin picked up her cup and took a sip of tea. “I know it must be hard, to be in front of the only ones capable of giving you an answer and still having to wait. But in order to make sure you leave here without any questions left, I have to know what you do. I can’t fill in gaps I don’t know are there. I can’t very well cover up holes that never existed in the first place, either. So, please, if it’s not too much trouble—what do you know?”

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  “I… know that she was doing something with all of you. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good. Mother hid most of it from me, but I was able to understand bits and pieces, and how none of it was right. Then all these things started happening, and she said there wasn’t any reason to worry, but she was worried, and then she—”

  He cut himself off when he felt a hand on his. He looked up at the table to see a small scene from his memory being reenacted there—the last time he saw his mother. But then he looked over, and he acknowledged that Loraena was right there with him, and the illusion was gone with a nod and steady breath.

  “Is… that normal?” Jasmin prompted, gesturing to the table. To Kiara, she whispered, “He just created a small illusion of him and Eme. It was… involuntary. Unstable. I know Eme mentioned that he hadn’t quite controlled his magic yet, but I hadn’t thought it would be of such clear projections…”

  He felt himself shrink a little when he heard it. It was one thing to acknowledge what his magic did when he wasn’t quite aware of it… but he never usually dwelled on what other people thought about it. How they saw it, and how they reacted, when they didn’t really think that he was going to be paying attention to whatever they had to say…

  But slowly, he forced himself to nod. Not like he was able to make eye contact with her. “It’s… happened a lot, since Mother left. It was practically the only thing I was around for a while. Alone, with just projections and old memories. I was… trapped there. And since that was the only way things made sense, I stayed. Until Loraeana and her friends were able to help, and did what they could to make sure I knew I didn’t have to be alone anymore…”

  “It was wrong to leave you like that,” Kiara mumbled. “You must’ve been so lost, hurt, confused… and we were responsible for it.”

  Jasmin shook her head. “Astyu wouldn’t have been able to understand it at his age. It was better to let him try to process things on his own.”

  A little spark of something—of anger—stirred within him. “And why were you the one to make that decision, when it was me that it affected?”

  The silence that followed led him to realize something: he was right. More than just the only two people who could explain things to him were sitting across from him—they were, at least partially, responsible for why there was so much he didn’t know.

  “Everyone makes mistakes,” Jasmin said slowly, carefully, “and I am not going to excuse mine. I was… not quite a different person at the time I knew Eme, but I was not the same person I am now. I made mistakes—many of them. And it seems a bit like a joke from the gods that those around me would suffer the consequences for them, while I remain largely ‘unaffected.’ I pulled others in on the road I first thought I would travel alone, and it seems they have paid the price for it in my stead. But I know that you’re not asking for my own shortcomings—you’re asking for now Eme ended up where she was.

  “I… honestly can’t say whether it makes it better or worse, but Eme was already aware of black magic and what it could do. She had toyed with it when she was younger, as well as learning more about it alongside her love—your father—Leander. Now, this was long before I knew her, so all I have is what she told me later, but… I know that he died, and it was directly related to the forces he was trying to tame. She swore off any kind of magic related to it, until… she met us. I convinced her to give it a second chance and she started working with us to find a way to remove the negative effects of using black magic.

  “Things were good for a time—I’m sure you’ll remember that, even if you didn’t know all of the context behind it. And something I know you’ll also remember is… just how much it came back to haunt us, just when we thought we might’ve gotten close to getting rid of it. When she learned about this, Eme… sunk deeper into it. I believe she thought that, if nothing else, she could try to bring back Leander, the whole reason she was trying to begin with. I’m sure she thought she would die anyway, so she might as well do what she could while she still could. In the end, however… it wasn’t enough. The magic overwhelmed her and, sure that it would consume her from the inside until all of it could devour her, she came to us. All that was left was for me to make sure that she no longer suffered, and that no one else would pay the price for our mistakes.”