It was Ronan, predictably, who first gave voice to the question that had been quietly forming in Jasmine's own mind for months — the particular, unsettled curiosity of a child old enough to notice the gaps in his own history. He had always been the one to ask the questions no one else thought to voice, a trait Jasmine had encouraged even when it occasionally unsettled her.

"Mother," he said, one evening in the fortress library, looking up from a text considerably too advanced for his age with the careful, deliberate manner that had marked him since infancy. "Who is Celine?"

Jasmine felt something cold and unexpected settle in her...