A family.

It felt like a family—the one I’d never quite had, had never dared really hope for. Had stopped expecting when I’d grown used to the space and formality of living in a manor. To being a symbol for a broken people, a High Priestess’s golden idol and puppet.

I opened the storeroom door, a blast of cold greeting me, but candles sputtered to life, thanks to the magic that kept the place hospitable. Shelves free of dust (another magical perk, no doubt) gleamed with more food stores. Books, sporting equipment, packs and ropes and, big surprise, more weapons. I sorted through it all, these remnants of adventures past and future, and almost missed them as I walked past.

Half a dozen cans of paint.

Paper, and a few canvases. Brushes, old and flecked with paint from lazy hands.

There were other art supplies—pastels and watercolors, what looked to be charcoal for sketching, but … I stared at the paint, the brushes.

Which of them had tried to paint while stuck here—or enjoying a holiday with them all?

I told myself my hands were trembling with the cold as I reached for the paint and pried open the lid.

Still fresh. Probably from the magic preserving this place.

I peered into the dark, gleaming interior of the can I’d opened: blue.

And then I started gathering supplies.

I painted all day.

And when the sun vanished, I painted all through the night.

The moon had set by the time I washed my hands and face and neck and stumbled into bed, not even bothering to undress before unconsciousness swept me away.

I was up, brush in hand, before the spring sun could resume its work thawing the mountains around me.

I paused only long enough to eat. The sun was setting again, exhausted from the dent it’d made in the layer of snow outside, when a knock sounded on the front door.

Splattered in paint—the cream-colored sweater utterly wrecked—I froze.

Another knock, light, but insistent. Then—“Please don’t be dead.”

I didn’t know whether it was relief or disappointment that sank in my chest as I opened the door and found Mor huffing hot air into her cupped hands.

She looked at the paint on my skin, in my hair. At the brush in my hand.

And then at what I had done.

Mor stepped in from the brisk spring night and let out a low whistle as she shut the door. “Well, you’ve certainly been busy.”

Indeed.

I’d painted nearly every surface in the main room.

And not with just broad swaths of color, but with decorations—little images. Some were basic: clusters of icicles drooping down the sides of the threshold. They melted into the first shoots of spring, then burst into full blooms of summer, before brightening and deepening into fall leaves. I’d painted a ring of flowers round the card table by the window; leaves and crackling flames around the dining table.

But in between the intricate decorations, I’d painted them. Bits and pieces of Mor, and Cassian, and Azriel, and Amren … and Rhys.

Mor went up to the large hearth, where I’d painted the mantel in black shimmering with veins of gold and red. Up close, it was a solid, pretty bit of paint. But from the couch … “Illyrian wings,” she said. “Ugh, they’ll never stop gloating about it.”

But she went to the window, which I’d framed in tumbling strands of gold and brass and bronze. Mor fingered her hair, cocking her head. “Nice,” she said, surveying the room again.

Her eyes fell on the open threshold to the bedroom hallway, and she grimaced. “Why,” she said, “are Amren’s eyes there?”

Indeed, right above the door, in the center of the archway, I’d painted a pair of glowing silver eyes. “Because she’s always watching.”

Mor snorted. “That simply won’t do. Paint my eyes next to hers. So the males of this family will know we’re both watching them the next time they come up here to get drunk for a week straight.”

“They do that?”

“They used to.” Before Amarantha. “Every autumn, the three of them would lock themselves in this house for five days and drink and drink and hunt and hunt, and they’d come back to Velaris looking halfway to death but grinning like fools. It warms my heart to know that from now on, they’ll have to do it with me and Amren staring at them.”

A smile tugged on my lips. “Who does this paint belong to?”

“Amren,” Mor said, rolling her eyes. “We were all here one summer, and she wanted to teach herself to paint. She did it for about two days before she got bored and decided to start hunting poor creatures instead.”

A quiet chuckle rasped out of me. I strode to the table, which I’d used as my main surface for blending and organizing paints. And maybe I was a coward, but I kept my back to her as I said, “Any news from my sisters?”

Mor started rifling through the cabinets, either to look for food or assess what I needed. She said over a shoulder, “No. Not yet.”

“Is he … hurt?” I’d left him in the freezing mud, injured and working the poison out of his system. I’d tried not to dwell on it while I’d painted.

“Still recovering, but fine. Pissed at me, of course, but he can shove it.”

I combined Mor’s yellow gold with the red I’d used for the Illyrian wings, and blended until vibrant orange emerged. “Thank you—for not telling him I was here.”

A shrug. Food began popping onto the counter: fresh bread, fruit, containers of something that I could smell from across the kitchen and made me nearly groan with hunger. “You should talk to him, though. Make him stew over it, of course, but … hear him out.” She didn’t look at me as she spoke. “Rhys always has his reasons, and he might be arrogant as all hell, but he’s usually right about his instincts. He makes mistakes, but … You should hear him out.”

I’d already decided that I would, but I said, “How was your visit to the Court of Nightmares?”

She paused, her face going uncharacteristically pale. “Fine. It’s always a delight to see my parents. As you might guess.”

“Is your father healing?” I added the cobalt of Azriel’s Siphons to the orange and mixed until a rich brown appeared.

A small, grim smile. “Slowly. I might have snapped some more bones when I visited. My mother has since banished me from their private quarters. Such a shame.”

Some feral part of me beamed in savage delight at that. “A pity indeed,” I said. I added a bit of frost white to lighten the brown, checked it against the gaze she slid to me, and grabbed a stool to stand on as I began painting the threshold. “Rhys really makes you do this often? Endure visiting them?”

Mor leaned against the counter. “Rhys gave me permission the day he became High Lord to kill them all whenever I pleased. I attend these meetings, go to the Court of Nightmares, to … remind them of that sometimes. And to keep communication between our two courts flowing, however strained it might be. If I were to march in there tomorrow and slaughter my parents, he wouldn’t blink. Perhaps be inconvenienced by it, but … he would be pleased.”

I focused on the speck of caramel brown I painted beside Amren’s eyes. “I’m sorry—for all that you endured.”