Not with a mirror!

He pressed a kiss to her neck, his husky laughter muffled against her skin.

“But what exactly does that mean?” Honor prompted, impatient with their father’s vague answer about the medicine.

With a look of triumph in his eyes, Leander said softly, “It means that our DNA, bioengineered to be compatible with the human body, solved a lot more problems for the patient than whatever the patient was taking the medication for. Have diabetes? Your eczema is cured, too. High blood pressure? Say good-bye to your lactose intolerance. Taking a pill for migraines? That hole you didn’t know you had in your heart is now healed, too.”

“Well,” said Honor after a while, sounding a little disgruntled. “Bully for them.”

“No, love. Bully for us.” Leander paused, his gaze taking in the group. “Because every person who took medication from the Phoenix Corporation for the last twenty-five years has had their DNA altered. And they’ve passed that altered DNA on to their children, and those children will pass the altered DNA on to their children. So now, basically . . . they are us. Or something like us.”

“Hybrids?” Beckett stared at Leander in disbelief. Everyone else stared at him that way, too.

Leander nodded. “Without knowing it, Thorne solved a problem that’s plagued the Ikati since the beginning of time. We could never mate with humans because our genes were incompatible. The half-Blood offspring would survive until the age of twenty-five, then either Shift for the first time, or die. Only a tiny percentage were ever able to survive the Transition—”

“So that’s what he meant!” exclaimed Lu, standing straighter.

“Who?” asked Honor, frowning.

“The Grand Minister! The day he found me at the Hospice he questioned me, asked if I’d ever had any health problems around my twenty-fifth birthday!”

Eyes shining, her mother reached out and touched Lu’s arm. “You’re only one-quarter human, and I knew how powerful you and your sister were, but I admit, the day of your twenty-fifth birthday was one of the worst I can remember. I just sat on the cot in my cell all day . . . waiting. I thought I would feel it . . . if . . .”

She swallowed, shaking her head. Leander murmured something into her ear, low and soft. Jenna cleared her throat, blinked her tears away. “But obviously I had nothing to worry about. Cliché as it sounds, we had the last laugh. The majority of people left on Earth are more like us than not. Even if they can’t Shift, they have our Blood, and that makes us related.”

A bird was singing somewhere out there in the twilight. High, sweet notes warbled and trilled, suspended for a long moment in the cooling air. Lark, Lu thought. She’ll be making her nest soon. Life goes on.

Life goes on.

Her mother’s hand was still on her arm, and Lu gripped it, overcome with emotion. Honor moved closer, and the three of them stepped together silently, embracing. Her father put his arms around them. When Lu looked up at him with tears in her eyes, he kissed her on the forehead, then kissed Honor the same way.

“We’re so proud of you,” he said, husky, his own eyes moist. “For everything you’ve done, for the women you’ve become, your mother and I are so proud of you both.”

Lu’s face was wet now; she didn’t care. She smiled up at Leander, squeezed Jenna’s hand, bumped her hip against Honor’s. Then she looked over at Magnus and Beckett, both of them wearing huge grins, and realized with her heart full to bursting that she finally had everything she’d ever wanted. Family. Love. Home.

There was only one thing missing.

“The people you left me with,” she said, looking back at Jenna and Leander. “The people I called my parents, before . . .”

Jenna’s brows drew together. Leander stilled, waiting, his eyes searching hers.

Lu wasn’t sure how to say what she wanted to say, only that she needed to say something to make them understand. They hadn’t talked about her past yet, specifically her childhood, and at this moment it seemed important to honor the people who’d sacrificed so much for her. The people who’d taken her in as a baby, cared for her, in spite of the danger to them. In spite of how different she was. In spite of everything.

“They loved me,” she said simply. “And I loved them. I . . . I’ll always love them.” Her voice broke, and she swallowed, looking away.

Her mother’s voice was as soft as the hand she laid on her cheek. “Of course you will. They’re your parents, too. And I’ll always be grateful to them. Don’t ever feel like loving them takes anything away from us. Hearts are big enough to fit a lot of people inside; you don’t have to choose one over the other. We can all be in your heart together.”

“Thank you,” Lu whispered, overcome with gratitude that she understood.

Swiping at her eyes, Honor sniffled. “Okay, enough of this! My mascara’s gonna run.”

“You’re not wearing mascara,” Lu said.

Honor jabbed her in the ribs with her elbow. “Shut up.”

“You shut up!”

“No, you shut up!”

“Both of you shut up!” said Beckett and Magnus, and everyone laughed. And it felt so good Lu couldn’t stop for a long, long while.

“Speaking of that hospital in New Vienna,” said Lu to Honor on the slow walk back toward the caves, “you and I have a little unfinished business there.” She slid Honor a sideways, knowing glance, but her sister looked puzzled.

“What do you mean?”

Lu answered casually, “I mean . . . did you ever hear the old saying that if you die in your dreams, you die in real life?”

It was a moment before Honor grasped her meaning. When she did, a smile spread slowly over her face. “Oh, dear sister. And everyone thinks I’m the wicked one.”

“Witchy, I think you mean.”

“I’d rather be witchy than haggard,” Honor shot back, her brows raised haughtily.

“Here we go again,” said Magnus, holding Lu’s hand and rolling his eyes. Beckett pulled Honor against his side, clamped his arm around her shoulders, and dragged her away.

Lu called after them, “Love you, too, sis!” to which Honor responded with a distinctive, one-fingered salute.

Magnus chuckled. “You two are unbelievable.”

With a brilliant smile, Lu looked up at him. “I know.”

They walked through the hole in the grassy hillside, leaving the jewel-painted sky behind.

He was dreaming. He understood that. He didn’t rise to the position of Grand Minister of the Imperial Federation by being stupid, after all.

But the thing was . . . there was something wrong about this dream.

The scent, for instance.

He knew he’d never had a dream that incorporated smell before. He didn’t know how he knew, only that he did, and it disturbed him. The scent itself wasn’t disturbing—it was lovely, in fact. Lovely, dark, and deep, like an unexpected breath of springtime air in a dead winter woods. He knew this scent, but couldn’t place it, and the just-out-of-reach recognition was maddening.

Floral top notes, gardenias and freesia. Something earthy and indefinite, clean like ocean breezes but woodsy like moss and beds of dried leaves at the same time. Beneath it all, a musky, exotic heart of . . . cloves? Amber? Maybe even chocolate. Mouthwatering.

Aware that his body was fully operational, and all his limbs were intact in a way they could never be when he was awake, he felt loamy earth beneath his feet, saw slanting shafts of sunlight glimmering through towering, ancient trees. This was the woods behind his childhood home, the wild Black Forest he’d played in so long ago. It was all familiar, there was no visible threat, but that sense of wrongness permeated everything.