Eli sighed, and not knowing what else to do, retreated to his room, checking several times to make sure her moonlight presence was still close by. Why would she run away? Eli stared at the maze of swirls on his ceiling. She’d obviously thought all those things about him since the day he’d brought her here. And why should he even care?

He didn’t have an answer for it. All he knew was that he couldn’t keep up the charade for Dad or for Dom. He couldn’t keep making an enemy out of a Kar-Tog— a human— he truly respected.

He sank into a fitful sleep. Terror coursed raw and real through his veins as words he’d never forget rang like thunder in his mind.

“You have failed me.”

The alabaster walls melted away. The tunnels began to quake and collapse to rubble. Children screamed and ran while mothers cried out their names.

Eli searched for Mom in the darkened waters. Dad hauled him up by his shirt and swam like mad for the tunnel. There, in the mouth of the tunnel, her arms outstretched, stood Mom.

“Mom, get out of there!” Eli called to her, knowing she was deaf to him.

He watched the scene unfold, the one he could never stop no matter how many times it repeated in his mind.

The tunnel roared, shook, and the archway collapsed.

Mom disappeared beneath the rubble.

Dad shouted her name, over and over again, and dug at the rock.

Her mind reached out to them just as Dad revealed her bruised and bloodied face. Deep indigo, love and grief, followed by brilliant white finality, washed over Eli, and he drank it in.

“Eli. Stay safe, my love, my son. Remember that I love you.”

Eli knelt beside her, his eyes shut tight against the pain building up behind his eyes and nose.

“Mom, you should have listened. Why didn’t you move? Why did you have to die?”

His words didn’t reach her. They never had and they never would.

Her aura faded to nothing.

As the darkness of her blank mind spread over him, Eli opened his eyes and choked on the water gathered in his throat.

“Mom.”

He sat up and let the burning sobs take him. It had been years since he’d dreamed of Mom, and he knew exactly what—or who— had brought the memory back. He took in several deep breaths to calm the shuddering in his limbs and then stood, his mind ablaze. “There must be another way.”

Not willing to try sleep again, he got up and paced the room, then stepped out into the hall and down to Nel’s room. Even though he felt her sleeping presence, he needed a visual confirmation.

She was there, curled up tight under her single blanket. The glowstone sat in the corner, uncovered, bathing the room in its blue light. A chill rippled through the coiled-up shape on the divan. She was afraid of the dark, and cold, too.

Going back to his room, he went to the coffer for another spare blanket, and not finding one, he took his own blanket and went back down the hall.

At her doorway, he paused. Why was he going through all this trouble for a Kar-Tog who’d condemned herself to die?

The thought came automatically, and he shrunk back from its coldness. If she was willing to call him what he was, he was going to call her what she was. A human.

He draped the blanket over her. Her still form brought unwelcome images to his mind, images of her pale face and frightened eyes staring at him, of her slender form slumping over the sacrificial knife—

He shook the horror from his mind and went to the kitchenette, pacing and unknotting his hair with his fingers.

“There has to be another way,” he told himself again. He knew he had to tell Dad what Dom was planning. But if he did that, Dad would probably just jump more quickly to the ending Dom already had in mind for Nel.

He had to get her out of the picture first, somehow. Then he’d tell Dad. It would take longer to get his blues back that way… and that meant he’d have to wait longer to get back in Ron’s good graces. He didn’t like that notion. But Ana didn’t know how long it was going to take to get his blues back. And they could still meet secretly. It wasn’t as if Ana was going anywhere.

But Nel had to get out of there if all this was going to work. He didn’t even know if humans could revert back to their humanity once Taken.

A sudden memory glanced before his mind’s eye, of a giant room, with stacks and stacks of rolled fabric, humming with melodies waiting to be sung and understood. The Room of Records.

Of course. He could find his answers there. But what if Dad caught him? What if he asked what he was doing?

“Hey.”

He whirled to face Nel.

She rubbed her eyes and tossed his blanket back at him. “You can save your chivalry for your fancy noblewoman friends.”

“You’re welcome,” he said.

“Why’re you being so nice to me all of a sudden?”

Eli thought about the question hard for a moment. She obviously wasn’t taking his kindness seriously. In fact, it seemed she was trying to infuriate him. Did she honestly want to die that badly?

When he turned to shrug at her, he stopped. There was that look again, the one that reminded him so vividly of Mom.

He sighed and looked at the floor. He had to help her. Pride or no pride. It was the only way he’d feel comfortable in his blues once all of this was over.

“Because,” he began, then paused. He didn’t have to explain himself to her. She could take his help or leave it.“Because I want to.”

Her eyebrow arched. “Really. You, after taking me hostage so your psychopath king can get his hands on my sister, want to be nice. Isn’t that sweet?”

“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

She strode closer to him, her eyes blazing. “You seriously expect me to trust you after all you’ve done?”

Eli stared back at her, willing the retorts on the edge of his mind not to fly out at her. He calmed himself with a couple of deep breaths and turned away to sit at the table.

“No, I don’t,” he said after a moment. “But I do expect that you’ll take help wherever you can get it.”

She seemed ready to come back with something, but she paused, examining his words, his face. “You want to help me?”

He looked at her, eyebrows raised, and nodded.

This confused her. A flash of violet tinted her moonlight aura. “How?”

He shrugged. “I have a couple of ideas. They’re a bit far-fetched, but they’re something.”

Nel stood there for a second, not seeming to comprehend him. Then she stepped closer to the table and sat down across from him, her arms wrapped around her torso.

He looked at her, his hand propping his forehead. He didn’t need to see her thoughts to know she was lost in the implications of what he’d said. Maybe there was something to that body language thing after all.

She stared hard at the table, her brow furrowed, her lips drawn down into a confused frown. She then glanced up at him. All traces of her former anger were gone. Now there was hope in her wide eyes, a hope Eli knew she didn’t cling to, but held deep nonetheless.

“You mean…you’re going to keep Dom from getting Mil?”

Eli gave her a sincere, if crooked, smile. “That, and better, if I can. I’m going to try to find a way to make you human again.”

Her eyes widened even more. A wild joy danced through her moonlight, magenta because it was tempered by distrust. “You have to be kidding.”

Eli snorted. “Part of me wishes I was.”

That sobered her well enough. The lines in her brow came back. “Then why are you doing it?”

Eli frowned. He couldn’t tell her the truth—that she reminded him of his dead mother. What else could he say? “My dad always tried to teach me about honor. He told me that people don’t sneak around and play dirty to get the things that they want. I’d forgotten that until…” he trailed off, his pride not letting him continue. But he couldn’t stop himself from looking at her, and couldn’t contradict the knowing arch of her eyebrows, begging him to continue.

“Until…?”

Eli sighed and waved his arms. “Until all… this happened.” That was the only answer he could make past the brick wall of pride in his mind. It was the closest to an apology he could give her. He looked at her again.

She seemed to be processing his answer and looked up, her lips upturned in a smug smile. “I’ll take it.”

Eli woke the next afternoon with a clear sense of purpose. His plan that he’d shared with Nel was simple. He’d go to the Room of Records while the kingdom slept and search for information on how to make her human again. When he found something, they’d start the process, whatever it turned out to be, and pray they’d have time to get Nel gone before the new moon—a little less than a week away.

“I don’t pray, remember?” Nel had said.

“Well, you’d better start,” Eli had retorted, “because there’s no guarantee about any of this.” That had sobered her, but she’d gone to bed hopeful, if the magenta of her moonlight was anything to judge by.

Eli readied himself and then snuck a quick peek into Nel’s room. There was the glowstone, illuminating her huddled form. Ignoring the cold voice in his head this time, he went back, retrieved his blanket, and draped it over her. She shifted in her sleep, but didn’t wake.

He checked the time stone embedded in her wall— the green of early evening was fading to a dull teal. I’ve got to hurry.

He stole out of the house and down and out the tunnel to the palace. At each tunnel opening, he kept his eyes aware, ready to hide or give his alibi to any that might be awake at this early hour. As he expected, none were out, and he finished his journey to the backside of the palace within a few minutes.

He slipped through the broad, decorated archway and counted the doorways down the wide corridor as he walked—one, two, three, and four. At the fourth doorway to the left he stopped and glanced around. The glittering halls were silent and empty.

So far, so good. He gave a quick nod and ducked inside the doorway to the Room of Records.

The towering stone shelves closed around Eli as he entered, stifling all movement in the water. Eli rubbed his arms as he scanned down the length of the shelves. The water tasted stagnant and settled heavy in his lungs.

“A very early hour for a visitor, is it not?”

Eli started and searched for a face among the dark shelves.

A green-hooded figure moved into view just down the row to his right—Eli recognized the green robes as the garb of the Palace Scribe.

“Yeah, uh, sorry. I just, uh…” Eli scratched his head. “I didn’t want to be disturbed.”

“I know your quest, young son of the High Guardian.” The scribe’s voice was soft and high, rather like Dom’s. “You wish to free the human girl.”

Eli searched his face. How did he know anything about what he needed?

The scribe peered back at him, his eyes indecipherable in the shadow of his hood. “Come this way.” He turned and strode back down the row.

Eli hesitated. What if it was a trap? What if the scribe was going to turn him in to Dom or his Dad? He already knew too much. How long he’d known was a different question altogether.

The scribe turned and beckoned. “Come. I will show you where to seek.”

Eli looked up at the gargantuan shelves and sighed. Left to his own devices, he’d need weeks to even discern where to begin. And at this point, he was down to just a couple days. It was now or never.

He nodded at the scribe. “Alright.”

The scribe led him down the row and along the side of the giant room, passing row after row of the same gargantuan shelves. Eli studied them with a growing sense of dread. Even if the scribe led him to the right place, there were likely months’ worth of fabrics to sort through.

He remembered his blues, Nel sleeping in the cold spare room, and Dad. He steeled his will. He had to try.

The green-hooded figure stopped a moment later in front of a large chest hewn of rock at the corner of the massive room. He turned to Eli, his aura swirling navy with gravity. “Guard yourself wisely against what you find in these records.”

Eli raised an eyebrow. The scribe produced a little stone key from his pocket and turned it in the chest’s lock. The lid scraped against the chest as he slid it to the side, revealing piles of the same rolled, dirty green-brown fabric that filled the rest of the Room of Records.

“Everything I need is in here?”

The scribe nodded.

Eli sighed and gave a nod. “Alright.”

The scribe left him, and Eli dug into the chest, pulled up an armload of fabrics, and sat himself down to work. He picked up the first scroll and gave the query he’d learned as a child, the little melody that accessed the records sung into every thread of the carefully woven fabric. Then the information spread out before him in a tapestry of words and music and images.

“Humans,” he said. “I need to find stuff about humans.” He directed his thoughts toward the fabric, and it began to sift through the various melodies it contained, bringing to light brief parts of the record.

“The humans were sacrificed… the humans, as a race… humans are given a choice…” The fabric held no promise for Eli, and so after a moment he pushed it aside and grabbed the next one, and then the next one, with no luck.

“The humans are Taken… drug used in the temporary transformation from human to Tognir-”

“That one.” Finally, on the fourth fabric, Eli widened the range of the excerpt the fabric returned to him and listened.

“The drug used in the temporary transformation from human to Tognir is a complicated potion. It uses liquefied forms of various aquatic gems as its base, with the blood of the Taker giving the drug the Tognir information necessary to impart to the human candidate for sacrifice. The liquefaction of gems is a difficult matter, primarily because-”

Eli stopped the fabric and cradled his chin in his hands.

This is going to take forever.

Eli found himself keeping long hours at the Room of Records during the two days that followed. He spent most of his time alone, but it seemed that each time something puzzled him, before he could work up the motivation to call for help, the scribe appeared with some bit of advice.

Eli looked through dozens more rolls, but without any luck. He'd found the most interesting things on the first day, and though he'd found a few excerpts that might have interested Nel—for example, explaining why Tognir took three-letter names—he found none that helped him think of a way to get her out alive.

On the third day of Eli’s search, after having been lulled half to sleep by the repetitious search results, he bolted upright.

“That one.”

“Human blood is a powerful hallucinogen,” the scroll repeated. “When humans are Taken, they are known to go mad, claiming to see variations in the architecture that are not real. As their blood content transitions, near the third day of their capture, they will stop seeing these visions and their sight will adjust to what a normal Tognir sees. If a Tognir were to come into contact with human blood, they, too, would see the hallucinations, thereby proving the contaminating factor of madness resides somewhere in the human blood. The humans have described their visions in varying terms, but all with the same end. Instead of marble, alabaster, or smooth stone walls, they see rough, dark cavern walls, sometimes smothered with algae. Some have even claimed to see bright eyes staring at them from these crude walls, further proving their madness.”

Eli chuckled to himself. “They just can’t handle the Tognir world, it seems.”

He remembered Nel’s near-descent into mad panic and his smile faded. He stopped the scroll, picked up another, and pushed on.

Later that evening, Eli sighed and rubbed his face in despair. “I can’t find anything. And I don’t have another day to come back. I have training in the morning.”

The water shifted as the scribe appeared and stood beside him. He studied the piles of rolls on Eli’s table.

“I’ve looked everywhere.” Eli slapped his hand on the table. “There’s nothing about the humans. No human has ever been released before. Why would there be a way to turn them back?” He thought of Nel, alone, shivering. “Surely something in this place has the answer. I don’t have time left to keep guessing.”

“The king’s would-be bride,” the scribe said.

Eli glanced at him.

“She is no longer here.”

“No.” Eli rubbed his nose. “Someone tried to get rid of her.”

“They did get rid of her. They got her out of this place.”

Eli stared hard at him.

The scribe began gathering up the rolls.

Dad had got Mil out of there. What had happened to make her human again? Was she human? Nel seemed sure she was. And the drug didn’t make them fully Tognir. It just enabled them to survive as one.

“That means…she can just go back.” He looked at the scribe. “Right? She’ll just go back and eventually she would be normal again.”

“Define ‘normal’.”

“You know. A normal human. Without the scales and all that.”

“In theory, yes. Given some time.”

A giddy hope danced in Eli’s chest, followed by a sinking sense of betrayal. “Did you know this all along?”

The scribe continued gathering the rolls from the table, though there was a small smile visible under the shadow of the hood covering his eyes.

Eli could have throttled him. “Why’d you let me sit here this whole time if you knew?”

“You knew it as well,” the scribe chuckled. “And every key must come at its due time.”

Eli leapt up and started for the door. “I think the ‘due time’ was three days ago.”

“Be wise and stay safe, young son of the High Guardian.”

A familiarity in the scribe’s words slowed Eli’s frantic pace. He turned back, but the scribe was gone.