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"Lili, there's something I must tell you. We haven't much time, but I need you to know before I go."

Lisha couldn't read her mother's face, longer than usual, sadder than she'd ever seen it. Her scratching at the bark in the roots of a tree quite forgotten in an instant, Lisha hopped up to comfort as best she could. Perhaps she was too little to help, she thought when her mother steppe...

'When I look in the mirror I see you,' Meera thought at the rippling reflection staring from the hanging water's-surface portal charm on the wall. That was her mother's nose, the same resolute mouth and eyes so dark the pupils were hard to discern. Maybe they weren't even there. Even a drop of siren's blood made some features hard to shake after generations of dilution.

She liked to think she cou...

She wasn't sure where she was going or why, even what she needed to find. All she knew was that her eyes were open now, the last tendrils of the dream relinquishing their hold on her and retreating into the dark corners of the room. But they were still there.

'It runs in our blood, Meera,' her mother used to say often, so long ago. Prophetic dreams were their bloodline's core thread, connecting m...