"It's hard to say. Patia was a few hundred years old by the time we met, and she wasn't exactly an open book about her past." It's easy, now, to wish he'd pushed harder. Maybe if he had, they'd both have been a little less lonely in the end.

"But I know she never married, or had children, because she dedicated herself so thoroughly to that pursuit of knowledge. In the name of her city." He knows how she looked at Laerryn, sometimes, and Nydas; he knows that she vowed to be there for Elias once he and Evandrin had passed on.

"Her grandfather was the one who founded Avalir."