Skandar had heard this before, but he didn’t mind one bit. He and Kenna were always desperate to hear about their mum. Grandma—Dad’s mum—used to tell them about her, but they liked it best when the stories came from Dad, who’d loved her most. And sometimes, when he repeated them, there were new details, like how Rosemary Smith always called him Bertie, never Robert. Or the way she had liked to sing in the bath, or her favorite type of flower—pansies—or the element she’d liked watching best—water—in the first and last Chaos Cup she’d ever seen. “I’ll always remember,” Dad continued, looking straight at Skandar, “when that first Chaos Cup finished, your mum took your tiny hand, traced a pattern on your palm, and whispered, quiet as a prayer, ‘I promise you a unicorn, little one.’?” Skandar swallowed hard. Dad had never told him that story before. Maybe he’d saved it until the year of his Hatchery exam. Maybe it wasn’t even true. Skandar would never know whether Rosemary Smith had really promised him a unicorn, because—without warning, three days after the Mainland had watched unicorns race for the first time—Skandar’s mum had died. Skandar would never have said it to Dad, or even Kenna, but part of the reason he liked the Chaos Cup so much was because it made him feel close to his mum. He imagined her watching the unicorns, the excitement building in her chest—just like it was in his—and it was as though she was there with him. Kenna stomped into the room with a bowl of cereal balanced on her palm. “Really, Skar? Mayonnaise at breakfast?” She pointed at Skandar’s smeared plate on top of the stack. “I keep telling you: it’s not an acceptable favorite food, little bro.”
