Tarquin forced down an unreasonable shock of anger. Mundir had only said what he already knew. “There has to be something else.”
“There isn’t. You must accept that. We all must. I’m sorry.” Mundir picked up the gold bear and turned it in his hands, frowning at an apparent flaw in the figurine. “It’s possible that he will still know himself once the transformation is complete. That he won’t…be truly taken from us.”
“He will be,” Tarquin said.
Mundir’s head snapped up, his brow furrowed. “You can’t know that. Merely because he’s shown…a certain amount of confusion—”
“It’s more than that, and you know it,” Tarquin said flatly. “When Faladir found me in the chapel earlier, he…for a moment it was like he didn’t know me. No, worse. Like he wasn’t there anymore. In his head, or soul, or…” Tar
