The problem with half-breeds, the document read, is that they are ill-equipped to the longevity of the fae. Humanity are meant to be short-lived, and their minds and their spirits thus best survive in a more natural lifespan — sixty to eighty years, perhaps a hundred at the outside. The half-breeds are similarly equipped, being closer to humanity than to the gods who are our ancestors. At a certain point, the half-breeds simply stop forming memories correctly; their brains are full and they can no longer process new information.

It had been hailed as a piece of scientific truth for over two centuries among the Grigori, but to Regine, it read no more accurately than any other piece of pseudo-science racism of its era. Why were human brains and half-breed brains ill-equipped to longevity? What, other than the same grasp of genetics that called a panda a bear because it was roly-poly and shared a certain similarity of shape with Ursus, suggested that half-breeds were further from the ancestor-fae? And for that matter, who had reference that told anyone what the ancestor-fae were, or how specific traits which came to be equated with each of the pure-blood breeds were related to those ancestor-fae?

What she wanted to do, now, was take a sample of her half-breeds at fifty, a hundred, a hundred and fifty years and so on, preferably in contrast with pure-bred fae of the same ages, and discover how their minds worked, how they processed new memories, how they handled their oldest memories.

It had been forty-nine years since her first year of students had graduated. Five of them were still alive. None of them, no matter what she tried, would talk to her — and one of those was the grandson of one of her crew!

Regine huffed at the replies her messenger had brought back.

Respectfully, no way in hell.

I’m sorry, I have other plans for the next 50 years.

I don’t owe you anything anymore. I paid back every cent you gave me and every cent you gave my parents and my children. Look at your ledgers. We’re not only clear, you’re one child in my debt.

If Addergoole taught me anything, it was never to let someone I didn’t trust completely into my mind. I trust four people completely, and you, Director Avonmorea, are not on that list.

The fifth had left a hole in Regine’s messenger’s shoulder and the messenger had taken that as a no.

She filed the responses carefully in their respective folders. She’d ask again in ten or twenty more years.

She had forty-eight cohorts of students yet, and, of course, a new one every year for several generations to come. Within them, she was still fairly certain she could put together an adequate study.