Jade
The Seer of Origin’s ember-gold eyes sweep across our boat and land on Callie.
“The ambitious one.”
Callie straightens, her chin lifting in that practiced way she has.
The Seer of Origins studies her with those ancient eyes. “The Bennett bloodline. Council-adjacent for generations. Ambition is woven into your upbringing, like threads of gold through silk.”
Callie doesn’t flinch. If anything, her posture improves.
“You were taught from birth that power is currency.” The Seer studies her, and the weight of that gaze borders on disapproval.
“That love is leverage. That attaching yourself to those with power is the same as possessing it yourself. You have spent your life seeking power through proximity, never realizing that borrowed power is no power at all.”
Callie’s hands close into fists, but she says nothing.
The Seer of Essence glides forward next, and when those burning red eyes fix on Callie, his expression shifts into disgust. Actual disgust, visible on features that should be beyond such mortal reactions.
“What you have done to bind yourself to another...” he says, lower now, colder. “You have surrendered pieces of yourself.”
Surrendered pieces of herself?
What the hell does that mean?
The color that had returned to Callie’s face is draining away, replaced by genuine fear.
“You offer your blood to the one who hungers.” The Seer takes a step closer to her, his massive form casting shadows that shouldn’t exist in this strange, even light.
“He takes from you again and again. You call it devotion and tell yourself it is love. But what you serve is not love. It is appetite. And you feed it willingly, letting yourself be drained in exchange for the illusion of importance.”
I glance at the others, searching for clarity.
Kieran’s face is tight with controlled fury, his eyes narrowed like he’s already calculating who to kill. Evie’s standing right next to him now, and she’s radiating heat, but there’s confusion mixed with her anger now.
Logan’s face remains blank, like the man I love doesn’t exist inside him at all.
My attention returns to the Seer of Consequence, his silver eyes fixed on Callie with the same unsettling intensity he showed during my judgment.
“The path you walk leads to transformation.” His layered voice echoes across the water. “You wish to become what you serve, to cross from a witch to a creature far more powerful. All that remains is for the resurrected one to complete the transformation.”
The resurrected one.
The phrase echoes in my head, strange and wrong, making sense but not at the same time. Because there’s only one person I know of who’s been resurrected—Ambrogio.
But a few days ago, Callie didn’t believe me when I told her what Circe said about Ambrogio and his goal to create Revenants to steal back Selene.
She thought it was ridiculous that I believed it at all, and then she started theorizing on how Revenants were created, even going as far as saying how fascinating it would be to study them.
If she wanted to be one all along… then she was lying the entire time.
Of course she was lying. Why would I have expected anything else from Callie Bennett?
Now, her eyes are fixed on Logan with desperate intensity, like she’s begging him to make this stop.
Logan doesn’t move. He just stares straight ahead, his gaze fixed on nothing, his face so blank it barely looks human anymore.
Then, finally, he looks at me.
His eyes stop me cold.
Because they don’t hold fear, anxiety, or even the careful blankness I’ve grown used to reading around the edges.
What I see in them is grief. It’s the same sort of grief he showed me when he let me hold the rings on his necklace and told me about his parents.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and the words are barely a whisper.
“Sorry for what?” I walk to him, reach for him, and take his hand. A spark jumps from my fingers to his, and his grip tightens like a reflex.
His eyes search my face like he’s trying to memorize it.
“I wanted more time,” he says, soft and desperate. “I thought we’d have more time.”
“More time for what?”
But before he can answer, the Seer of Origins speaks.
“Now, the dead one.”
The temperature drops, sudden and sharp.
The dead one.
Who’s dead? We’re all standing right here. Five living, breathing people on a boat in the middle of an impossible strait with three ancient creatures digging their fingers into our souls to destroy us from the insides out in front of the people we care about the most.
But the Seer’s ember-gold eyes are focused on Logan.
And Logan drops my hand, levels his gaze with the Seer’s, and steps forward.