15. Rae
RAE
“Your family.”
Rhys’s words swirled in my mind, echoing through the faint buzzing in my ears.
“My family?” My voice was barely a whisper, but saying it aloud had a million different unknowns circling.
Adopted at the age of eight with memory loss that had stolen every recollection of the time before that. A feeling of otherness.
“No, no, no.” I spoke the words under my breath over and over. This wasn’t happening. It was all wrong.
“It’s going to be okay,” Pax said softly.
But I heard the lie in his words. “Witches?” I wheezed.
His gaze moved deftly between the approaching crowd and me. “Luminaries, light wielders. They harness their powers and magic from all forms of light.”
“More like they steal it,” Rhys spat. “Manipulate it for their own gain.”
The two ideas seemed at odds. How could those who used light as power be bad? But so far, it seemed like everything in this world had an edge—and not always an expected one.
The horses and their riders drew closer, the warriors surrounding them. The silver creatures were adorned with flowers woven through their manes and tails. Even their hooves seemed to glow with silver light.
All except one.
The outlier was a slightly larger black horse.
His coat glimmered, too, but with darkness.
And the man who rode him also radiated darkness.
He was larger than everyone he accompanied.
His dark hair was shaved on the sides and slightly longer on top, and I saw intricate designs inked along the sides of his skull.
His skin was the kind of tan that spoke of countless hours in the sun or Mediterranean descent. His jaw was clean-shaven, making it incredibly clear that he was grinding his teeth. My gaze jumped to his eyes.
Violet.
I’d never seen anything like them before. They glowed with a purple hue like violets lit aflame.
And something about them was…familiar.
Like a long-ago dream scratching at the back of my brain and trying to break free. There was a flash. A tendril of an image.
Running through elaborate gardens in a white dress. Laughing.
I reached for it. Tried to grab hold. Attempted to see more. But it vanished like smoke.
Losing it hurt. But why? I had no clue. It wasn’t as if I’d really even had it to begin with. Yet an ache settled deep in my chest.
The corners of my mouth pulled down in a frown. My mind had to be playing tricks on me. That was all. Soon, I’d wake up, and this would all have been a crazy dream.
The group came to a stop before the burned land. Warriors in light garb formed a line before the horses. I started to see it then—a hierarchy.
An older man and woman were at the center of the group. There were no lines on their faces, but there was silver in their hair—hair capped by actual crowns, the metal encrusted with countless pale jewels. Every millimeter of their surface reflected the light.
It had me searching the skies. Above the Luminaries, I saw nothing but blue skies and full sun. Above the land I stood on was nothing but midnight. No stars, no moon, no glimmers of light. The only glow came from the fire.
“So.” A voice boomed.
My head snapped back down, my gaze landing on the owner of the voice. It was the woman with the crown. Her voice was neither high nor low, but it reverberated with authority.
Yet something told me not to let her exert dominance. Not to bow or lower myself but to meet her gaze dead on.
The woman’s silver gaze narrowed on me. “She returns.”
There wasn’t exactly a warm welcome there. Her tone dripped with distrust—and possibly dislike.
“This is my family?” I whispered to Pax. Suddenly, I didn’t care that he’d been lying to me for the past seven years. I needed someone to translate what was happening.
“Not exactly,” he said quietly. “She’s your Queen. In Luminary culture, the women rule.”
I was down with that idea, but this particular woman didn’t look all that welcoming.
The man next to her smiled gently. “You were missed, Soraya.”
My mouth pursed on instinct at my full name.
“You dislike your given name?” the Queen snapped. “Do you disrespect your ancestors that much?”
It wasn’t that I didn’t like my full name.
It was that it never felt like it fit. My parents had called me Rae my entire life.
But to this woman, my choice of a nickname was clearly an insult.
For some reason, I didn’t want to look too closely at the fact that it didn’t bother me when Rhys used my full name. It sounded almost musical then.
“Mother, please.” A man pushed forward on a horse.
He wore brown pants devoid of the ornateness of the others’ and a linen tunic.
Everything about him was golden—his hair, his skin, his very aura.
The only thing that wasn’t was his eyes, which were a blue-green that tugged at me—the color of a lake I swam in every summer.
“Rae has been through enough,” the man continued, his gaze turning hard as it settled on Rhys. “If you return her without harm, I will only kill you. I will spare your people.”
My breaths started coming quicker, in short, tripping pants.
Rhys pulled a blade from thin air and spun it between his fingers. “You could try, witch. But you’d fail.”
The Queen held out her palm, and a moment later, a ball of silver appeared. It looked like some type of phantom energy, crackling with power. “You stole from us, Rhys. And then you have the audacity to return, flaunting it in our faces? You should’ve stayed in the human realm.”
Rhys ran the tip of his blade under a fingernail as if he were bored. “If I left your precious prize there for another day, she would’ve died.”
The golden man’s spine straightened. “Rae, are you ill? Hurt?”
I frowned. I felt like there was something I was supposed to know. Recognize. I glanced at Pax, uncertainty bleeding into my words. “Who is he?”
Ayden scoffed. “What’s the matter, witch? You don’t recognize your betrothed?”