Chapter 9
SEAN
Welcome to the show.
What did that mean?
“We really should get back,” Bel said, taking Sean’s hand.
“Aye.” Cathaire nodded. “Your father has been waiting long for you. Best not keep him in suspense.”
Sean’s gaze drifted back toward the Tree, looming high overhead. Apprehension curled around his muscles, tensing them. A brush of fingers ghosted over his knuckles, and he turned to find Anna, studying his face.
“Breathing exercises help anxiety,” she said.
He screwed his face into his charming smile. “Am I that obvious?”
She shook her head. “In through your nose, out through your mouth.”
He laughed once and agreed to try. After a swift goodbye, Isobel took his arm and headed back toward the monstrosity behind them.
Back toward his father.
Before long, they reached the Council Hall and entered the antechamber to his father’s quarters. The brownie rang a bell, then cracked the door open. “The heir of Sidera is here to see you, sir.”
“Of course. Let him in,” came Aunt Blaire’s familiar voice, and tension released in Sean’s neck. Aunt Blaire would never abandon him.
Except…she wasn’t his aunt. Not really. And she’d kept so many secrets.
Before Sean could decide how he felt about that, Isobel was dragging him into his father’s living space. With the balcony doors thrown wide open, sunshine filled every nook and cranny. Cole stood at the railing, looking over. Autumn, perched on a sofa nearby, stared at the back of his head.
Mesmerized by the morning sun glinting over the treetops, Sean merely stared.
Kywyn stood beside him. “Pretty, isn’t it?”
“Why is it glittering?”
“We call it Luster. The Light. It’s the energy in this realm, fed to us from Viterra. It lives and breathes with us. Looks after us.”
Sean paused. That sounded…religious.
“There’s Luster in everything here,” Kywyn said, “but Luxorians can use it in the other realms, too. It’s just harder.”
“It’s so bright.”
His father smiled, soft and sad. “It’s fading. Indigo uses the same type of energy, but it’s called Shade. The Light may look bright, but the Indies take so much from Viterra that our entire realm has darkened.”
Sean inhaled and exhaled as slowly as he could just as Anna had suggested, though his heart was begging for oxygen, wanting to panic. Literal magic floated in the air around him. It shone from his skin like shimmer dust.
Fairy dust.
“As Lhynion’s heir, you will be a symbol of hope that things will soon change,” Kywyn said. “Without Viterra to feed her, the Great Mother, who protects us all, will shrivel and die—and us with her.”
The Mother. Blaire’s goddess, who she believed controlled all their destinies. It made so much sense in hindsight.
Kywyn cleared his throat. “Why don’t you have a seat. I’ve some food here.”
His father led them to an elaborate dining room, where a round table was overloaded with berries and cold cuts.
Sean sat. “So how are they stealing so much of our…magic?” He tripped over that last word. It felt strange in his mouth. Cole glanced his way and laughed under his breath.
The others filled plates while Kywyn said, “As mortal creatures age and die, they release a sort of potential energy that extracts naturally from their world to ours through the mist.”
Mouth full of berries, Sean only nodded. What was this fruit? Sweet like a ripe watermelon, but crisp like an apple.
“Glowberries,” Autumn whispered in his direction.
He glanced at her, suspicions forming. This wasn’t the first time she’d replied to his thoughts.
“The Indies are parasites,” Kywyn continued. “They possess humans and thieve the Light from their bodies before it can reach us.”
Cole, riveted to Kywyn, hadn’t eaten a bite. He leaned his elbows on the table. “So what happens if this place doesn’t get enough of the energy?”
Beside Cole, Blaire gripped his hand.
Kywyn’s gaze fell to the table. “Well, the Great Mother…she’s starving.
We all are. Our elders are dying. Our women have difficulty bearing children.
The Luster is fading. No matter how many of us go into Viterra to purge the Indies, more always take their place.
With human technology, they’ve grown even more dangerous.
Our numbers dwindle, and we can’t replace them fast enough. ”
“So what are you doing about it?” Sean asked.
Kywyn hesitated, so he shifted his gaze to Aunt Blaire.
“Lhynion Sidera was the last Sovereign to achieve a balance,” she said. “Under him, we thrived. The Indies were held at bay. After he was gone and things got worse, it was said another would come, that Lhynion’s progeny would bring us freedom.”
“Who said that?”
Blaire set her fingers over her mouth, hiding half her expression, but Sean knew her well. Whatever she was thinking, she didn’t want to say it.
“Still with the secrets?” he asked, brows raised.
She frowned. “It’s— Some immortals can look into the future. There was a prediction you would be the one.”
The berries acidified in Sean’s stomach. Prediction was only one step from prophecy, and prophecies weren’t real. Every pair of eyes in the room landed on him, and he wanted to run, to scream, to laugh in their faces.
“You keep saying immortal as if we don’t die,” he said, his voice louder than he meant it to be. “Where is this Lhynion Sidera person if he can’t die?”
“We don’t age, but we can die, Sean,” Kywyn said. “Accidents, violence, suicide. Mortal or immortal, nothing lasts forever.”
“So which was it?” Sean asked. “Accident, violence, or suicide?”
Kywyn’s mouth tightened. “Lhynion Sidera was my grandfather. He was murdered by his brother more than a thousand years ago.”
Murdered.
Murdered?
Grandfather?
A thousand years?
An absurd laugh burst from Sean, frenzied and high pitched. The others watched as he pushed from the table and left the room, pacing the sitting area they’d used last night.
His mother had kidnapped him from his home. His aunt-but-not-really was in on it. He was illogically obsessed with a girl who wore a mysterious vial around her neck. He was part immortal. Meant to be some long-awaited leader. Descended from a nobleman with a tragic history. His great-grandfather.
They wanted him to save this realm from starvation.
You wanted answers, he reminded himself. But now he wanted to give those answers back. He wanted to return to his small life in his tiny town and be no one.
He wanted to resurrect his mother and ask why. Why had she condemned him to ignorance?
If he’d just come home sooner that day, she wouldn’t be dead. He’d be there now, with her.
And still in the dark, whispered a voice in the back of his mind.
Sean paused to grip the back of the sofa, his fingers digging into the fabric, knuckles blanching. It did nothing to relieve the tension tightening his ribs. He couldn’t take a proper breath.
“It’s normal to feel overwhelmed,” said a voice behind him.
Sean startled, unaware Autumn had crept up. She touched his hand, and warm happiness forked up his arm.
He held his attention on where she touched him. “Why does it feel like that?”
She let loose a small laugh. “It runs in the family. You got exceptional combat skills from Lhynion. I got Rhiannon’s happiness charm.”
Happiness charm?
“That’s what I call it. My touch alters your emotions. Injects a bit of cheer.”
Sean lifted his gaze to hers. She’d answered his thought again. “You hear my mind, don’t you?”
Her expression froze, mouth parted, still with its omnipresent smile. “That’s another thing I got from Rhiannon.”
His jaw spasmed. “Neat.”
“I really try not to pry, but sometimes I answer thoughts without realizing.” Autumn grabbed his shoulders and turned him to face her.
“Listen. It’s normal to think what you’re thinking, Sean.
Anyone would feel the same. In a single day, your entire life has changed.
Everything you thought was true, isn’t. But you can do this. ”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. Look.” She snatched his elbow and dragged him deeper into the suite until they stood in another sitting room. One wall was composed entirely of a giant, aged portrait. Two men, two women.
Autumn pointed at the raven-haired man. “That is Lhynion Sidera. Your great-grandfather.”
With a sinking weight in his gut, Sean stared at his own face on this stranger’s body. The man wore a navy tunic with a low-slung belt, a scabbard dangling at his hip.
“That’s my face,” he said, because what else was there to say?
Autumn laughed. “Well, your ancestor’s face.”
“Am I—some sort of reincarnation?”
“Not exactly.” She moved to stand beside him, gazing at the portrait. “We aren’t repeating history, Sean. We’ve been offered a redo. We’re meant to fix everything they got wrong.”
Fix history?
What did that even mean?
High stakes. Infinite risk. No guarantees.
It was lunacy dressed in the spangles of destiny.
Sean’s gaze roamed the portrait. Lhynion Sidera stood beside a woman. Auburn hair. Emerald-green eyes.
A softer version of Isobel.
“That’s Meléan.” She pointed at the other woman. “And that is Rhiannon.”
Sean moved his attention to the redhead, letting his gaze drift back and forth between the portrait and the real woman, finding little difference.
So that would make the last man the missing piece of their quartet. Numb once more, Sean lifted his eyes. The fourth individual stood off to the side, and for the millionth time, Sean’s world shifted.
Gold hair. Sly curve to his smile. The way he held himself, like furniture was made for the mere pleasure of leaning against. That man was an impeccable likeness of David Berkeley.
“And that’s Galadaine Manae. Lhynion’s brother.”
Brother? The one who’d killed him?
At Galadaine-David’s hip hung a scabbard boasting a jewel-encrusted broadsword.
“Oh— No—” Sean stepped back, his gaze fixed to the portrait. “No.”
Autumn turned, brow scrunched, studying him. Memories of David dredged forth—fighting and feuding and yielding to the deep hatred David had exhibited from their first moments. There had been nothing but rivalry and animosity between himself and David at every meeting.
A crayon stuck up Sean’s nose upon their first meeting as children.
David’s blood on his knuckles from a fistfight at age twelve.
A bruised jaw when David had compelled Cole to attack Sean with his weird voice trick.
A knife at Sean’s throat the last time Aunt Blaire had forced him to accompany her to David’s home to visit her friend, Alex.
“Threaten me again, Archer,” David dared, digging the blade into Sean’s windpipe.
With a deft maneuver and a quick hand, Sean reversed their positions, shoving the blade at David instead. “Not so scary without your mind tricks, are you? You know they’ve never worked on me.”
David’s green eyes glinted. “Do it, then. Kill me.”
Sean often thought on the way David had said those words. They’d almost sounded like…a request. A demand.
The knife had dropped from Sean’s hand at once, but that had been the last straw.
With the thin scratch from David’s blade still stinging on his neck, Sean had told Blaire he’d had enough.
If she wanted to visit David’s mother, she could do so at her own risk.
He would no longer serve as a bodyguard in that house of criminals.
“You know him?” Autumn asked, tone incredulous, jerking Sean out of his memories.
Another doorbell called their attention. Autumn darted that way, but Sean followed more slowly, arriving at the entryway in time to watch the brownie attendant poke her head through the cracked door. “Visitor!”
As the door swung wide, a disheveled David Berkeley came into view, his clothes and hair flecked with dirt. His shrewd gaze took in the room of strangers, darting to each of them before pausing on Sean.
Horror flooded Sean’s nerves, a dread so toxic it made him sick.
How was he here?
How was it possible?
“This is where you’ll find answers,” said a blonde behind David. “May I go now?”
“Sure,” David said, frozen behind a blank expression. “Looks like I found what I was looking for.”
As Kywyn stepped forward, David entered the suite and closed the door. Anxiety coiled in Sean’s gut, ready to spring.
David shrugged and threw on his mask-like smile. “Guess I’m late to the party.”