Page 61

Everyone did. Stella couldn’t look me in the eyes, and her hand lifted slower than the rest, but at least she saw what we did.

Although their crime wasn’t as bad as Lux’s, the intention behind it was far worse.

“Alright then,” Lux said.

“Now, onto Hana and Venark.” I shifted to face Rafael. “Where are they?”

He scratched his head. “You’re not gonna like it.”

CHAPTERSEVENTEEN

VÉA

When Rafael handed me a crystal, I expected to feel the pulse of a soul within it. Wouldn’t that have made things so much easier? If they’d found Hana and Venark’s souls entrapped in a few gems? Nix could extract them, put them into bodies, and in twenty years, once they were adults, we could show them our memories of them. We could remind them who they’d been, and before we knew it, we’d have our family back.

Of course it wasn’t that easy.

Instead, I held the crystal, and I saw two adolescents. A boy and girl, not past twenty, but certainly not dead a year ago. They were in a forest, chasing after one another the way my children had played tag yesterday morning.

As I pulled myself from the vision, I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”

“Neither did we,” Rafael said.

“Until I remembered a story Pa used to tell us,” Lux said.

“What was the story?” I asked.

Nix wiggled his fingers, and I set the crystal in his palm.

Lux gestured to Nix, as if saying he could explain. After a moment with his eyes shut, he yanked himself from the vision, dropped the crystal to the table, and glared at it.

“What is it?” I asked.

“That’s them,” Nix murmured. “I see their souls. It’s them.”

“How is that possible?” I asked. “They’re adults, or almost adults. Hana and Venark only died last year.”

“Aye. And there’s a spell that accelerates aging.” Nix rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “Always thought it was a myth, but Pa said it was stored in the caverns.”

In a way, that was more convenient. “Is it a bad thing that they’re older?”

“I’m more concerned withwhythey’re older,” Lux said.

“You don’t get it?” Nix asked.

Lux raised a shoulder.

“Do you know how many times I’ve been pissed at you?” Nix leaned against the table and crossed his arms against his chest. “At least a thousand times, you’ve done something awful, and I’ve thought to myself, ‘If I were to kill him, and he was reborn, and I raised him to be humble, without the overzealous confidence Purah dumped into him from his childhood on, would he be so awful? Would he betolerable? Would he be a half decent person if I could’ve molded him into a man?’”

I lifted a hand over my mouth as it settled in.

“They’re training them. Likely making them think of themselves as no one,” Nix said. “They’re making sure they don’t realize who they were, because if they didn’t, and Hana and Venark somehow started unlocking memories from this life, they’d have no control over them.”

“Fucking stars,” Mum said, lowering herself to the table.

“Aye.” Nix yanked his blue-black hair from his face. “But if we get to them, we can remind them of who they were, Véa can give them eternity in the bodies they’re in now, and we can pick up where we left off.”

“But it isn’t so simple, you said.” I gestured to Rafael. “Why can’t we get to them?”