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My head was split open, and in the moments it took before I awoke, it was healed. She should’ve been healing.

Our babies should’ve been healing.

“Why aren’t you healing?” I took her face in my hands, bringing her gaze to mine. “Mi lim, what happened?”

Again, she tried to form words, but nothing came out. Her mind, which usually whispered to me whenever she couldn’t speak, was silent.

I looked deeper, beneath her eyes to her soul.

And there wasn’t one.

Her soul was gone.

When I looked at my son, and when I looked at my daughter, again, there was no soul.

“Véa,” I repeated. “Who was it? I’ll get it back. I’ll bring you back. Who took it?”

Her eyes rolled into her head.

I shook her face, squeezing harder than I meant to, but it did its job. Her eyes opened wider. “Who, mi lim? Who did this?”

Her arm fell to her side.

Only then did I notice the body beside her.

I couldn’t tell who he was. His face was mauled, indistinguishable, stabbed so many times that all that remained was mush.

But no soul pulsed through him either.

That was good. It meant he’d taken my families’ souls, but they’d traveled into the abyss, and I could yank them back.

As Véa’s limp face crashed to my chest, I squeezed her tighter, touching my son’s arm with my free hand, and my daughter’s with the back of my knee. Physical contact helped me tether to a soul as I searched for them in the abyss.

Shutting my eyes, I collapsed into blackness.

The colors pulsed around me as I soared through the dark. So many auras flickered through the infinite dusk, so many souls, but usually, when I came here, those I was looking for were within arm’s reach. I was touching them, after all. That link was like a leaf to a tree. Once you found one, it wasn’t hard to find the other.

But they weren’t here.

I rushed through the abyss, searching for any of them. For Véa, or Mirobhail, or Vanna. They’d throb when I called for them. That was how it always worked when I looked for a soul here.

But no matter how fast I went, no matter how loud I yelled their names, I couldn’t find them.

They were nowhere in sight.

“I don’t know how they did this,” a shaky voice whispered in the doorway.

My eyes flung open.

Lux.

“I-I swear I didn’t know, Nix.”

“Where the fuck are they?!” My voice dropped to an octave that would scare a lion. “Shejustdied, Lux! Where the fuck could they have taken her?”

Again, his head shook quickly. “I don’t know. I swear I don’t, Nix.”

I didn’t know if I believed that. I didn’t know much of anything in this moment. All I knew was that life had been fine a year ago, Lux threw a temper tantrum, and everything fell apart on nearly every world since.