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He didn’t say anything when he awoke. He stood, walked outside to piss, and returned in silence a few moments later. I didn’t say anything for a while either.

Eventually, he broke the silence with, “We should eat.”

So we did. Véa’s berry coated vines covered every inch of this first floor, and that was our breakfast. Berries.

I didn’t taste them. I felt their texture in my mouth. My stomach felt better than it had, but I didn’t taste them.

I imagined it was my mind’s way of punishing me. Why did I deserve a droplet of joy when I’d failed on such a colossal scale?

As Medica grabbed the tea from the kettle, pouring each of us a glass, he said, “Everyone else is gone, I take it.”

All I managed was a short nod.

Silence again.

I wasn’t sure how much time passed before he broke it with, “If we can find them, you can put their souls into new bodies, can’t you?”

Another nod.

“Just a matter of finding them,” he said under his breath. “Have you spoken with Lux?”

“I was taking him to his cell when it began.”

“Do you think he’s the root of it? That he was trying to evade imprisonment?”

No. Maybe. I didn’t know. “He claims he isn’t.”

“He claims he didn’t kill your mum an eon ago, but I still think he did.”

That was a discussion I didn’t have the energy to delve into. Yes, several of us had toyed with that idea over the years. Véa was so sure of it, she’d even dissected his mind to see if it was so.

But she came back with nothing. Cere had looked through his thoughts for the same thing once, and again, the effort was fruitless.

It was irrational to accuse him of it with that information at hand.

“I don’t know, Medica,” I murmured.

“It’d make sense, wouldn’t it?” he asked. “When this all started, you said it was because the boys were trying to defend Lux. What if that’s what all this was? What if they were fighting for him, and he arranged for them to do all this?”

“But why would he pretend that he wasn’t then?” I asked. “Why would he act like we were on the same side?”

“So we’d let our guards down long enough for him to kill us all,” he snapped.

Did that make sense? Yes. It was the simplest theory, the one with the least nuance. Believing it would be easy enough.

But I wasn’t sure I did.

The shock, the pain, in his eyes when he saw Véa dead in my arms was genuine. He loved her. I was fairly certain he’d never fallen out of love with her. And yes, Lux had a habit of destroying the things he loved, but that look…

I wanted to think about this through the narrow scope because that’d be simpler. Taking down Lux would not be difficult. Getting him to tell me where Véa’s soul was wouldn’t require much effort. But I just wasn’t sure if I could believe it was so tidy.

What Lux had said to Michael, about this being over jealousy, seemed more likely. That look in his eyes, the way the other Angels looked athim…

“They look at Michael as the king,” I said, shaking my head. “If Lux were the center of this, they’d look at him that way, not Michael.”

He didn’t say anything, only tightened his teeth to a line and glared at his tea. “What’re we doing then, Nix? What’s our plan?”

I nibbled my lip, glancing out the window at the castle of Elvan ore in the distance. “We have to tell the queens.”