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Our power was part of us. Trying to explain it toa human would only come across condescending and dismissive.

“Especially when the sea just failed them for an entire summer,” I said in agreement. Lukas and Daphne couldn’t recover more than they had. The sea was practically spilling over with the fruits of their combined power. But the pain of a lean summer had struck first.

Jason nodded, twisting one of the large rings he wore stacked on his fingers around. “Just thatoneseed of doubt…”

“Sows an entire field of crops,” Mia finished for him, a small, if not pitying, smile growing on her lips from the metaphor.

“I know.” I rubbed hands together. “I wish I could say to give it time, to let another year of steady returns in the sea prove it for us. But we need something now.”

“We could distract,” Jason offered. I smothered a laugh at the last second. If only he knew that was exactly what I was doing.

I nodded in agreement. “Let me think on it. Keep an ear to the ground and tell me if you hearanythingbeyond mild chatter.”

Jason hummed in agreement before checking the time on his watch. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a date with my girlfriend.”

That girlfriend was a good friend of Rose’s if I remembered correctly.

Jason leaned forward to clap me on the shoulder in support. “You have it under control,” he said. It was a statement, a fact even. But it landed on my ears like a challenge, like the words could expose how thoroughly I wasn’t in control.

But Jason’s quiet confidence was helpful. Necessary.

I thanked him as he stepped back through a portal, leaving me with Mia. The tension in her strong frame was clear, reverberating through the room.

“You saw it, didn’t you?” I asked, only turning to face her after I spoke.

“Read it over my morning coffee,” she confirmed, her head tilting with a small wince. She lifted her thumb to her mouth to adjust the corner of her lipstick. A nervous habit it looked like. “At least I had to hunt for it between pictures of you and Reyna.”

Before I could say something to divert attention away from our relationship, Mia added with a chuckle, “How freaked out was Gus?”

I let out a low laugh, a genuine smile threatening. “He handled it better than I thought, actually.” Gus was young, barely a year into his seat of power.

“Good,” Mia said with a dip of her chin. “He’s a good kid.”

“He is,” I agreed. A kid who was too young and too good to be dealing with this bullshit. It was easy to call it that, I realized, than to put a name to it, call it what it was, and confront the weight of the threat.

We could be losing support. If we lost patrons we lost power.

And then I’d lose everything.

Chapter 11

Reyna

Family brunches were a long-held tradition in my household. Almost as long as the accompanying entertainment.

My brother and cousins shouting at each other across the table. Platters of food overflowing on the table, having to move around towering stacks of pastries to look someone in the eye.

The clink of glasses after my father’s toast, reminding us of the importance of family. Of our reputation.

It was colorful. Loud. At times, yellow with joy and at others, red with anger.

Today it was dead silent. A drab, murky gray that sat heavy around the table like oppressive rain clouds.

No, I thought grimly over a long sip of my mimosa. Rain clouds weren’t drab or oppressive to me anymore. Maybe gray like a boulder, balancing on the edge of a cliff seconds away from crushing you.

My mother was the only person who’d said a wordto me in the fifteen minutes since I’d walked around the side entrance and out onto my family’s back patio, greeted with beautiful rolling vineyards and a view of Rome in the distance.

When she saw me round the corner, clad in a sundress covered in soft oranges and pinks, complete with a sweater so that I'd be comfortable in the mid-fall weather, she jumped from her seat gracefully and came around to hug me. Narrowly crushing the flowers I’d picked up on the way.