Page 48

She reached for its hands as her features were cloaked in fear, and an instant later, she’d been pulled backward into the water. I stood, unable to move as the swell of pained helplessness threatened to choke me.

She was drowning, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.

Everything else disappeared as the kappa’s face transformed into something even more sinister and dark. The creature remained unmoved as Bianca flailed, trying to escape. To breathe .

I held my breath as her movements slowed and his teeth bared.

He didn’t win . I knew this because Bianca was relatively safe with us in the present.

But how? No one was here to help her. Any longer and—

A whirlwind of movement rushed past us, and the demon was thrown back. A second later, Alyssa carried Bianca to the shore, looking darkly toward where the creature had fallen.

But when it didn’t resurface, she focused back on her daughter.

“Bianca…” She lightly shook her. “Wake up.” Her statement came out as both a desperate question and a command.

At first, Bianca didn’t stir. Then, even though I expected it, I sighed in relief as she finally began to cough.

Alyssa dropped all pretenses as she threw herself over her daughter, pulling her tiny form into her lap. “You’re okay, baby,” she kept repeating. “You’re okay.”

Bianca slowly opened her eyes and looked up. “Aly?”

“I love you so much.” Alyssa peppered Bianca’s face with kisses. “I love you.”

Bianca’s brows furrowed in confusion. She seemed too disoriented even to notice that Alyssa was holding her. “I was bad.”

“No, you weren’t, baby,” Alyssa insisted. “It’s not your fault.”

“But—”

“I love you.” Alyssa held Bianca back from her. “Now, go back and wake up Kieran. He’s still bespelled. Tell him that—”

Her sentence cut off with a gasp. She didn’t need to breathe, of course, but having a hand thrust through your back would shock anyone.

Bianca blinked, still dazed, as she stared up at her mother.

“I only need one more,” the kappa growled, pulling his hand back. With the movement, Alyssa was thrown from Bianca as he snatched her limp form. The kappa smiled, baring its teeth. “And I don’t care who it is anymore.”

Then, it dove under the water, taking the spirit of Alyssa Dubois with it.

The scene faded, and I returned to that space between memories. The stream ran past me, highlighting other windows begging for my attention. My fingertips hummed with the growing pressure of unused magic as the voices echoed through the chamber.

The sounds of laughter—and another, with a screaming that I wouldn’t be able to forget.

Darkness cloaked my vision as my shoulders tensed. There were so many lights of that type. Why was there so much pain?

They reached for me, calling for my attention, and a fundamental part of me longed to follow. My body quaked with a desire to learn, to protect. Why was it important that I not do so?

It would be too easy to embrace the destruction. I would never forgive anyone who’d ever made her cry.

“Now is not the time.” Pops was suddenly there, his hand a heavy weight over my shoulder. “You’ve found the key memory to solve this incident. With your presence, it is no longer stuck. Now we should—”

He suddenly vanished mid-word, and everything fell into sudden darkness. Everything disappeared as the familiar space vanished, and I was thrust somewhere entirely unfamiliar.

“Pops?” I asked, taking a step forward. My limbs felt strange, and even my voice sounded different. A faint light returned, revealing a heavily forested glen bathed in the soft glow of early morning .

I glanced at my hands.

My skin was lighter, and a thick layer of heavy scarring covered my knuckles. Even though I knew this form, I took another moment to reorient myself and fall back into Shui’s presence.

Well, this hadn’t happened in a while. But why now?

“I sent him back first.”

The familiar, ancient language washed over me, his words accusing. “Did you find what you were searching for?”

Mu.

My heart jumped, and guilt filled me at the sight of the other man.

I shouldn’t have been surprised that he was here. This was his consciousness, too. But I hadn’t been ready. And even thousands of years later, his voice still caused a shiver to run down my spine.

A gentle breeze blew through the air, causing his long black hair to sway behind him. His emerald robes contrasted brightly against his pale skin. And his jade eyes held mine knowingly—and judgmentally.

His thick brows furrowed, and he frowned. “We had an agreement.”

“I apologize.” The accusation stabbed at me. “I was running out of options. I needed to see—”

“I know what you needed.” Mu’s response was curt, but then his jaw tightened. A look that I knew to be regret lined his face. “And in this case, exceptions had to be made…”

My heart began to race.

Usually, Mu would have lectured me and nursed a grudge. But now, he seemed resigned. This was unlike him. “You’re not angry?” I asked.

“Not in particular,” he said, studying his hand. “I just never expected to see you here. Once again, you’ve pushed me outside my comfort zone and were right to do so. You usually are.”

This was new.

“But now you need to keep pushing me. I’m not going to break,” Mu said lightly. “I could never be angry at you for long. You’re one of the few who seems immune to that.”

“I’m not worried about that,” I replied. However, it was a lie. Yet there was another reason why I’d been avoiding this moment. “It’s just that—”

“You think she’ll break,” Mu said knowingly. “You know, we are the same person.”

“It’s different now…” How could he say such a thing? “She’s tiny, frail, and has been through so much—”

“You’re not wrong,” Mu interrupted. “But you should have more faith. We’ve survived without your meddling for years.”

I cringed. His statement almost sounded like an accusation, especially since Bianca had said the same thing.

“Give me something,” I said. “Anything that we can use to help her because, as it is right now, we are lost.” I reached out to him without thinking—this was always how things had been.

But he pulled back, blinking, as he looked away. “We are not ready.”

“What?” I frowned, my attention lingering on his tight shoulders.

Never before in any of our many lives had Mu flinched from me. A surge of renewed fury made it harder to breathe. I’d assumed Bianca’s fear was limited to our current lifetime—as sometimes things were. But it seemed the effects had migrated into her collective consciousness.

“Just,” he began, still unable to meet my eyes. “I can give you this: be careful.”

“Of course,” I told him. Bianca had become my most important person, and I would treat her as such.

“Do not seek to beguile her,” he warned. “Especially you. I do not know if we could ever trust again. We’re extremely fragile from our previous betrayal.”

My eyes narrowed. “You mean Finn?”

“I am not referring to the demon’s descendent,” Mu replied. “His actions are inconsequential, and our anger is misdirected. But we know this, even if we do not admit it to ourselves yet.”

“Then what happened?” I asked.

Mu looked up at the sky. “We were so easy to trust back then, before everything. All we’ve ever sought was to belong. He was the one who harmed us the most.”

“Who?” I narrowed my eyes. “Eric Richards?”

“No,” he said. “We do not like to speak his name; it gives him power over us. However, they are of the same blood. That is all I can say.”

I studied him—the firm set of his jaw—and knew that he wouldn’t talk anymore on this subject. I fought the urge to sigh. I wasn’t sure what we could make of what he disclosed.

“Okay, then let me help you with something else,” I began, and he looked at me again. Perhaps I could get an answer to our other most curious question. “Why are you female? Did something go wrong?”

Mu’s sad smile caused me to pause.

There was something almost broken in that expression, but his eyes glittered with a hint of his ever-present mischievousness. “I have something I must do, but don’t worry. I won’t let it affect you.”

That tipped me off, and realization dawned. “You chose to be born like this…”

His eyebrow twitched, and he squared his shoulders. “It was inevitable,” he replied, almost defensively .

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Do you take issue with it?” he asked, tilting his head.

“No!” I replied, my words stumbling out. It was embarrassing, and heat raised to my face. “It’s not that I care either way, and I rather like your current form, and you’ve always been kind of—”

I couldn’t say ‘delicate’ because then he’d cry.

“Different,” I corrected. “But I assumed you being born in this form was a random accident. You’re fae. You know how women are seen among your kind.”

“Prophecies are tricky things…” he mused, his attention drifting past me. “There’s so many things that you can plan around them.”

My senses were on high alert. “What are you plotting?”

“You know who doesn’t like change?” Mu continued, ignoring my question. “Quite a few people. Dragons especially.”

“So why are you a woman? To fulfill the prophecy or to annoy Jin?” I asked.

“No, I’ll leave that to Tu. He and Jin secretly enjoy their bickering.” Mu waved his hand in the air, unperturbed. Then his mood shifted, and his eyes flashed. “But which individual and which realm do you think my new form might affect the most?”

My jaw locked. “Huo.” Annoyance flared through me. He’d come as Bianca for Damen?

“You’re going to need to let go of that resentment.” Mu frowned.

He was in no position to judge me. “Only when he stops acting like this,” I replied.

“Your hatred is impacting how you treat other onmyoji,” he pointed out, not incorrectly. “Which clouds your judgment regarding myself.”

I looked away and clenched my jaw. We would just have to see about that.