Page 81 of This Blood that Bonds Us

I still wasn’t sure what I was looking for but hoped I’d know when I saw it. We still needed answers about what was happening to me, but more importantly, Presley and I needed to find something to aid us in helping our brothers.

“This is boring.” Presley groaned as he turned a page.

“I know, but it’s the most helpful thing we can do. A lot of these books reference The Family, and we need to look for anything that could help us.”

“This one is just gibberish. I don’t even understand what I’m looking at.”

I held out my hand. “Let me see?”

It was a thick book with leather binding. Upon inspection, the entire thing was written in Latin. I’d seen enough of them to know what it looked like.

“Kilian, can you look at this one?”

Kilian had his head buried in a book but looked up at my request. The sun was disappearing and lit up the study in a warm glow.

“Hm.” He held the book and flipped a few pages till he landed on one. “It’s an account of poems. Many are illegible.”

“Anything helpful?”

“This one roughly translates to: Life belongs to Her.”

Presley rolled his eyes, picking up another book. “At least this one is in English.”

The mention of Her brought sickness to my stomach and a dryness to my throat.

“Do you think . . . she’s mean to them?” I asked a little too absentmindedly. I probably shouldn’t have asked in front of my brother, but I wanted Kilian’s answer. “I keep trying to imagine what it’s like for them. What would they even have in common with Her? What would they talk about?”

“I imagine She’d use whatever She could to create a relationship. The Family is all about the relationships they form. That’s how they manipulate them how they want. I’m more confident since Kimberly’s dealings, that the entity that makes the queens uses the memories and feelings of their vessel. I’m curious as to if there are times when that energy is stronger in the vessel and if it changes with the moons as well.”

“So, Cecily . . . She’s in there. She talks to my brothers.”

“I’m not sure. It is likely It uses her humanness to appeal to them.”

What did that really tell me?

“It’s all theory. How the thing connects you and I, connects us to the queens and the queens to their guards. The more we uncover, the more I believe that this entity needs their vessels.”

“I assumed you’d know more since this has been your obsession for hundreds of years.”

“Yeah. You’re so old. How don’t you know everything there is to know about every subject ever made?” Presley didn’t look away from his book.

The corners of Kilian’s mouth tugged into a smile. “The mind can only hold so much information. You think I’m knowledgeable, but my brother was even more so. The myths of Her in Ireland haunted us. My brother . . . was obsessed with hunting Her. He had a strong sense of justice. I often thought of him as purer in heart than me. He’s the reason we ended up in The Legion. From there, we gathered as much information that we could. Ezra, her closest, was thought to be the knight of Cecily.”

“Like he knew her before everything?”

“Yes, I believe he is the first She turned after Her transformation. The others are less known. Akira is said to have traveled a great distance to find Her. While Sirius and hisbrother are the most mysterious. These four were selected for a reason.”

His gaze flickered between me and my brother, but Presley was busy skimming pages with the same vacant, bored expression.

“Prophecy. Do you believe in it?”

“I have seen many things come to pass through prophecy.”

Of course.

“However, I think we have more power than we think. I believe fate is a strong wind, not a solid like stone. This power that the entity draws from, I’m not sure what it is. My brother believed in its power, that’s why he gave his life for the cause.”

“And you? What do you think?”