I knew those words. I didn’t know how, but I did.
“Lumen Solis Invicti,” they continued.
Light of the unconquered sun.
Their efforts were not enough. They needed me, needed whatever power I stored within me to put their magic into full effect. I knew this in the same way I knew to breathe. It was just a part of me.
I closed my eyes, focusing all my energy into their small bodies, and joined their chant. The light became blinding. I turned away, shielding my face with the crook of my arm, but Charles, Adrian, and I were wrapped in the children’s shadow, untouched by their implacable light. A few moments later, the air went cold. Darkness reclaimed the cemetery.
Only the tombstones had survived. The newly silent air—now empty of the cries of battle—filled with shuddering breaths and the winces and moans of Charles and Adrian.
The children turned to me, their skin bright red. I shrieked at their unexpected appearance and swayed back against Charles.
“It’s okay, Sophia,” they said, reaching toward me.
Their skin lightened more by the moment, returning to their previous pallor. I reached out to touch them, but my hand twitched. What were they? As their hands touched mine, palm-to-palm, they effused a relaxing stream of electricity that entered through my fingertips. They knelt in front of Charles and Adrian.
“What was that?” Charles asked.
“We’ll explain later,” the girl said, her voice oddly mature. “We must relocate immediately.”
The girl touched Adrian’s and Charles’ wounds, her fingertips glowing red. The touch cauterized the skin, stopping the flow of blood. The boy placed his palm to each man’s forehead, and a soft hum carried on the night’s chill wind. Both Charles and Adrian’s countenances improved.
“Now, Sophia,” the boy said.
I couldn’t read his thoughts, but there was a knowing. The men still needed my blood. This time they had the strength to feed. They drank quickly, just enough to give them the strength to get away, then we scaled the cemetery walls to our escape.
As I heaved myself over, I saw Ophelia standing at a nearby grave, watching. A small smile touched her lips, then she disappeared into the shadows.
{chapter thirty-one}
THE CAR OPHELIA HAD WAITING for us was old, the gray seats inside upholstered with perforated leather, as though it’d been used as a pincushion, each tiny hole an inch apart. The heating vents blew around a mothball odor that reminded me of Mother’s coat and vacuum closet back in Keota. My clothes, wet with blood and dusted in ash, squished against the seat, and my stomach sent acrid bile into the back of my mouth.
At first, I half-expected Cruor to chase us down the road, but the further we distanced ourselves from the cemetery, and the faster the night sky lightened, the safer I felt. But we still needed to get Adrian indoors before sunrise.
I wished for the nausea and shaking to subside. A headache settled in. I was neither able to block nor focus on the supernatural noise. All that remained was the pulsing hum of whispered thoughts, most of which belonged to Charles and Adrian.
A fog lifted from my mind as we pulled away. Not a fog caused by magic or Cruor influence, but the fog of what had happened. Reality was crashing into my chest, arresting my lungs and heart with the realization of what I’d done.
The children, sitting on either side of me, tended to my wounds with their magic as Adrian drove, but because I was mortal, the scars would remain—the thin pink rivers on my arms as well as the burn scars on my shoulders, chest, stomach, and shins that Ophelia had healed. Charles and Adrian had already fully regenerated, no visible evidence of the war marked their bodies, though Charles was still nearly unconscious from exhaustion.
With my immediate wounds cared for, the children turned away from me and stared out the windows. I leaned forward between the front seats to check on Charles, who was sleeping in the passenger seat. His chest rose and fell in slow patterned breaths. I touched his cheek with the back of my hand. His skin was feverish and damp.
“Is he going to be okay?” I asked Adrian.
“Quite.” He reached to turn on the car radio, hand trembling. “A big shift, is all.”
I rubbed my temples to alleviate the pressure. In the rear-view mirror, I saw the creases in Adrian’s forehead deepen. Where did we go from here—where would we be safe?
“They could’ve killed me,” I said, more to myself than anyone else.
Adrian heaved a sigh. “I cannot thank you enough.”
“Thank me?”
“We’d all be dead if it weren’t for you.”
I wasn’t so sure. Perhaps they wouldn’t have escaped without me, but I wouldn’t have escaped without them, either. Or Ophelia for that matter.
We passed barren fields as we headed toward the airport. Adrian placed a call to Rhett, his voice a backdrop to my thoughts. “Fifteen minutes … immediate departure…”
As we turned the car onto the private runway, Charles woke. Rhett had the plane running. We rushed over, his gaze scrutinizing us more harshly the closer we came.
“No, no, no. Not getting in my plane like that, dirty as field rats and smelling of rot.” He shook his head. “No way. Ain’t gonna happen.”
I glared at him. “We paid you.”
“Fine,” he said, huffing through his nose. “Fine! I don’t get paid enough, tell you that. Grab the towels in the back. Don’t touch nothing, don’t get nothing dirty, or you pay for that, too.”
“Go on,” I said to the children, shooing them to follow Rhett onto the plane. I turned to Charles and Adrian. “What are we going to do with them?”
A muscle twitched in Charles’ jaw. “Do whatever you want, but I have a few questions to ask.”
I frowned. “Are you okay?”
“My parents are dead. What do you think?”
I stared at him with searching gravity. The pain of losing his parents was one we shared, but I wasn’t ready to deal with those emotions right now, and there was nothing I could say to make him feel better.
Once we boarded, Charles told Rhett to take us to a location in the Japanese mountains. The Liettes’ home, I guessed. Rhett’s only reply was a flippant quip that we should rest easy and let him take care of everything.
Adrian lay on a small bunk in the back cabin. I should’ve been exhausted, but my mind stirred with too many unanswered questions. I grabbed the ragged brown towels from the compartment near the bathroom and tossed them over all the seats. Charles and I sat opposite the children, a small dish on the table between us, empty except for some dusty peanut residue.
“Sorry,” I said to the children, “I haven’t even got your names.”
The boy introduced himself as Aspen and the girl as his sister, Autumn. “Valeria took us in several years ago—” the boy began.
“Bullshit,” Charles said.
The boy blinked. “Did Valeria not tell you of us?”
“My mother,” Charles said, turning to me, “would never take in one of the Chibold.”
So they were fire elementals? I covered his hand with my own. “Please, let them talk.”
Charles was suspicious, and, admittedly, I didn’t like the way they kept staring, unblinking, an inky blackness to their eyes. But if what they said was true, they were family.
As I delved more deeply into Charles’ thoughts, I read he was only remotely thankful the twins had saved me; mostly, he blamed them that I’d been in danger in the first place. The children clearly had the power to rescue his parents but had allowed them to die and nearly got us killed in the process. Why hadn’t they acted sooner?
“Tonight’s events had to happen this way,” Aspen said.
The usual blue vibrancy of Charles’ eyes faded to a stony gray, and he clenched his fist over the armrest of his seat. I placed my hand on his arm, hoping to soothe him. We all dealt with grief in our own way. Detachment was the only way I knew. For Charles, grief was handled through anger and a need to place blame.
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He slumped in his chair, pressing his lips together.
I asked the children—these Chibold—about their capture, about how they had survived so long. The Council had been waiting for us, but not entirely for the reason we had thought. They didn’t know how to destroy these children, and the Liettes provided no answer. They’d hoped Charles would help them solve the riddle, that somehow bringing the family together would be the key to solving this small mystery.
“Though our kind are nearly extinct due to the lack of host families, some of us have found a way to survive by helping dual-breeds in exchange for them being our hosts,” Aspen said. “The Council does not take kindly to this, but there is not much they can do. Their only option is to kill our host families, but we aim to protect them. Moreover, even once they’ve ended the lives of the host family, we’d still live for centuries more. The Liettes being alive was the only thing that kept us in holding, and the Council was aware of that. We could have left at any time. They thought Charles might be able to reveal more—reveal another way to end our lives.”
“You were trying to help the Liettes, then?” I asked.
“They wanted us to escort Charles once he was ready to approach the Ankou and purge his Cruor side. We were to be introduced to him at that time.”
“So what happened?” I asked.
Aspen settled his gaze on me. “You were involved.”
“Of course I was involved.”
“No, you don’t understand. Not you, the woman Charles wanted to grow old with. You—as in the very reason we were originally sent here.”
What the hell was he talking about? “Who sent you here? Why?”
Autumn gave me a warm smile. “Sophia—this has been hundreds of years in the making. The first attempt had been in the late 1600s, but the unexpected events of that time derailed the Universe’s plans. As things changed, they had to take additional steps to prepare. Even Ophelia’s life has been devoted to awaiting your arrival.
“They brought you back time and again, but the path was not an easy one to resume, to line up as had originally been intended.” She spoke as if the details carried no weight. Perhaps they didn’t. Perhaps the night’s events made everything meaningless.
The Chibold, Charles thought toward me. My parents would not get tangled up with such tricksters. Don’t believe anything they say.
I disregarded his thoughts. Much as I loved him, he was a horrible judge of character. His perceptions of Thalia and her coterie had been way off. Then again, perhaps I was no better. I’d trusted Ivory for years.
“You could have prevented the deaths of your host family,” I said. “I hope you can see why we’re hesitant.”
Charles crossed his arms, his mouth dipping into an even deeper frown. The shadows under his eyes deepened with each passing moment.
“The Liettes were like parents to us,” Autumn said, her voice lullaby-sweet, “but we are here to save something bigger. We needed to meet you, Sophia.”
Charles scoffed. “You could have saved my parents and found her later. Or joined them on their visit to the States.”
“Brother,” Aspen said, his voice darker than his sister’s, “we couldn’t come forward until now—we simply were not able. Sophia had to act first.”
The idea was hard to accept, but I’d gone years without even knowing about my gifts. Perhaps things were the same for them.
“We would not willingly sacrifice our host family,” Aspen pressed. “That would mean risking our own lives. Host families are hard to find these days, and even centuries might not be enough to find ones who would hide our true identities. Surely you understand that?”
“Why is this happening now?” I asked.
“Because you willed it,” Autumn said in her musical voice. “Your ritual set these events into motion.”
My ritual? My ritual hadn’t willed this to happen. I’d never want the Liettes sacrificed because of me.
“That ritual was months and months ago,” I said. “Couldn’t you have come to me sooner?”
Aspen shook his head. “The ritual was only the first step. You still had to learn, on your own, who you were. To accept yourself for who you were—who you are—and prove your strength and loyalty as you did tonight.”
Autumn leaned back in her chair, resting her hands in her lap. “By not caving in to the Council’s request, you triggered our powers and allowed us to progress on our path. Just as in your first life, you did not cave—you remained true to yourself until the end. That was the moment the Universe was waiting for.”
The tension did not leave Charles’ neck or shoulders, but some of the anger had dissipated from his expression. “What business are we of yours, then?”
“We are your messengers,” Autumn said.
“Messengers?” I said, disbelieving. “You’re children.”
“We are, in that we carry a child’s appearance. However, we have greater knowledge—one bestowed upon us by the Universe that we are to share with you. We are your guides. The Council remains strong and their plans for the future nefarious. You will need our help.”
Guides? Messengers? The concept muddied my thoughts, and Charles was still skeptical. I gave the children a blank stare, which spurred Aspen to elaborate.
“At one time, the Universe thrived alone, but in time it became weak. It spawned humans to recycle the energy,” he said. “The Universe fed from the positive energy of people at night, pulling them into sleep. The energy allows the Universe to create and put new life into the earth. If the humans die, the Universe dies … and vice versa.”
“Negative energy poisons the Universe,” Autumn continued in place of her brother. “The original immortals were here to clean up the mortal world, but some veered from the path the Universe had set for them. Though the source of the original evil is unknown, we imagine that sometimes the Universe accidentally feeds from the energy of corrupt human life and, in creating elementals, some of that dark energy is unintentionally imprinted.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“This will never be a perfect world,” Aspen said, “but it could be better. You will play a role in making that happen. The evil will continue to propagate.”
“You could have ended it today,” Charles said sharply.
Autumn lowered her lashes, her gaze dipping to her hands. “You cannot comprehend the extent of the Council’s progress. Callista has sanctioned others. Damascus is no longer the only home of the Council. Tonight’s events were bad enough, but had a dual-breed been responsible for the death of the Queen, the retaliation would’ve been far worse than what we expect now.”
I sighed, defeat sinking further into my core. Did I want to help the Universe? Its track record was shoddy, at best. “What do you need me for?”
“To gather others like you, one for each remaining element.” Autumn breathed in deeply, settling her gaze heavily on my own. “Then, you will fight in the Great War. If you do not, the Council will spiral out of control. First, only the dual-breeds will be killed, but soon the humans will be freely hunted as well. The Council claims to want to save the humans, but when the New World begins, the Council will shift to darker means. Their actions could lead to the ultimate demise of our planet. Of our entire Universe.”
I shook my head. What did they expect me to do about that? “I—I’m sorry. There’s no way. I couldn’t stop them.”
Autumn’s soothing voice was a relief from Aspen’s chilling echo. “You will be ready when the time comes, and you will not be alone.” In an awkward moment, she unfolded her hands in her lap and reached to place one of them over my own. The gesture was something Valeria would do, a movement Autumn was merely parroting from her host mother—staged but unrehearsed.
Charles didn’t say a word. His once fiery gaze had extinguished, the irises now dull and clouded. This was the oldest I’d ever seen him look.
“I still don’t understand the purpose of you being sent as children,” I said. “Won�
�t that make it harder for you to help us?”
“Quite the contrary,” Autumn said with a small smile. “To your world, children are the property of their guardians. We are lesser beings, seen as weak, less intelligent, and less deserving of respect. Who would treat us as equals but those who are pure of heart? Through us,” she said, “you will make the right allies.”
{chapter thirty-two}
EVEN MONTHS LATER, the misery of that night still haunted me. We mourned … Charles, the kids, and I. Even the Liettes’ cabin seemed to mourn—the windows sad, rain sliding down the glass like tears some nights, the scarred wooden floor icy as death in winter. The cherry blossoms had at least brought hope in the spring, unfurling their flowers along the peaks of Mount Rishiri.
Plums, so purple they were almost black, sat in the dish between us. Valeria’s dish. Months had passed, summer now returned, but the ache of losing loved ones doesn’t go away or numb quickly. All the family Charles had ever known were gone now, leaving two orphaned children in their place.
I plucked one of the plums from the bowl and sank my teeth past the tart peel, eyes fixed on Charles. He looked tired, but not as sad. I walked around the table to sit in his lap. He kissed my jaw, my wrist, my fingertips.
“We have each other,” he said, and he buried his head against my neck, his light chin stubble tickling my shoulder.
My heart raced as it always did when he was near. A smile softened my lips, and I kissed the top of his head. “We do.”
For a long time we just sat there, with the hazy, Japanese summer breeze drifting through the open kitchen window. It was all we needed.
I traced my finger along the scar inside his arm. We both had them—scars the world could see, and also our private scars. Those were the scars we shared.
* * *
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