Our prophecy is different.
Ten minutes later, after Domenic recovered each broken piece of himself, he caught sight of the transport map. To his shock, magic shimmered across it: a butterfly fluttering across the Gold Line, starlight twinkling atop the Gardens, diamond-bright radiance illuminating the Citadel from within.
Ellery’s and his enchantments were still here, all these weeks later. Even when cast by training wands.
Suddenly, reassurances were not enough. He needed to know the line between significance and coincidence. He needed to know if there even was a future worth waiting for.
Domenic walked his usual route home. No one noticed him through his cloaking enchantment, but several people paused their shivering as he passed, as if crossing a nighttime patch of sun. (He tried spitefully several times to shut this off, but it seemed he couldn’t.)
In the foyer, he set his shoes on the rack, shrugged off his spell like a heavy coat. His heart thumped as he climbed the stairs and approached the door that adjoined Hanna’s bedroom to his own. He rarely ever used it.
He knocked.
“Yeah?”
He pushed it open and treaded inside, wary in more ways than one.
Sure enough, Hanna held Syarthis. Light poured from its tip over the open pages of her science-fiction novel. Its eyes peered at Domenic over the cover.
She smirked. “You look like a waiter.”
He smirked back. “You look like a grandmother.”
“I like nightgowns. I feel like I could bake banana bread. Or, I don’t know, roam the hallways at three a.m. and make weird moaning noises, like a ghost.”
“Shit. This whole time, I assumed that was Iseul.”
They both laughed, but their jokes had the same cautious pattern as they had for weeks. They teased. They deflected. They pretended things were as they’d ever been.
It was better than fighting.
He navigated around the mounds of clothes to the foot of her bed. He sat.
“Why did Alice Rhodes burn, Hanna?”
Hanna’s smile caved in. “What?”
“The only other Chosen One who died was the one who failed. So why was she the unlucky one? What did all the others do right that she didn’t?”
She didn’t answer.
“What did the other Chosen Ones do, after they thwarted their cataclysms?”
She picked at her cuticle.
“Why did Peak haul me aside at the border for some man-to-man talk about sacrifice?”
Nothing.
“Damn it, Hanna. I don’t want to fight with you. And I don’t care if you hate me right now. You have to tell me the truth.”
“I…” Hanna dragged her gaze, not to him, but to Valmordion. Something dark lurked in her stare, something haunted. “I could never hate you, Dom.”
He was crying now. He was always the worst at arguments. “Please. How many of the past Chosen Ones survived? How many?”
Hanna tilted her head back, scowling as she blinked away tears. She crawled toward him, then she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and propped her chin atop his head.
After several seconds passed, Domenic finally spared her the burden of telling him. He answered for them both.
