“Good.” Kaelis nods and glances away. “But even with the cards, first we’ll need the vessel.”
“I know.” I hold his gaze and don’t elaborate, and that says it all.
Kaelis’s jaw goes slack. “You have it.” He doesn’t phrase it as a question, but I nod anyway. His grip tightens on me, and there’s a flash of what I’d describe only as pain in his eyes.
“What is it?” I caress his cheek thoughtfully.
“I would’ve loved to see you make it.” He shakes his head. “But that’s not important. All that matters is we have it now.”
“I left it with the Worldkeepers,” I admit. He tenses. “I need them to trust me, and I can get it back from them with ease.”
He nods. I can tell he doesn’t like that it’s not in my possession, but at least he understands. “I’ll do what I can to keep the enforcers busy on All Coins Day. But they should be anyway. It’ll be a good day for the initiation.”
“What were the other reasons Ravin came?” I ask. He’d said there were multiple.
“My father is becoming impatient.”
That’s never a good sign. “Impatient for what, specifically?”
“You know what; you’re just hoping it’s not the case.”
“The World.”
Kaelis dips his chin slightly. “He wants the Star.”
I bite my thumbnail in thought. Ravin was the one to put Arina in Halazar—doing so while thinking Kaelis didn’t know where she was.Which means, with the destruction of Halazar…I’m so removed from my body for a moment as I analyze the implications of this that I don’t even realize Kaelis is supporting me until I return to the present.
“Do they know Arina made it out of Halazar alive?” My voice is barely a whisper, terror dropping my words to a hush.
Kaelis shakes his head. “I don’t think so, since they’ve shifted the Hierophant’s focus to finding a new Star. I hear there are no solid leads.”
I let out a sigh of relief and don’t bother to stop myself from crumpling against him. Kaelis shifts again to allow me to. I have my legs draped across his lap and one arm of the chair. His arm is around my back, and my cheek rests on his shoulder.
“It…it doesn’t make sense.” I stare at nothing, my gaze becoming unfocused.
“What doesn’t?”
I squint, as if trying to see the hazy outline of the world that existed before this one. “Why did your father let the Worldkeepers live when he remade the world? Why not wish for them gone?”
“Maybe he tried, and the World’s interpretation of his wish didn’t fulfill that part. It’s a difficult thing to capture everything you want into a single request.”
“If only we knew exactly what he wished for,” I muse.
“Something I’ve wondered often. What makes a man murder the mother of his child?”
The initials etched onto the bookshelf in the library come to mind. That wasn’t the action of a power-hungry man using a woman to get what he wants. That was the action of a boy in love…Did something sour between them? And why let the Revisan era be remembered at all in this new world? Was it just a function of the wish going awry from Naethor’s intentions?
Too many oddities are stacking up to believe it’s all chance. There’s something I’m missing.
“Regardless of what happened then, I think it’s safe to assume that he’s going to try to make another wish to accomplish what he didn’t the first time around.”
I make a noise of agreement. “Was there anything else Ravin came for?”
“An odd request, actually.” His tone has me sitting up straighter. “He was searching for a particular book on the lore of the Minor Arcana and was wondering if it was perhaps in the public or private collections here.”
“MinorArcana? Not the Major?”
“My reaction exactly. After I overcame my surprise that my brother could even read a book cover to cover, I asked him about it and why this particular book. Of course he said it’s nothing more than ‘personal fascination.’ ” The mocking tone Kaelis uses for his brother tells me that he also believes there’s much more to it than such a generic excuse. “Naturally, I probed.”
