“Am I—some sort of reincarnation?”
“Not exactly.” She moved to stand beside him, gazing at the portrait. “We aren’t repeating history, Sean. We’ve been offered a redo. We’re meant to fix everything they got wrong.”
Fixhistory?
What did that even mean?
High stakes. Infinite risk. No guarantees.
It was lunacy dressed in the spangles of destiny.
Sean’s gaze roamed the portrait. Lhynion Sidera stood beside a woman. Auburn hair. Emerald-green eyes.
A softer version of Isobel.
“That’s Meléan.” She pointed at the other woman. “Andthatis Rhiannon.”
Sean moved his attention to the redhead, letting his gaze drift back and forth between the portrait and the real woman, finding little difference.
So that would make the last man the missing piece of their quartet. Numb once more, Sean lifted his eyes. The fourth individual stood off to the side, and for the millionth time, Sean’s world shifted.
Gold hair. Sly curve to his smile. The way he held himself, like furniture was made for the mere pleasure of leaning against. That man was an impeccable likeness of David Berkeley.
“And that’s Galadaine Manae. Lhynion’s brother.”
Brother? The one who’d killed him?
At Galadaine-David’s hip hung a scabbard boasting a jewel-encrusted broadsword.
“Oh— No—” Sean stepped back, his gaze fixed to the portrait. “No.”
Autumn turned, brow scrunched, studying him. Memories of David dredged forth—fighting and feuding and yielding to the deep hatred David had exhibited from their first moments. There had been nothing but rivalry and animosity between himself and David at every meeting.
A crayon stuck up Sean’s nose upon their first meeting as children.
David’s blood on his knuckles from a fistfight at age twelve.
A bruised jaw when David had compelled Cole to attack Sean with his weird voice trick.
A knife at Sean’s throat the last time Aunt Blaire had forced him to accompany her to David’s home to visit her friend, Alex.
“Threaten me again, Archer,” David dared, digging the blade into Sean’s windpipe.
With a deft maneuver and a quick hand, Sean reversed their positions, shoving the blade at David instead. “Not so scary without your mind tricks, are you? You know they’ve never worked on me.”
David’s green eyes glinted. “Do it, then. Kill me.”
Sean often thought on the way David had said those words. They’d almost sounded like…a request. A demand.
The knife had dropped from Sean’s hand at once, but that had been the last straw. With the thin scratch from David’s blade still stinging on his neck, Sean had told Blaire he’d had enough. If she wanted to visit David’s mother, she could do so at her own risk. He would no longer serve as a bodyguard in that house of criminals.
“Youknowhim?” Autumn asked, tone incredulous, jerking Sean out of his memories.
Another doorbell called their attention. Autumn darted that way, but Sean followed more slowly, arriving at the entryway in time towatch the brownie attendant poke her head through the cracked door. “Visitor!”
As the door swung wide, a disheveled David Berkeley came into view, his clothes and hair flecked with dirt. His shrewd gaze took in the room of strangers, darting to each of them before pausing on Sean.
Horror flooded Sean’s nerves, a dread so toxic it made him sick.
