Page 20 of Lost and Bound

“But each segment of our supe community are hellbent on holding their own position of power, so each faction trains hard in case a war between the five breaks out.”

“They’ve been to war before?”

“We’re talking about top-tier predators. Someone must hold the ultimate position of power, and there’s always someone else who’s not happy that faction is in power. There’s also a group in our world, made up of bigots and prophets who believe we should live like they did years ago, where their voice is the one our world should listen to. The Legion have been around since the start of time. They are archaic in thought and practice, and everyone spends a lot of time battling them.

“And yes, I’m skimming over details and significance, but we don’t have all day. We also need to talk about how each faction in Quin-state has its own internal fights for dominance, and all of them are looking for the key to unlimited power while pretending to be collectively working toward battling the Legion. Most days in our world are a shit show for any or all those reasons. Whoever holds the most power holds control over all beings. In shifters, that’s the position of Alpha, the celestials want to achieve either Archangel or Heavenly Appointed status, the vampires call theirs Elders, demons go by a monarchy, so the King is the highest, the witches and druids share the title of High Priest or Priestess.”

I stare at him, listening, while also fighting the sense that I’m never going to get a handle on this. Since arriving at Thales, I’ve been feeling like I’m standing in quicksand.

Orion ignores my bewildered gaze. “Don’t worry about trying to remember everything, especially who’s the most powerful at Thales in their designation set because they’ll remind you as often as they can. Supes aren’t exactly known for being subtle.”

“I’m seeing that,” I mumble.

He grins at me, and I wonder if I missed something he said.

“What?” I ask when he keeps looking at me expectantly.

“Did you want to talk about you”—his hands rise, and he overemphasizes and does little rabbit ears when he speaks again—“‘seeing’ things yet?”

My mouth pops open when his words hit home, but he sits back in his seat casually and explains what he means. “Obviously you have a little something in your DNA, or you wouldn’t be a student here. And I’m going to say this gently, Maya, you must have a little other magik or you wouldn’t be here.”

“How do you know that? I mean, I don’t know that for certain.”

He leans in close. “But you had a vision on the day you arrived when we met.”

“How do you know that?” I ask again.

“Because I’ve seen other seers get messages, and you did what they did.”

I don’t mean to, but I glare at him. “You made fun of me, and I didn’t know who you were. I wasn’t about to…”

Orion ignores my mood. “So, what happened? What did you see?”

I take a quick breath and look around to see if anyone is paying attention to us. They’re not.

“It was only the second time I’ve experienced it, and because I had a concussion on both occasions, I wasn’t a hundred percent sure it actually happened.”

“Have you had one since?”

I shake my head, and he leans over to rub my shoulder in comfort, but there’s a troublesome smirk on his mouth too. “You will. Visions only happen when they need to.”

I grit my teeth, hissing back at him through a forced smile. “You seem to know a lot about them.”

He rolls his eyes, making me laugh. “Yeah, Mom’s sister was a seer. You display similar tells to what she did.”

“Like what?” I insist.

He grins. “Your hands cupping were in message-receiving mode, and it looked like you were somewhere far from here.”

“I guess I was. My hands tingled both times.”

“That must be your call sign. My aunt used to run her fingers over her forehead. No matter what else was happening, if she did that, you’d know she was about to get a message.”

“What happened to her?”

“One too many messages, I guess. It happens in our world sometimes, like whatever the gift is, sometimes it’s too powerful, or they don’t have enough training to deal with it, and they…”

“Die?” I gasp. “No shit, that’s awful, Orion.”