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“Nothing.” When I gape at him, he adds, “It’s a vampire thing. They each have their own power. Rory’s is—”
“That was a long one,” Rory says, blinking the white out of her eyes.
Quill returns with a wet compress and drapes it across her shoulders.
“Sorry to frighten you, Gwyn.” She presses the back of her hand to her forehead. “I can’t quite control when my visions come to me.”
“Visions?” I ask. “What kind of visions?”
“I can see glimpses of the future.”
Rory has... visions? That must be how she knew we were coming, knew exactly what we sought. Ioana could see glimpses of the future too, but never so suddenly. The thought of her makes my chest ache, a sharp reminder of my loss.
“What did you see just now?” Riven asks, eyes fixed on my hand in Rory’s lap.
Rory shares a knowing look with Quill, as if there’s a silent conversation transpiring between them. And there might as well be, since they’re mates.
When she snaps her attention back to me, she releases my hand and smiles. “You know, I think you’d look very pretty in dark purple.”
Chapter 12
GWYN
After Rory’s cryptic, complimentary message, Riven was able to negotiate the use of bloodshade and permission to visit his grandmother’s burial site in Wynterhaven.
Impatient as ever, he demanded we head there at once. Rory protested, insisting I borrow her cloak and snow boots because Wynterhaven is colder than hell.
Now, dressed in her clothes, I’m shivering in the cold atop a mountain peak where a quaint cabin sits in the distance. Achlys has shifted into a fluffy fox; this form is clearly more suited to the freezing temperatures than his preferred form.
“Let’s go,” Riven says, forging ahead. “It’s not much further, little witch.”
I follow him to the furthest side of the mountain, where two snow-covered gravestones jut from the snow-packed earth. A foreboding feeling of dread seeps into my bones.
Or maybe it’s just the cold?
I pull Rory’s cloak tighter around me. “I should’ve asked this sooner, but why exactly is your grandmother’s body buried here and not in the Fae Isles?”
“Because this is where she would cheat on her husband with her bodyguard.”
His tone is bleak, words clipped.
That’s not really an answer. There must be more to the story than that, but I don’t press him on it.
Familial drama is not something foreign to me, and I wouldn’t want him to press me about my coven if our roles were reversed.
I’m here to do one thing and one thing only: Resurrect his grandmother.
He gestures to the tombstone with the emblem of a rose engraved into it.
It’s so… sad.
No name, no message of mourning. No flowers—dried or alive—decorating it, no candles lit in memory.
It’s wrong, and I can’t bear it.
“I’ll be right back,” I call over my shoulder, rushing away from the graves and into the thick grove of trees to gather a few frost-coated needles.
I weave them into a garland.
