Page 6

Behind him, Kole has appeared. He lingers in the entrance; arms folded, tall and dark and brooding. His hair is loose over his shoulders, which means he must be really screwed up right now. Usually, the only times he shakes it free are right before he goes to sleep or when he’s trying to release the tension in his head.

“Is this how it was supposed to happen?” I ask him, still clutching Nova’s ring. “What now? How long until she returns?”

“I don’t know.” Kole’s muscles twitch. Whatever he’s feeling, he’s locking it down tight, keeping it beneath the surface, trying to act as if he’s okay.

“You still believe she’s coming back?” I ask, standing up.

“Yes.” Kole looks at Mack. Something unspoken passes between them.

“Kole,” I growl, stepping forward. “Did you fuck up? Is she coming back?!” Now, I’m yelling. The fire surges and my voice rebounds off the cave walls.

I was angry with Nova when we first met. Terrified because if I fell in love with her and she left, I’d be broken. To my surprise, I’m not mad at her anymore, but I am angry with Kole. Just looking at him brings a fire to my belly that I can barely hold down.

I’m not so out of touch with psychology that I think he deserves it; I know I’m channeling my rage toward him because if I don’t, I’ll set the whole fucking forest on fire; then stand here and watch it burn. But all the same, I don’t stop myself striding over and slamming my hand around his throat.

He could easily throw me off. He’s taller than me, bigger than me, and—if I’m honest—his magick has always been more powerful. But he doesn’t.

“Tell me, seer, when is she coming back?” I yell in his face as I send heat to my palm.

I feel Mack moving toward us, but he doesn’t intervene. Not yet.

Kole puts his hand on mine. His neck is growing red beneath my touch. “I don’t know, Luther. I don’t know when.” He inhales shakily, my fingers still squeezing his neck. “But I still feel the blood bond. I still believe she will return.”

As Kole finishes speaking, Mack puts his hand on my shoulder. “Luther, we need to stick together.” He tugs a little and, finally, I let go.

My hand has left a deep red mark on the snatches of Kole’s skin that are visible between his tattoos. He rubs his throat and steps round me to sit by the fire. Staring at it, he says, “I didn’t see Nova returning. I just knew she would, and she knew it too.” He reaches out and warms his palms. “The visions have been right so far. There is no reason they would fail us now.”

“Have they been right? Or have they been causing all this?” I stand above him, arms folded.

Kole looks up at me.

“The prophecy, the visions…how do we know we’re not making them come true? How do we know they’re not just—”

Kole’s eyes flash with a darkness I haven’t seen for a long time. He stands slowly, and something about the way he moves toward me makes the hairs on my arms stand up. “Because that is not how it works, Luther.”

I am dangerously close to insulting everything Kole believes in and everything his family believes in. I’m on the cusp of telling him to prove to me how it fucking works, for once, when Mack’s hand appears between us.

“Here,” he says. “We can wear her rings until she comes back for them.”

He’s holding a piece of blue rope in his hand. Looking at it makes me wince as I remember how it looked against her skin, and how it felt when I tightened the knots. When Mack starts unpicking a thread, the memory fades.

“Do you have them?” Mack asks Kole.

Kole dips his hand into his pocket and takes out the remaining four. Mine is still in my hand. I pass it to Mack and, one by one, he creates five blue-thread necklaces. When I slip mine over my head, the ring comes to rest on my chest right above my heart. I breathe out slowly and close my eyes.

“We are all hurting.” Mack’s tone is dark and solemn. “Right now, all I want to do is shift and run.” When I open my eyes, he’s staring at me. “But we have to stick together.” He sits down and gestures for me to do the same. “We’ve been in this from the start, the three of us.”

Kole sits down, too, on the opposite side of the flames.

“From the day I first recruited you both, we were brothers. Not a professor and his students, or a boss and his employees. We were family. This is the biggest test we’ve had—bigger than when Kole went missing, bigger than when you burned that village to the ground…” Mack meets my eyes.

My stomach lurches and I clench my fists. “How do you know about that? Kole was the only one—” My cheeks burn. Did he tell Mack? All these years, he let me think he’d kept my secret.

“You were caught on camera. No one could tell it was you, but I knew. As soon as I saw the name of the village, I knew.”

The look on Kole’s face tells me this is fresh information for him too. Clearly, he believed he was the only one who knew my secret.

“They killed your parents, Luther, I understand you wanting revenge. But it could have destroyed everything if you were caught. You’d have been thrown out of the S.D.B. I’d have been arrested for aiding and abetting. Kole too.”