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He trailed off, realizing thatthiswas the prophecy, that I was a prophet.
“It’s okay,” I said. “You can’t even imagine how prepared my mother made me.” I knew prepared wasn’t the right word, exactly, but I didn’t need to explain what we’d gone through. It was certainly no surprise to find how central the prophecy was to all of their lives, because that had been practically all mine consisted of for eighteen years.
“It started small, I guess,” he said. “Once the initial shock of a male heir in the dragon’s line calmed, there wasn’t much else to do but wait. We all had our place, and we were trained for the day Morgan would lead. But waiting was hard for some of them, especially the elders.”
He sat his sandwich down, glancing at my own lying unopened before me, and seemed to understand.
“There were some skirmishes, a few flare ups here and there, but for the most part we had things handled,” Logan said. “It reached a fevered pitch when Morgan got older and they knew he would soon lead.” His eyes met mine. “Things took a turn when their mother got sick. Aern and I must have been about fifteen at the time, Morgan close to twenty. When she died, their father changed. He became strict, enforcing rules on Morgan that he’d never lived by before, challenging the elders, calling the entire prophecy into question. There was a man, Tarian, who became convinced their father was trying to keep Morgan from ascending.”
He hesitated, taking a measured breath, and a tingle ran up my arms.
“They fought, and Tarian was killed. What we didn’t know, was that he had amassed a following. The battle that resulted took their father’s life.”
The tragedies of my own family were not far from such, and when I spoke, my voice was barely above a whisper. “So, Morgan’s father was killed so that he could sooner take the seat of power.”
Logan’s answering tone was level. “By the very people who wished to see him there.” His fist tightened almost imperceptibly where it rested on his leg. “And it wasn’t just his father. Most of the elders among their leadership were taken as well. Everything shifted. The younger of us were thrust into the positions left vacant, forced to choose a side between a split family.”
“And you?” I asked.
“And I chose neither.”
His words lingered in the silence between us for a long while as I picked at the clear plastic covering my lunch. He’d spoken of living alone, of choosing neither, but he was standing guard over me in the Division household for the new leader of Council. “You were going to tell me,” I said eventually, “about the men.”
The hesitation was there again, and I got the feeling Logan wasn’t a sharer, but this wasn’t exactly a normal situation. And I was the prophet.
“My father was to protect the One.” His eyes fell for an instant to the archive ceiling, to one of the smoked glass domes that hid surveillance cameras. “He was killed with the others, and it fell to me, to those men, to take his place.”
His words came back to me.Had it been Aern …
He straightened. “We don’t work for Council’s best interest anymore. We work for the good of our kind.”
What he didn’t say rolled through me. He was watching me, his team posted outside my room and in those black SUVs because I was their last hope. Everyone’s last hope.
“Brianna,” he said after a long pause. I looked up, caught suddenly by the change in his expression. “Eat.”
It wasn’t an order, but I obeyed nonetheless. Absently, I considered the story he’d told, comparing it with the details my mother had given me, lining our histories out on parallel timelines. Trying to find the connection. Trying to understand our link.
I hadn’t seen anything of our people within the Council archives. My mother hadn’t explained our past, how our lines had lived in the old world, or if there were any others left, aside from Emily and me. The only reference to us at all was that of the prophecy, and it didn’t even imply we were not one of them.
But I knew. I knew because I could see Emily’s makeup, could see she was built differently than Aern. Not physically, but her connections, and her apparent lack of those powers that the Seven Lines all held.
When I went back to work, I focused instead on the newer works, the records kept since Morgan’s birth. Logan pulled documents for me, covering the desk with books and certificates, ledgers and registers. There were photographs, too, here and there among the files. I found one of Morgan at maybe four or five, a hollow, lost look in his eyes as he was posed in front of the Council banners. And another, older Morgan as he seemed to accept his place among the elders. My fingers slid over the faces of strangers, the prints dulled with age. Suddenly, I found something familiar in a candid shot of two scrawny young boys. I paused, drawing the picture closer to find Aern, maybe ten years old, arm over the shoulder of another boy his age, standing carefree on the manicured lawn of a large, open and unguarded estate.
I looked up, comparing the picture to the man who stood across from me, and couldn’t help but smile, given the spiky blond tufts of hair sticking up in all directions in the photo. Logan narrowed his eyes on me, daring me to laugh. That only made it worse.
My grin widened. “I’d never thought of you as a boy before.”
His brows shifted. It wasn’t just an odd thing to say, it was the way I’d said it. I ducked my head back to the books on the table. He didn’t question it, but I could see him as I read, his body unmoving as he watched me from that same position across the table.
I resumed working, the records of Morgan’s building empire dragging me in despite my need to keep moving through the archives. He’d amassed quite a collection of businesses, but that wasn’t unusual. What was weird, however, was the section of run-down warehouses and crumbling industrial plants. I tried to remember what Emily had said, if she’d told me where the warehouse Aern had been held was, but I couldn’t bring it to mind.
“What about your visions?” Logan asked, moving to sit in the chair across from me.
I glanced up distractedly. “What?”
“The visions,” he explained. “You said flashes. Do you see everything?” I felt my brows draw together, and he gestured to the room around us. “I mean like this, did you know we’d be here? Did you see me coming?”
His tone was completely casual, innocent, as if he were simply curious. I’d opened my mouth to answer no to the first question when the second one registered in my brain. Did I see him coming? A flush tore up my neck, coloring my cheeks before I could curb it. My mouth hung open in a kind of dazed guilt that he’d caught me so completely off guard.
