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“Thank you,” I said over the last bite of warm bread. “You were right.”
The bedroom was large, but it didn’t contain a table or connect to a separate sitting area the way my suites had. Instead, a spacious love seat was centered on the wall opposite a king size four-poster bed. I slid my plate away from the edge of the coffee table and leaned back into plush cushions.
Logan smiled. “I would never lie.” I smirked and he added, “Not to you, anyway.”
“You’d be the first.” At his sideways glance, I sighed. “That sounded bitter, I’m sorry. It’s just really exhausting sometimes.” I pulled the folded papers from my back pocket and laid them on the side table for when I worked up the nerve to open them. I tried to listen to my instincts, to heed those quiet pushes as my mother had taught me, but sometimes it was hard to tell when something needed to wait for the right time and when my own doubts were driving the reluctance. This felt like me.
Logan leaned closer to run a finger over the scratch on the inside of my forearm. “Climbing through the roof hatch?”
I nodded. “It’ll be gone in a few days.”
A vague thought niggled at the back of my mind, but I couldn’t quite grasp it with his fingers resting on my arm. My gaze lingered there, and then he trailed them up to slide behind my back and draw me to him. I leaned in, pressing my side against him, and rested my head on his chest as his arm wrapped around me. It was so nice to be held.
I was “my Brianna” and “our Brianna” to Brendan and the others, as their prophet, all of the Seven Lines owned me. But it was different with Logan.
It was more.
His fingers traced over the skin of my arm, trailing gently down and back. Suddenly, I wanted to tell him. To say something that would let him know what he meant to me. When I pressed a hand to his chest to push myself up, we were face to face, and the words caught in my throat.
His other hand came over to lay softly on my side as he waited for whatever I was about to say. I closed my eyes and his hand drew down my side slowly, coming back up against bare skin. His breath fell on my neck while his thumb slid slowly across the skin of my stomach. When it almost reached the scar, I stiffened, and Logan’s hand froze as he mistook my reaction.
I opened my eyes. Whatever he saw there changed his mind; his hand came free, tugging the hem of my shirt back in place. He sat up, pressed his lips to my hair before breathing, “I think I should go take that shower now.”
My hand slid down his chest as he stood, and I watched him walk across the room to the washroom. My palm pressed flat against my stomach. I was self-conscious about my scar, but not because I was vain. It was what the wound symbolized. I was going to have to make sacrifices, and that scar stood for everything I’d have to give up.
And that was when I knew it was time. I leaned back, drew my feet up under me, and pulled the folded pages to my lap.
It was written in another language, but that didn’t stop the pang at seeing the familiar curves of my mother’s handwriting on the page. Her first words, the only ones that mattered, were, “I’m sorry. I love you.”
The rest of it laid me numb.
When Logan came out of the washroom fifteen minutes later, I had the pages spread across the coffee table, flattened and in plain view. It didn’t matter who saw them, it was a secret language; no one would be familiar with it except one of us. And then the idea of that hit me and there was a sudden lump in my throat; my fingers pressed against it.
Logan stood in front of the table in jeans and a worn T-shirt. “Brianna?”
I looked up at him, my shoulders drawing back, and said, “When was the last prophet of the Seven Lines alive?”
He considered the question for a long moment. “Fourteen hundred years ago.”
“And her line?”
He slid a palm across his stomach. “Sky, I think. But those powers died out. It doesn’t mean the same as it used to.”
I nodded. “Because each line could do more.” His brows drew together, not understanding where I was taking this. I stood up. “It’s time to call Emily.”
When he drew the cell phone from his pocket, I said, “Wait. That’s not right.” The push was there. Something, some decision I’d made was wrong. I pressed a hand to my temple. “Just send her a message. Get her on the way.”
“Are you all right?” Logan asked, and I could tell he wanted to take a step forward, to comfort me. There was a push. Again.
“No, I’m fine. I need …” What did I need? “This prophet, do you have any information on her?”
“It would be a fairly common file, I think. I can check downstairs. Brendan has an extensive library.”
It won’t be there, I told myself. They would have hidden it; they would have wanted it in darkness. In the shadows. I stared down at the papers on the table before me, so thin and frail. She hadn’t written them when Morgan had captured her. She’d written them long before, maybe a hundred times over, and carried them with her for the day she’d be forced to leave them. To hide them for me to find. A shadow.
“Please,” I said. “Anything you have on her. Anything from the time she was alive.”
“Brianna—”
