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“I believe that evil exists in all of us, Seer. In you most of all.” King walked past me, heading downstairs.
“Then why let me live?” I called out. “Why leave me to raise Draco if you really think I’m Hagne?”
He left without an answer.
I looked at Ansin, whose face shifted to an ice-cold façade. He didn’t want me to know what he was thinking. Red flag.
“He was lying just now, wasn’t he?” I said. “He has no intention of letting me live either way?”
“I won’t let him harm you, Jeni.”
“We’re talking about King. He always gets what he wants.”
“As do I.”
I clamped my eyes shut, wishing this nightmare would end. “Just promise you’ll find a good family for Draco, Ansin. That’s all I ask.”
“Sorry, Jeni, but I cannot promise that.” Ansin headed for the stairwell.
Of course. How could I expect either man to show compassion? They didn’t believe in it. To them, life was all about power and control. If anything, Draco would be more at risk in their hands. Maybe he’d even be sold to the highest bidder for his powerful blood.
Once we found Draco, and I had to believe we would, I needed a plan to take him somewhere safe. Somewhere no one would ever be able to find him.
Ansin, King, and I got into the rental we’d arrived in, with Ansin at the wheel. I was next to King in the backseat.
King was already on his phone, putting out the word to whichever degenerates had a line inside baby traffickers and supernatural occult dealers. He assumed Draco had been taken for one of two reasons: because he was a baby and there were people out there desperate for one, or he was taken because Draco would someday be a powerful man. The son of King and a powerful Seer.
“You’re wasting your time with those calls, King. I already did that,” Ansin said, sounding irritated.
“I figured. However, I’m King. You are not.”
Ansin shook his head, glaring through the rearview mirror. “Still as arrogant as ever.”
“Why are you here?” King asked Ansin. “Other than to die faster?”
“Jeni asked for my help.”
“You should be more concerned about yourself. You do not look well,” King said.
I leaned forward and glanced at Ansin in the driver’s seat. Actually, now that King mentioned it, Ansin did look pretty rough—bags under his eyes, pasty complexion, and a general lack of sparkly assholiness.
Strange. Because I’d seen him sleeping—napping—meditating—whatever—on the plane for hours.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Ansin growled.
“He is dying,” King said.
“What?” I snapped.
“Silence, King. You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ansin barked.
“How do you know he’s dying?” I asked King.
“Because,” he replied, “like those objects in my warehouse, our powers are being drained away.” He leaned back in the seat, looking all relaxed, like a beautiful man who had all the time in the world.
“How?” I asked.
“I do not know, but whatever the cause, it has not left us.”
I suddenly noted that King didn’t look so great either. Not like a man on the verge of death, but tired. Really tired.
“So it’s a contagious spell?”
“I am not entirely sure,” King explained, “but that which keeps us alive, thereby defying the laws of nature, is being syphoned off.”
I gasped and looked at Ansin. “Is it true?”
“The world is a wonderous, mysterious place, Jeni,” Ansin replied. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
“How much time do you both have?” I asked King.
“I would give myself a week at most,” King replied. “Unless I take my life to rejoin my family. Then sooner.”
“You can’t do that,” I protested. “Someone has Draco. We have to find him.”
“I plan to.” King didn’t look worried.
Why isn’t he worried! “But you just said you don’t have your powers and—”
“I have other means of accomplishing the job,” King said. “And I am not entirely without my gifts.”
The pit in my stomach told me differently. It told me that we were not going to find my baby, that King would kill me in his final breath, and that Ansin would bail on me to go make a baby with Obliza before his time expired.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Why was all this happening? And at the end of the day, did it really matter? I had to find my baby. The rest was noise.
“King, do you think the Seers took Draco?” It was the obvious choice.
“Do you?”
I explained how I’d tried repeatedly to ask them myself, but I either ended up in a dark room, or I found their “home” empty.
“Any sign of Ariadna?” he asked.
Ariadna was his unborn Seer daughter. After her death, she’d gone straight to be with the Seers. Unfortunately, I didn’t trust any of them.
“Not since the delivery.” That was the day King died, and Ariadna appeared, claiming I was Hagne, the evil Seer who murdered Ariadna’s mother and baby brother.
“It is possible they had someone of this world take Draco, but not likely,” King replied. “If they had wanted to raise him from infancy, they would have taken him the day of his birth while you were at your weakest.”
