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“I have news from the castle.” He lifted a piece of parchment, the wax-seal broken, words scrawled in black ink across the page.
“Who’s that from?”
“Niall,” he admitted, and my brows raised as I failed to keep the surprise from my expression. “He was helping me, when you were kidnapped. I haven’t heard from him for some time, then one of his associates turned up and gave me this.” He tapped the paper. “He was looking for Sebastian. Don’t worry, I kept the truth of your being alive from him. I sent him back to the castle with a letter.”
My eyes widened. “Why was he looking for Sebastian?”
“He was likely searching for information about your death.” He sipped his tea, his expression unreadable.
I lowered my barrier, my empath gift reaching to him like tentacles, probing at the barrier he'd put up to protect his emotions from being read. As always, it was like trying to reach through a stone wall. “Why was he helping you?” I finally asked, giving up on trying to sense what he was feeling. Every time Azia answered a question, ten more popped up. The man was more of a mystery than anyone I'd met. But he was helping us, and I trusted him.
“He has his reasons,” he said, his lips curling behind his teeth. “Regardless, he has come through for us. Salenia admitted her reasons for being back. One of them we know is to get rid of you. As far as she’s aware, that’s been taken care of.”
My breath caught in my throat as I realized how little time we had left now, our element of surprise gone. “Until Astor spills the truth.”
“We have heard nothing yet,” he pointed out, but we both knew it was only a matter of time.
I shifted in the chair, wondering how long it would take for him to tell her about me. If he hadn't already, then I couldn’t help but wonder if they killed him before he could. Either way, I couldn’t shake the shiver running down my spine. “What else is Salenia after? Asides from Vener.”
He placed the letter between us, and I eyed the paper as Azia lit a candle, soaking everything on the desk in an orange glow. “We know Vener escaped the underworld, but what we didn’t know is Anastasia is here, too. At first, I thought she had died. She returned mortal long before Vener escaped. But now I think she’s still here, which means one of two things—she’s a vampire, or she found some way to stay alive.”
“How?”
“A sorceress perhaps, but I can’t be sure how she did it. Salenia is a master manipulator, playing with the lives of mortals and vampires, as if we’re all pawns on her chessboard. I’m sure she would have found out where Anastasia is, or at least knows where she can find her. There are ways of keeping a mortal alive, through vampirism, dark rituals, sorcery, and other ways too. She found a way to stay alive, which leads me to believe she remembered who she is.”
I arched a brow. “So Anastasia is aware of who she is?”
He nodded. “Yes. Usually, when anyone who escapes the underworld loses their memories. When they return to this world, they forget everything. But there are ways to make a person remember.”
“I recall Astor saying,” I murmured. “That there’s a veil.”
“Yes. As it is all attached to Salenia, it evaporates any memory of their immortal life when they break away from her, crossing the barrier back into the living. It is the only way, other than taking the elixir of mortality, to become a mortal again. “
My heart skipped a beat as Sebastian floated into my mind. I didn't know there was another way to become mortal. If I had...
“Unless,” he continued, cutting through my racing thoughts, “they are a part of Salenia, like a demon. Then they remember who they are.”
I ran cold when I thought about Hamza, and how he returned, recalling every detail about us and what he wanted to do with me. Bile rose in my throat, biting at my tongue as I pushed the feelings about him into the same box as the grief and guilt I was attempting to contain.
“Astor said the same.”
He nodded. “Then my theories are confirmed.”
“How do you know for certain that she’s alive?”
“Niall says Salenia believes it, and she wouldn’t without a good cause.”
“Anastasia would be hiding then,” I assumed.
He cast his gaze to the letter. “Yes, or she’s biding her time. We are aware, at the very least, that she put Anastasia through hell. It’s safe to say she despises her more than we do.”
I leaned forward, an ache heavy in my chest. “Do you think she’s with Vener?”
He pursed his lips. “Maybe, but I’m deducing here from what we know. Vener originally made her immortal, which apparently she never wanted to begin with, then she killed her family out of bloodlust. Even between soulmates, there can be resentment. The line of love and hate is thin. Especially if Salenia’s been playing with their minds, so possibly not.”
I licked my lips, thinking about the times Sebastian and I had fought, but I could never imaginehatinghim. “How can you escape the underworld?” My thoughts drifted to my mom and dad, as well as the idea of Sebastian getting out of there, if I didn't survive fulfilling the prophecy. “How does anyone just come back from the dead like that? I mean, without the gods' help,” I added, seeing as I'd already done it.
“The underworld is often mistaken as an afterlife,” he explained, and I remembered Astor saying as much too, but I wanted more explanation on how it worked. “But it's a prison realm,” he continued, “and therefore, it’s escapable. The underworld exists between life and death, and the souls that are simply trapped. They could go either way, come back to this world, or cross over into the afterlife.”
