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“Welcome back,” he said. “Seems like you’ve recovered fully.”
“You as well.” I dropped into the first available chair, with Gaige following suit on my left.
“I’m glad everyone is all right,” Leena said. She sat at the head of the table with Noc beside her, and she toyed with the stem of her water glass as she looked over us. “We’ve heard snippets of what happened, but I’d appreciate the full story.” Her hazel eyes bounced between Gaige and me.
Letting out a tired breath, I retold the series of events that led to the attack on Hireath. I explained Gaige’s disappearance, and he interjected with details of his own and how he’d been snatched by the Lost. We recounted the horrid landscape we’d happened upon, Gaige’s broken body, the Lost’s strange obsession with Gaige’s magic. No one spoke as Gaige and I traded off recounting one of the most horrific events of my life. We were safe here in the clearing, but I couldn’t stop my heart from reacting to the mage’s name. The Lost. It sent a flurry of panic racing through my bones. He was still alive. We had no idea if—when—he would attack again.
Isla drained her water and set it on the table before her, studying the diamond pattern etched into the glass. “I tried to warn you.”
“I know,” I said, letting my hand find Gaige’s thigh beneath the table. “We had no other choice.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Her umber eyes were hollow. “I knew you would go in after Gaige. I just meant I tried to warn you abouthim. The Lost, or whatever he’s calling himself.”
“You know him?” From the seat beside her, Ozias tipped his head her direction.
“No.” She pursed her lips. “I just know he’s old. He’s Unfractured.”
Raven narrowed her eyes as she regarded Isla. “What does that mean?”
She picked at a stray, splintered piece of wood until it broke from the table. “Mages are awful, horrible people. They’re selfish and power hungry and entitled.” She finally looked at each one of us, as if needing to remind herself that she was here in Hireath and not lost in Allamere. “Mages used to have immeasurable power. The goddess Luminessa granted us the ability to harness the energy that teemed from the world itself, and we could do wondrous things.
“But like I said, mages are awful. Our greed turned Luminessa against us, and she fractured the power we’d been granted, splitting us into five factions.” She held up her hand and ticked off each finger one by one in time with her words. “Projectors. Manipulators. Transmutators. Enhancers. Creators. We all possess a unique type of magic the other factions can’t master. But if the Lost lived and died before the Fracture, he would still have access to all the magic Luminessa stripped from her children.”
The Fracture.Her weak warning rattled through my mind as I rewound the events of her ripping into the Lost’s universe. I’d thought she’d been referring to the chasm she created, not the person lying in wait.
“Why Gaige, then?” Noc asked. Everyone’s gazes rounded on my lover, and I squeezed his knee tighter. He dropped his hand to mine and brushed his thumb along my wrist.
“I don’t know. He never said.” Gaige’s brows drew together sharply. “He just wanted power.”
Isla glowered at her glass. “Typical mage.”
“He wanted me, too.” Calem ceased his reclining and settled his chair on all four feet. “He took our blood.”
“You let him?” Isla rounded on him with wild eyes.
Calem glared at her. “I didn’tlethim do anything. We were transported to an entirely different realm, and he was the only one who had the magic, theability, to do anything.” Tension snapped from his frame as the mercury hue around his irises threatened to encroach upon his muted-red shade, but Kaori placed a gentle hand on his arm. He didn’t visibly react to her touch, not at first. Eventually, though, he once again leaned back in his chair and tipped his head to the off-white canopy.
“About this realm,” Noc said, bringing our focus back to him. Jaw tight, he stared first at some indistinct spot on the table, then me. “You think we’ve been wrong all these years.”
“Yes.” I adjusted my glasses, and the action settled me. Partially because of habit, but more likely because they were a precious gift from Gaige. “After considering Uma’s own personal history with losing someone, the Lost’s rambling, and the realm itself, I believe we’ve been led astray.”
Ozias frowned as he crossed his arms over his chest. “How so?”
“We’ve always been told that control of the shadows was necessary. And it is.” I cut a quick glance to Gaige, and he rolled his eyes. “But I believe the risks associated with lack of training were incorrectly deduced. If the Lost is as old as we think, he could have lived, and possibly died, during the same time as Zane.”
“No shit,” Calem whispered. Indeed, it would have been incredible if that were the case. Zane was the fallen son of the First King—the first undead assassin who started Cruor. The power to raise the dead and wield the shadows started with him.
Still, that was centuries ago, and this was now.
“We don’t know what happened to the Lost. Not in the slightest. I do believe, however, that anyone who was ‘lost’ after him was actually taken. His misguided search for power resulted in him preying on his own kind to amass more magic. Why, though, I can’t fathom.”
Kaori pressed her back stiffly against the carved frame of her chair. “Some people are fixated on things like that.”
Calem’s eyes were on her before she could finish speaking, and he stilled his precarious rocking without bringing his chair’s feet back to the ground.
Isla sighed. “No one more so than mages.”
Aside from her initial questioning, Leena had remained silent throughout the conversation. But I’d noticed the worry lines caving across her forehead and the way she’d wrapped her fingers in the chain of her bestiary. She chewed on the inside of her cheek as she studied Kaori, then Isla.
