My breath catches. “Left?”
Neela answers instead, her voice blunt. “The witches learned a long time ago that killing a Darkwielder isn’t easy. But cutting them is.”
Her eyes flick to me. “They do it to women most often. You understand why.”
My mouth goes dry.
Neela continues. “Over time, there were fewer births. Fewer survivors. Fewer parents. War doesn’t make for raising babies. Now we have less than a dozen children in the entire castle. These are all we have left.”
The words hit like a blow. Less than a dozen. The future of Umbraxis, reduced to a handful of small bodies playing on stone floors.
“And you hide them,” I whisper.
Darian nods. “The parents who are still alive spend the most time here. We rotate sentries. Everybody volunteers.” His eyes flick to the toys that line the shelves. “Vaelion would target them if he knew.”
Neela’s mouth tightens. “They’d make a spectacle of it,” she says. “To break what’s left of us.”
My stomach churns. A small boy with dark curls wanders closer to Darian, watching him silently. He’s not racing around like the others.
Darian’s face shifts again. It brightens, something deeply protective breaking through.
The boy reaches out and tugs on his sleeve. “You came back,” he says. His voice is small. Almost as small as him.
“I did.” But the words are quiet.
The boy’s gaze slides to me. “Is she… safe?”
My throat tightens. Safe. As if I’m a thing that might explode. Darian crouches so he’s level with the boy’s face. “Yes,” he says firmly. “She’s safe. But you shouldn’t touch her. Not until you have more control over when you read.”
Oh.
The boy studies me with solemn, too-old, amethyst eyes, the dark shadows beneath them almost a mirror of what I see in Darian’s face. Then he nods once, as if making a decision. “I don’t have good control yet.”
“Lyra,” Darian says softly. “This is Jace.”
I stare at Darian, and his gaze meets mine with a weight that makes my skin prickle.
“I thought you were the last,” I whisper.
The last dreamwalker.
Except he’s not, because Jace is here, with deep purple eyes and a heaviness in his face that mirrors Darian almost exactly.
“So did I.” His throat bobs. “But dreamwalkers receive their erevas early.”
Jace points at my hair. “It’s bright,” he declares. “Like a candle.”
I have rarely been around children. In Solvandyr, I saw them at ceremonies from my window, tidy and distant and polished like jewels. “Thank you.”
Darian looks as if he’s hiding a smile at my awkwardness.
Rosen runs up to me, holding a cloth doll. Several others edge in behind her, as if she’s the ringleader. “Can you make light with your hands?” she asks bluntly. “Like the witches do?”
I hesitate. “Yes.”
Her eyes widen. “Can I see it?”
Opening my palm, I let the glassreavers flicker to life once more. Excitement breaks out as they flow from my palm, filling the room with glowing, fluttering wings, and Rosen’s eyes widen.
