"Theo," Rhett says carefully. "Talk to us. What happened?"
I make it to the stone circle in the center of the hall, pressing my palms against the cool stone. The contact usually grounds me, helps me sort through whatever I've seen. Tonight the Ether here feels charged wrong—static electricity crackling through my bones, setting my teeth on edge.
"A vision," I say, dropping into the center. "But different. It felt real in a way that defies everything I understand about my gift."
Which admittedly isn't much.
The sanctuary's warm silver hum surrounds me. Familiar. Comforting. But then something like mirror-glass slices through my thoughts—too sharp to belong here.
Bree's shadow splits—one half reaching toward me, the other toward something hidden.
A door opening into a sanctuary that looks like ours—but hollow. Like the shape of the sanctuary had been remembered rather than lived in.
Whispers echoing in my own voice: "She doesn't belong here—yet. It's not time. You saw it already."
I surface gasping, the fragments scattering like startled birds. But the certainty remains—something is bleeding through from a place it has no business being. What I saw had the same layout—familiar, but wrong—like the vision didn't know how to interpret the place and stitched something together from pieces it thought I could understand.
"The vision was of our garden," I say finally. "But not our garden. Everything was in the right place, but... off. Changed. And Seth was there, but fractured. Like someone had tried to glue broken pieces into the shape of him."
Wes lowers himself beside me without a word, grounding me with the steadiness I couldn't find on my own. "And Bree?"
"Hurt. Dying, maybe. The Ether around her was black as night, rippling in patterns that felt wrong."
"But outside just now," Gray says, "everything looked normal."
"That's what I don't understand." I run my hands through my hair, frustration bleeding through. "This vision felt more alive than anything I've felt before. But Seth looked... he looked exactly like himself. Human. Confused."
Silence settles over the group like a weight. I can see the calculation in their faces—whether to go after her, whether to trust my vision, whether to trust me.
"Visions can be warnings," Stellan murmurs. "Or fragments. Not certainties."
"Can the visions lie to him?" Jace asks, but there's no edge to it. Just consideration.
Stellan's expression shifts slightly. "It's rare, but it's not impossible."
I sit in the circle's quiet after they drift away to give me space, replaying every detail. The changed garden. The fractured figure. Whispers in my own voice. The way Bree's shadow fell in two directions, like she was being pulled between worlds that shouldn't touch.
I open my palm—and stop breathing.
A thread of reflective mist rests on my skin. Not silver like Bree's Ether—dark as polished obsidian, gleaming with inner light.
I blink. It's gone.
The cold spot it leaves behind doesn't fade. Like it touched me back.
What if the vision was a warning? What if a door's been opened and something's already walked through?
Chapter 44
Thane
I step into the garden through the sanctuary's side door, drawn by voices drifting through the night air. The hunger claws at me, but it's not the same hunger I've known for centuries. Three weeks. Three weeks since I last fed, since she opened that door and everything I understood about myself began to unravel.
Three weeks of telling myself I'm choosing not to feed. Of convincing myself it's strategy, control, protection of her.
But the truth I won't admit—can't admit—sits like ice in my chest: I've tried. Twice. Fed on willing donors in the camps when the need became unbearable.
And felt nothing. No satisfaction. No sustenance. Just emptiness that left me hungrier than before.
