“This one is certainly well hidden,” Scythe says. “Especially considering it requires a guardian such as Celeste and now Aurelia.”
“Mythical shifters.” Selene nods. “Makes total sense.”
“Who needs a unicorn if we have a portal!” Savage says, squinting his eyes as if he can see beyond the darkness. “I say we go in and see what’s on the other side.”
Selene’s eyes light up. “If you can find more mythical shifters, Aurelia, they will have knowledge about basilisks.They will be able to help you take down Ghoul’s power.”
“But we don’t know what we’ll find on the other side,” Lyle says. “These other shifters could be hostile. Who’s to say they’ll help us? Imagine if we had strange people from a different world coming here, wanting to talk to Aurelia. We’d probably try to kill them.”
“Lyle’s right.” I say. “We just don’t know where the portal will take us. It’s not worth the risk right now, when my father is taking next steps.”
“There could also be a time discrepancy.” Xander nods. “What if we go and return to find three years have passed and everyone we know is dead?”
My stomach roils at the possibility. Minnie, Sabrina, Stacey, Eugene—all gone.
“No,” I whisper. “I won’t risk this unknown power for a possibility.”
Selene nods. “If I didn’t have my hatchlings, I might have risked an academic expedition. Perhaps after all this ends, we can sendsomewilling soul through.”
“Agreed,” I say. “Ashfang, close the door.”
Dinner is a quiet affair, after which we separate into groups. Selene lets Xander and Savage give her a tour of the academy while Scythe goes to soak in the tub. Lyle and I sit in the TV room together. Lately, I’ve felt I haven’t given my lion enough time, making his animus irritable and prone to growling.
But as Lyle rubs balm into my tired leg, I sink back into old thoughts.The last of your kind.There has always been something eternally depressing about this fact. That with the death of my mother, I became theone. The last. The only.
The thought of other Boneweavers existing somewhere in the universe is a concept I dare not grasp. I barely know the extent of my own powers. What could I learn from them? What would it be like to have…family? Being discarded by my own blood family hurt enough. What if they, too, rejected my existence? What if I was toootherfor them as well? Too different.
There’s no point in trying to find out. The threat ishere. My enemy ishere.
“I’ve suddenly realised I’m the only one of my pack without siblings,” I mutter.
“Don’t do that to yourself, angel,” Lyle says. “Don’t find ways to isolate yourself further.”
I frown at him, offended. “If I isolate myself, Lyle, it’s for a reason.”
“I know,” he says softly. “I just mean…right now, we need to band together. Not withdraw. If there’s something on your mind, we are always willing to work through it with you. Sometimes it can be good to think out loud.”
He’s right, of course. “I was just thinking that I’ve not entertained the thought of others like me in a while. After I was exiled, I just avoided thinking about family, and now those ugly feelings are coming back. I don’t want to hope and then have it stomped on again. We just don’t know what’s on the other side.”
“To be fair,”Xander’s voice says in the group chat.“None of us knows what tomorrow really offers. We don’t know how Mace is going to attack us. We don’t know who he’s going to try to kill.”
I rub my eyes, the weight of his words heavy on me.
Scythe’s voice pops in like a cool breeze.“Xander is trying to say that we are operating in unknown territory. We need to use what tools we can.”
My brows shoot up in surprise.“Tools like the portal?”
“If it comes to it, yes, regina.”
Chapter 91
Xander
After the tour of the property, I send Savage back to Aurelia so I can have tea with Selene in the empty dining hall.
“How are you really?” she asks over the rim of her cup, dark eyes catching the light of the stained-glass windows next to us.
“I have a black mating mark, Selene,” I say quietly. My sister’s eyes widen, telling me she surmises its meaning as I have. The words sit in the air between us. The implication. The way I am condemned. After a moment, I can’t bear it any longer. “I don’t know how to feel about it,” I admit. “But a part of me feels it’s the right and proper way of things.”
