The seventh.
Not Damien—she said earlier that the sixth mark was cloaked, implying Damien's bond is known but this other...
"No one does," she continues, the words landing with the weight of prophecy. "But the most complicated individuals arethe most devoted and broken bunch anyone can have on their team."
Complicated. Devoted. Broken.
The description triggers memories of the stranger who appeared during Gwenievere's resurrection. The impossible purple blood. The refusal to identify himself. The power that tasted of nothing I could categorize despite centuries of studying supernatural taxonomy.
Him.
The seventh is him.
"Ensure the rest understand that," Professor Eternalis finishes, hand finally turning the doorknob, "as we hopefully break this cycle once and for all."
She opens the door.
Beyond it, I can see the larger space where the others wait—Cassius's shadows coiling with agitated energy, Atticus pacing with vampire restlessness, Zeke observing everything with feline calm that now carries different implications, Nikolai—or perhaps Nikki, or perhaps both—trying to recover from whatever separation their shared form has undergone.
And somewhere in that space, presumably still restrained, the stranger who apparently holds the final position in our unexpected configuration.
Professor Eternalis steps through the door without looking back, her presence withdrawing from the room and taking with it some essential vitality that I hadn't realized she was providing.
I'm left alone with Gwenievere's floating form and the weight of revelations that will take far longer than a few days to fully process.
The Seven was always a metaphor.
Gwenievere is the Queen, the centerpiece, the golden clover among green.
We—Cassius, Nikolai, Atticus, Zeke, myself, and two others—are the pieces that serve her.
Damien's position makes sense now—the sixth mark, the complicated redemption arc, the former enemy becoming crucial ally.
But the seventh...
I turn back to Gwenievere's sphere, watching her float in peaceful stasis while my mind races through implications I'm not sure I'm ready to accept.
The stranger with purple blood and impossible arrogance.
The being who saved her life when the rest of us couldn't.
The final piece of a puzzle we didn't know we were assembling.
Professor Eternalis's words echo through my mind:You won't like your final teammate. No one does.
But the most complicated individuals are the most devoted and broken bunch anyone can have on their team.
I think about Cassius—how his shadows seemed alien and threatening before I understood they were protection given form. About Atticus—how his vampire arrogance masked centuries of lonely devotion. About Nikolai—how their shifting form hid trauma so deep it required creating an entirely separate identity to survive.
We're all complicated.
All devoted in our own ways.
All broken by experiences that shaped us into whatever we've become.
Why should the seventh be any different?
But even as the rational part of my mind counsels patience and understanding, my dragon instincts coil with wariness that refuses to subside.
