“Where are you taking him?” I cried out.
“One more kiss,” Ellyn said, tears rushing down her cheeks to bathe his sweet face. “One last hug.”
“She raised him,” I said. “Yet you’re taking him?” Vera must intend to return him, or his future would’ve changed. I clung to that as reassurance because I hated to see his mother sad. “What sort of spell are you going to cast on him?”
“Stop talking,” Vera snapped in my mind.
For one moment, a serpent slick with distrust coiled across my heart, squeezing tight. Had she cast a spell that impacted Vexxion today?
“Tell me,” Ellyn pleaded, drawing my attention back to her. Her gaze clung to her child.
“You know I can’t say. If I do . . .”
“He’ll know,” Ellyn said harshly. Her chest lifted and her sigh seemed to empty out everything inside her. After giving Vexxion one last kiss, she lifted her arms, holding him out to Vera. “Don’ttell me. Then he can’t force the information from me.”
“She knows who Ivenrail is now,” I said softly.
“Even dreamers lose hope,” Vera said with brutal honesty.
She took him from his mother.
Ellyn pressed her fist against her mouth, her face awash with tears. She reached out, tentatively at first, then with more purpose, stroking his face and smoothing her fingertips across his brow.
“Fare well, sweet love,” she cried out.
She gave way to sobs as Vera took the baby from the room.
34
TEMPEST
Ijolted back into myself and stared about wildly. Darkness had swallowed the room. How long had I remained in the vision?
I didn’t understand. Vera had taken Vexxion from his mother when he was a baby? She must’ve brought him back because his mother had raised him until Ivenrail murdered her.
What had Vera done with him? From Ellyn’s sobs, it may have been awful.
“Why was I shown that memory?” I snarled. “Where did she take him and why?”
The word echoed back at me, eachwhy, why, whyclawing across my exposed skin, leaving the wetness of his mother’s tears behind.
Rising, I hurried to the fireplace and added wood from the pile to the right of the big stone structure. Flames gobbled it up, making it snap and pop. With chillswracking my frame and my hands outstretched to suck in the heat, I stared at the flickering gold and orange, trying to figure out what the vision meant.
A flutter to my right sent me spinning in that direction. I pulled a blade from my side and slashed it through the air.
Drask landed on his perch and flapped his wings, stretching out his neck to squawk.
Returning my blade to its sheath, I rushed to him and stroked his back. “You startled me. Where did you take the third bone?” It wasn’t with him.
He peered up at me and pecked at my hand.
I shut the window before more of the heat escaped, and returned to the sofa, sitting as far from the tiniest bone as I could.
Vera’s bone had not returned with me, telling me I no longer needed it. I couldn’t make sense of the vision, but I’d bet anything I would understand when the time was right.
“Will Vexxion’s bone tell me the meaning of Vera’s?” I whispered.
The unknown clawed at the inner wall of my belly, spreading anxiety and dread with my every heartbeat.
