“You know why she kept him away,” Hiram replies.
When Hiram confessed to Grace that he wasthatkind of Ellis, she cut contact and disappeared. According to her stepfather, not long after Grace arrived back in London, she found out she was pregnant and kept it a secret. John never approved, always urged her to reach out and give Hiram a chance, but Hiram understood. He hadn’t been free. The Ellis name and reputation had already smothered him long before he’d left. The last decade was a delusion of his own creation.
“We are not the monsters she believed us to be,” Simran argues.
“Seers have centuries of proof to the contrary. We invented ways to subjugate them, poisons to sever their connection to magic, and imbued their weaknesses into things they needed. Yet we had the nerve to smile in their faces while presenting their oppression as gifts.”
“The Great Vanishing—”
“Stop using that as an excuse to treat them as lesser.”
“You were across the ocean at college. If you had been here, the experience would have changed you like it did me. That is the nature of consequence. You never return to the state of naivety, nor can you undo what you have seen. I will never trust anyone with the power to change the world and erase people from existence.”
“I knew people who Vanished, but I’m not blaming an entire group for the actions of a single person. You can’t rewrite history. Anti-Seer laws were already in place long before the Great Vanishing.”
“This is futile.” Simran checks her watch and stands. “I must go.”
After she leaves, Hiram meticulously cleans every trace of their conversation, but it’s not enough. It never is.
Too restless to stay home, Hiram goes for a walk. Not around the lake, but into the forest. It’s midmorning, the sun is breaking through the trees, and the trail is congested. The farther he goes, the thinner the crowd becomes, until he sees only one or two people now and then.
Hiram hasn’t been here in years, but the forest is not beholden to time. When the trees start to bow over the path, little more than fallen leaves and moss, he knows he’s close. The first sounds of water trickle in, and a familiar western hemlock off the path is his cue to leave the comfort of the trail.
In daylight, directions are easier. Small carvings on trees guide his way as he walks for what feels like hours, sweating under the humid midday sun until he ducks beneath a low branch and comes face-to-face with the mouth of Nénuphar Cave.
It’s not a secret, but itissacred.
More than old, Nénuphar Cave is ancient. The tunnels and streams of a deep labyrinth branch far and wide. If there is an end, it remains a mystery. Hiram found the cave when he was ten, lost while hiking. He used to be a sickly kid, but that slowly changed after his first visit. The water, he realized, was not a cure but a boost to help him along the way.
The air inside is rich with raw, damp earth and something heady. Water drips rhythmically—the cave’s pulse. Hiram’s eyes are drawn to the stalactites above and stalagmites jutting from the earthen floor. Shadows from hanging lantern orbs dance across the deep cavern, swaying and looming, turning the cave into a mesmerizing display of light and dark.
At the edge of the water, Hiram strips down to his black swim shorts and steps in. The warm, waist-deep, luminescent waters are so clear, he can see the bottom. When he submerges, magic tingles his skin like electricity, and his first inhale after resurfacing soothes the tension in his shoulders. Careful of the darkness deeper in the cave, Hiram swims lazy laps. As he gently cuts through the water, thoughts cease. All the aches, anxieties, and worries that threaten to consume him ... he lets them go. Releases them to the universe’s embrace.
Floating on his back, he gazes at the amethyst walls and the limestone cavern ceiling. Eyes closed, he slips into a memory, another effect of the water. The visions are never the same.
With Peter surrounded like a shepherd among his flock, Hiram is bored, and the graduation party’s saving grace is the liquor. He’s on his second shot when he sees her. It’s not the slit in her orange dress that makes her legs look longer or the voluminous hair under her graduation cap that catches his attention—it’s the eye-shaped sapphire amulet around her neck.
The same one a Seer tattoo artist inked onto his skin last month. A vision made real.
Now, it watches. Torn between approaching and retreating, full of questions, Hiram lingers, observing the woman leaning against a table, drinking amber liquor straight from a bottle. She’s talking animatedlyto three men. Whatever the topic, she looks certain of victory. Without realizing, he drifts closer, now caught in her web.
“As Mages, you and I are more of a danger than any Seer,” she says firmly. “Just like, as a man, you are more of a danger to me than—”
“That’s not true,” one argues.
“I’ll tell you why you’re wrong.” She takes another swig from the bottle. “As long as men and Mages establish the standard for society, they bear responsibility for upholding a higher one. Mages don’t, and men certainly don’t. You’re so blinded by your own privilege that you can’t see the shackles ignorance has placed on you. Society would be much further along if Seers were allowed to be inventive and creative with magic. I—”
“Here you go, with all your dreamer shit,” the second man mutters, rolling his eyes.
Hiram is transfixed.
“That dreamer shit is responsible for the amulet you wear around your neck,” she argues firmly, touching her own with a sad fondness. “If a Seer hadn’t figured out how to divert magical consequence from the human body to the stone, and learned to tie Imprints to an amulet, Mages would still be dying from physical damage due to long-term spell work.”
They shift, uncomfortable. “We didn’t mean—”
She hops off the table, excuses herself, and disappears into the crowd.
Awareness returns as the memory fades. Hiram floats until he hears footsteps on sand.
