“What the—”
What was it?
I took the familiar device and turned it on with the side switch. It lit up, the light blinking a couple of times before stopping, waiting for me to point it at someone.
A fucking tracker. Was that where they stashed the few others they found?
I set it down before putting everything else back into the box and pushing it back on its shelf. If Margaret decided to refuse to give me the answers I seeked because “I made a mess,” I’d throw myself out the damn window.
With the tracker back in my hand, I walked back to the desk and sat on the chair, inspecting it. It said the same thing it did the last time when I pointed it at me, so I assumed it worked fine…
“I don’t understand,” I muttered. “What am I supposed to do with that? Point it at Lola? It didn’t work on her last time.”
The keyboard clicked softly and I waited, moving the tracker distractedly in my hands, making sure not to press it too hard.
“Didn’t it?”
I frowned. What did she mean?
“No, it didn’t. It didn’t show anything, like she wasn’t even an Immortal at all.”
Or…I turned the thing off and pointed it at me again.
No…She didn’t? Were we stupid enough to not even check if it was still on? Well, Idid. But…
“I broke it,” I whispered. “Must have held it too tight, and it broke in my hand. What if—”
The keyboard clicks again. “But, did you really?”
Fuck. Didn’t I? Did she tamper with it? To somehow conceal her real origin? Tohideeven more things from us? From hermates?
Anger bubbled up in my chest, sizzling in my veins. No matter how hard I tried, no matter how patient I was, she keptlying. Hiding things from me.
Dimitri had known her forever. He was always going to be the one she chose. Arc too. I was the last to fucking know about anything. And only becauseIfound out on my own, not because she told me.
I placed the tracker on the desk, feeling the need to close my hands in fists. The last thing I needed was to break another, even if I wasn’t the one to actually break the damn thing in the first place.
But thenwhodid?
“I don’t understand what’s going on,” I said, burying my head in my hands. “I need more books. I need to understand what the fuck she is, why it wasn’t mentioned thatMaidenswere actually Astrals and not humans like it’s been said in a few of the other books. I need to understand why I’ve never even heard of Astrals as being more than a myth before, and why they’ve been basically erased from Immortal’s history. I—”
My head shot up as books appeared next to me. First, a pretty big one, then a small, and finally another journal-looking one.
I looked at the leather bound cover.
“Come on, more translation?”
My eyes narrowed, inspecting the old Egyptian hieroglyphs on the cover.
Nefertari.
I’ve seen this name before. In Tedregon—Amyntas’ journal.
“Lola’s mother,” I breathed out, turning the pages slowly before setting it aside to look at the second one.
Astral’s customs. Nothing about individual species, but lots about the Maidens and their power system.
They called the strongest theShard Carriers. The ones who held the original power of their respective Astral species. Dragons, Phoenixes, and Chimeras. One Shard Carrier of each, passed down fromheirtoheir. The heir was always the strongest of their children and their first. The one and only they got from their Maiden before they went to their other human wives for weaker descendents.
