I guess I neverhadtold anyone beyond my little group that I’d had full conversations multiple times with gods, because almost everyone else in the room appeared completely shocked. But it was old news to me, so we needed to move on with it.
“This isnotinformation to glaze over,” Daddy grumbled as he fell back in his seat, but Mama cut him off.
“What did Coyote Spirit say?” she asked curiously. Everyone centered their attention on me.
I crossed my arms. “Well, Coyote told me that the connection between Earth and the spiritual realm is closing, so the spirits of the dead can no longer cross over to the afterlife. They’re stuck in-between, and because of that, the gods aren’t able to influence things like they were before. Coyote insisted that it was really important for Charlie to fulfill his prophecy, because if he doesn’t open the Elven Gate, the afterlife remains inaccessible for everyone, not just the Elves.”
“I’ve been trying to move the souls of the coven to the afterlife without success,” Lucas explained. “I knew something was wrong, but assumed someone must’ve been targeting my reaper abilities personally. Now we understand things are happening on a much larger scale. My magic isn’t working correctly with the afterlife in such turmoil. I can’t help anyone from the coven cross over. They’re stuck, and I’m powerless to help them.”
“It is even worse than we feared,” Cassiel said darkly.
“Maybe that’s why my birth mother, Neva, can’t speak with me, even though I’ve tried,” Kallie said. “The fae goddess of time should’ve come to me by now, in a vision or in person, for all the times I’ve requested her help. I’m her blood— she should be honor-bound to visit me. But I don’t know if she can, with the boundary between the realms being broken.”
“Princess Ava, if there’s any hope of contacting the gods, especially our Elven goddesses, it is through you,” Cassiel said to me. “You are now the mother of the Elvish race, and the only spiritual bridge we have left to our deities. Your experience in the afterlife could give us the connection we need to speak with them.”
That was a huge responsibility. I nervously clasped my hands together under the table and managed to say, “I can try. I have a strong connection to the spiritual realm. I have ever since I came back from the Ancestral Lands. Perhaps if I can commune with the gods, they’ll be able to help us bring an end to the war on Earth, and we can help them stop the war in the Blessed Haven.”
“If Ava’s doing spiritual work to cross the broken boundary in order to speak with the gods, I can help, too,” Marcus offered. “I can work on accessing visions in order to gain intel on the enemy with my magic. My mind reading abilities are growing. If I can access information that way, it’ll be really helpful.”
“Do you mean if we capture one of the Warden’s higher-ups, you could look into their mind and see what he’s got planned?” Kallie asked.
“Maybe. I’ve been getting better at mind reading, but when you’re inside somebody’s head, there are so many thoughts and visions that not all of it is useful, and important people like the Warden have wards against my powers,” Marcus explained.
“You’re a demigod. You should be able to get into anyone’s head, even if they have wards on them,” Kallie insisted.
“It’s not that easy. Even if Ican, that doesn’t mean I’ll find what I’m looking for,” Marcus said. “When I’m in someone’s mind, it’s like I have access to a whole library, and what we need is a singular sentence in one book, so I don’t know where to start looking. Unless someone is thinking of the exact thing we’re trying to get information on, right at the moment I peek inside their head, I have to go searching, and rifling through someone’s thoughts takes longer than you’d think. The brain has over six thousand thoughts a day, and I have to skim through all of that, and sometimes more, to even narrow it down.”
“There are ways to make it quicker,” Lucas said. “We’ll find a witch who can teach you to be more efficient at mind reading.”
“What I don’t understand is why the Warden is keeping Elves in concentration camps instead of executing them on a mass scale,” I said. “Why does he need to keep them around in prison camps? He’s already unleashed the dark gods. What else does he need them for?”
“That may be the most worrying thing of all, princess,” Cassiel mused.
“There’s just so much to do,” Charlie said in frustration. “How are we going to manage finding the rest of these keys while fighting a war?”
“I think it’s best if we sort our efforts into three groups,” Cassiel began. “My grandson, the princess, and their friends willspend their time investigating the Midnighters and searching for the vampire key. Myself and my son will do what we can to locate the Main Facility, and put an end to the Elvish concentration camps for good. We will also do what we can to learn more about the Astromancer key. The rest of us will occupy ourselves with helping the other races who’ve been displaced settle into Ilamanthe.”
“That’s a job for us parents,” King Ethan stated.
“Agreed. We’ll have the resources,” Daddy added.
It was weird to see them working together, but I guess we all had to, now. There wasn’t any other option.
Kazim rose from the table. “I’m going to focus my time on learning everything I can about the Warden and his defenses. I want to know what his weak points are, and if there are any gaps in The Mission we can use to gain the advantage. The Malovian army is large and strong, and the various races living here together in Ilamanthe are no small force. We have a shot at winning. The Mission won’t be easy to conquer, but if we stick together, we just might pull through this.”
“If you wanna kill the Warden, you better come up with a damn good plan, because nothing we’ve tried has worked,” Alistair said dully.
“Did you get a chance to work your Mentalist powers on him, like you did Professor Mazur?” Charlie asked.
I shuddered at the memory. Before we’d left the Institute, Alistair had used his powers on Mazur to make her turn her own life-energy magic against her, draining her until she was nothing but a husk. Angels were all but impossible to kill, yet Alistair had done it, so we were hoping he could do the same thing to the Warden.
“I did. We ran into him before we stole the bus,” Alistair said. “I tried casting the spell, and forcing him to drain his own life-energy, but it instantly rebounded. I don’t think he had a wardon him, either. He was just so strong that the magic immediately backfired the second it hit him.”
“We only got away because he was in too much of a hurry to summon the dark gods than to deal with us,” Chancey said. “But he did send a nasty spell back, one that nearly cut me in half. If I wasn’t an angel and didn’t have self-healing abilities, I would’ve been sliced in two.”
Chancey stood and lifted his shirt. A deep scar ran across his abs. Ivy winced, like recalling the moment pained them greatly.
Alistair was a talented warlock. If the Warden could brush off one of his spells like it was a nuisance and not an actual threat, we were in big trouble.
