Jesstin spun toward Sesto, bewildered. His anger was back. “Is this funny?”
“Artificial ignorance does not become you, Jess. Look at her. You’re itching for a fight, but perhaps you’d rather listen this time?”
“This. Is. Not. Possible.” Jesstin squeezed the words through his clenched jaw. “If it was, I trust you would have already told me.”
“Ah.” Sesto wrinkled his lips. “If I had known before a couple of days ago?—”
“Days? Days?”
“Uncle, it’s not Sesto you’re upset with, or even us,” Nara said with gentle patience. Sesto could easily see how she’d made a name for herself teaching gifted children in the Sepulchre how to manage their magic according to the kingdom’s rules of use. “Will you at least sit and hear us out before you decide this is a trick?”
“I’m fine here,” Jesstin stated. “Tell me who you all are and what you want.”
Nara raised her brows and nodded. “This is Cat, my cousin.”
“Hello, Uncle Brother,” the tearful woman said in a near whisper. “I’ve missed you so much.”
Jesstin’s hand gripped his neck. He pressed his hip to the doorframe with a harsh breath.
“And my son, Wyat,” Caterina said. She touched the boy’s arm. “He’s just had his thirteenth nameday.”
“Son,” Jesstin ground out.
“Tyreste.” The man standing at the cabinet spoke next. “Cat’s twin. My daughter, Clarissant.” He nodded at a young woman not much younger than Jesstin.
“Hello!” The girl’s enthusiasm was misplaced in the somber room, but she didn’t seem aware of it. “I cannot wait to hear your story.”
“My daughter,” Tyreste said, continuing with a cautionary throat clearing, “is here because she cannot seem to mind her business. At all. Ever.”
Clarissant grinned and swept her blonde curls away from her flushed face. “I’m here because I am also a Jesstin Believer.”
“I’m sorry, a what?” Jesstin scoffed. “What the hell is happening here?”
“I’ll explain. Will you please sit?” Nara asked calmly.
It took Caterina’s forlorn, tearful “please” to gain his compliance.
Jesstin pulled the chair about ten feet from the table and sat.
“We’re here because our magic compels us to solve our family’s greatest mystery,” Nara said. “Which has, unexpectedly, enlightened us to a truth unavailable to others.”
“Not me,” Clarissant said, interrupting. “I have no magic. But I believe.”
Tyreste shook his head.
“I manifested my first prophecies when I was nine,” Nara said. “Around my seventeenth nameday, my father was in the foulest mood. He seemed more confused than angry, but anger has always been his way of dealing with things he can’t comprehend. A few days later, both Cat and Tyr showed up at the citadel demanding to speak to me. That’s when they told me about Sesto’s letters speaking of a man, Jesstin, a younger brother of our parents. But according to them, Jesstin, you didn’t exist.”
“It was the oddest thing,” Tyreste said. “Because none of us remembered you either! But Cat and I...” He looked at his sister. “Do you remember Mother and Father, how their dreams took them to past and future?”
Jesstin nodded weakly.
“Cat and I inherited this from them. Wyat too, but that was later. We didn’t remember you, not the way we should, but you were still in our dreams—dreams of our childhood but also dreams of... the future, when we were twice your age. Something felt very wrong about all of it, and when we tried talking to Mother and Father, they wouldn’t entertain a conversation. We asked Nara if she’d seen you in her visions, and she hadn’t, but she believed us.” He shook his head. “Without question.”
“I tried, several times, to ask Mother and Father if they’d seen you too, but they wouldn’t even speak of it. I’d never seen them so upset with us. I couldn’t even recall a time they’d yelled, unless we’d put ourselves in danger, but they yelled then,” Caterina said. “It reminded me of visiting Aunt Finola’s grandmother in the infirmary. She’d lost most of her memories by then, and it made her so unspeakably mad. It was as though she knew how much she was missing, but her inability to grasp it was the ultimate insult.”
“It was then my father told us a family secret. They’d all promised not to tell us, but...” Nara glanced at Caterina. “Our grandfather, Mathias, was not a good man. I expect this is no secret to you?”
“No secret,” Jesstin stated, cold and even. He turned back. “Where’s the boy, Sesto?”
