Griff was still speaking. “Even though they’re more cognizant, they die just as the rest. Decapitation. Fire. Stabbing through the heart.”
He continued to explain what he’d seen. The deamhan had hit multiple Veil points at once, overwhelming the small number of forces in the border towns. The report Zachariah had received wasn’t wrong. Entire towns had been destroyed, with people missing, presumed dead or worse.
Was it really only two days ago I’d sat in his office and heard that?
At this point, we were days away from the Veil collapsing entirely and being overrun by the darkness.
Murmurs shifted around the room. Many of the people here had been alive fifty years ago. Had fought in those battles. And everyone saw the patterns repeating and knew where this path eventually led.
“What can we do?” the councilor from Aurantia asked, desperation clear in every word. “We’re outnumbered, outmaneuvered?—”
“Notoutpowered,” Zachariah interrupted, looking directly at me. I squirmed as every head turned toward me. “Not if we’re willing to use everything at our disposal. Not if you can access the old magics.”
“You told him?”Griff kept his face expressionless even as surprise colored his thoughts.
“I couldn’t think of what else to do,”I admitted.“Besides he featured heavily in some of them.”
Griff was silent for a moment while I realized what I had just inadvertently confessed.
“Tell me you did not tunnel through memories without me, Princess.”
I summoned an impish grin, shoving down the fear that Zachariah’s words instilled.“Oops.”
“You and I are going to have a long conversation about that ‘oops’ later,”his mental voice growled down the pathway to me.
I was saved from further discussion by a light knock on the door. I was shocked at who I felt on the other side. When Andrei opened it, Freya edged her way inside, hesitantly as every face spun toward her. For once, her bubbly personality had abandoned her.
“Freya?” Andrei asked gently.
“I have something to report,” she stated in a soft voice.
“Go ahead,” Andrei encouraged.
She looked around the room, making eye contact with me, and I hoped I had an encouraging smile on my face but I feared it was a grimace. Taking a deep breath, she said, “I was treating a patient. A gardener. He was acting strange, so his coworkers brought him to me. In my examination, I found…”
As she trailed off, I realized I was holding my breath. I knew what she was going to say before she said it.
“He was infected. It was early on, but the infection had taken hold.”
As the council room exploded with murmurs and exclamations, I was on my feet toward her, ready to burn the infection from her like I had done with that boy, but she stopped me with an outstretched hand.
“I’m uninfected, Lexie.”
I searched her with my channels anyway, and breathed a sigh of relief.
Turning back to the rest of the council, she raised her voice in order to be heard. “And I was able to heal him.”
Another round of exclamations took place, and my spirits rose. It wasn’t just me! Maybe others with their soul channel could do it too.
She held up a hand, and the excited conversation dwindled to hear what other good news she’d brought. “I searched out with my channels, and it’s worse than I feared. It’s everywhere,” she finished softly.
I reached out just as she did, casting my awareness around the castle and the city. And there, deep inside the earth, so deep I almost missed it, was the infection—a writhing bundle of darkness,spreading vines around the mountain, burrowing into every crevice, deep beneath our feet. I staggered into my chair at the enormity of it and wordlessly shared the image with Griff.
And somehow I knew. I knew without a doubt—I had caused this. I knew about Starfire. The words had been whispered, carried by the wind, straight to his ears. Heknew.
By digging through the memories, by speaking the words, I had accelerated the timeline. This devastation, the death, it was all on me. If I had known better, I could have prevented this. And now we had no choice.
This was all my fault. I had put the word back into the universe.
