“You think they’re connected?”
“Maybe. Or maybe your mother thought so, and she was wrong. I don’t know. But if the passage is a prophecy about the guardian bond, who was it written for? You, Aspen, or Ronen?”
My excitement whooshed out of me, and I sank back onto the couch.
“I’m so sick of all her secrets, Oli. And I feel terrible for that because she’s dead, and her soul has less than two months before it’s gone for good.”
He hugged me.
“We’ll figure it out.”
“Might be sacrificed before we do,” I mocked bitterly.
“I’ve lost enough, Luce. I don’t plan on losing my best friend too.”
I held onto Oliver like he was my only flotation device in the ocean of my problems.
We fell into a quiet, somber silence. I stared unseeingly into thewaning purple-black fire, cuddling deeper into him. My thoughts revolved around my mom.
She was the last thing on my mind before my eyes closed.
I stoodon a dimly lit path in what looked like a park. Purple haloed my vision, signaling a dream-walk. I assumed I was somewhere on Earth from the electric lamp posts and the city peeking through the trees in the distance. But it was nowhere I recognized.
A nippy breeze snapped across my face, and I pulled my coat tighter around me.
No, I realized. I didn’t.
But whose body was?—
“Staying warm in there, honey?”
My mom.
I had invaded my mom’s body, somehow using Inviso without having read the chapter.
She lowered her gaze to her belly, her amazed contentment overpowering my sudden shock.
She was pregnant.
With me.
She looked ready to pop. Even the discomfort in her swollen ankles attested to that. This was utterly surreal.
“Don’t worry, not too much longer, and we’ll go find some food. I’m feeling soup and a big box of chocolate truffles.”
A cloaked figure moved in the distance, avoiding the splotches of light cast across the path.
My mom tensed, then something strange happened. I felt her power flow through her, a zipping energy bubbling beneath her skin. She reached out with it, and we instantly felt the figure’s emotions. Curious, wary, but mostly at ease.
Straightening, my mom fingered something hard in her pocket.
A weapon? Most likely.
Beneath her feelings of caution lurked ferocity and a tempest of power waiting at her fingertips.
She stepped forward.
“The darkness shrouds us.”
