“I’ve seen whispers of your powers. Images and hints led me to an assumption. I had hoped I was right and that my note would pan out. I fabricated nothing.”
Seen whispers? Images?
“You’re a seer.”
“All blood-witches are to varying degrees.”
“Like your coven,” I accused.
She quirked a perfectly manicured brow. “If you’re insinuating that I’m a liar because I want to avenge my coven like my mother, then you’re wrong. I left my coven a lifetime ago. I planned a coup to stop Lilith, even asked your mother for help, but she was carrying you and refused to allow Miriam’s prophecy to come true.”
That lined up with my dream-walk to them. Unless…
She scrutinized me. “You believed me for a moment. What changed?”
I saw no consequences in lying to her. “I dream-walked to the moment you’re talking about. But if you’re a seer, you could know that and use it against me.”
Anya’s face scrunched in confusion. “Dream-walking and seeing are incompatible for us. They reject each other.”
“Miriam—”
She held up a hand, cutting me off. “I’m not talking about the Seraphim seer. Angels are different. I’m talking about blood-witches.After Lilith stole the Thrones’ powers, she struggled to use either. That’s why she was so desperate to siphon angelic power and retrieve my sister Melanie from the angels. That’s what makes you dangerous.”
My stomach sank. My skin itched. Answers I needed but no longer wanted pierced the too-hot air, ramming into my eardrums.
“What did you just say?”
“Blood-witches can’t?—”
“Her name.”
“Melanie.” Anya pursed her lips, tilting her head as she reconsidered me. “You figured it out too, then?”
My mind screamed at me not to ask. “Figured what out?”
Her expression softened with something close to sympathy. “Why the bite Lucifer received at Saraqael’s funeral didn’t affect him with the demonic strain?”
A pit of dread grew in my stomach. Because she didn’t look like someone about to take pleasure in her next reveal the way Lilith would. Instead, she appeared regretful.
“Why?” I whispered.
“Because he was infected with my sister’s soul.”
“What does that mean? Infected with your sister’s soul? Like the voice that talks through them?”
Anya slowly shook her head. “No. Like my sister’s soul is inside your father’s body and has been feeding on his essence since the moment he was bitten.”
It clicked into place then. That was who the Doors of Moirai showed—Lilith and hertwodaughters. Oliver’s adopted sister, the one he’d spent ninety-five years searching for since she’d been stolen, was eating my father from the inside out.
I ran to a patch of grass and heaved up my guts.
“After I had the vision of your father being bitten, I put together the pieces. Melanie figured out I knew. She’s always been a step ahead of me. Her abilities make her the next best thing to Miriam. So when I saw my death, I morphed into a mouse and hid in the dungeons until you all came to find me. Been hiding ever since.”
The mousewith the red streak.
ThesheAnya said planted the evidence. The person who had access to the dungeons. It wasn’t Sam. It was Melanie in my father’s body.
I puked again, sinking to my knees.
