Page 74 of Eight of Swords, Part Two

Busy but quiet.

Empty but full.

Riley says, ‘I need to tell you this, and I’m hoping you get it right away, given that you should have seen it a dozen times over during your time at the Estate, but if not, just listen to what I say, got it?’

Kade already knows what’s coming.

Not all of it, but enough to recognise the look in Riley’s eyes. The slight distance, mentally reaching somewhere beyond this room before he speaks.

Lachlan nods. ‘Heard.’

‘All right.’ Riley takes a deep breath. ‘Let’s do this properly.’

Nobody interrupts.

‘Nine hundred years ago, during a famine in England, three orphaned siblings were starving to death.’

Lachlan blinks. ‘That’s how this starts?’

‘That’s how it starts, Tanner. Shut up and listen. Nine hundred years ago, the famine had wiped out entire villages. People were eating bark, leather, worms, anything they could find. The three siblings had nobody left. No family, no food, no future. Instead of dying slowly, they chose to end it together. They went to a high quarry and jumped off the side together, holding hands.

‘They didn’t die, though. They woke up hours later on the shore. At first, they thought it was a miracle. The starvation was gone. Their strength returned. Cuts healed overnight, broken bones healed in days.’

Kade says, ‘Like us.’

‘Exactly like us.’

Lachlan asks, ‘So, it was a Death Knot between three people?’

‘The first known, and it was between all three of them,’ Riley confirms. ‘They stayed by the lake. The oldest brother fished. The sister set traps. The younger brother dug wild onions out of the ground. For the first time in months, they were thriving. When they returned to their village, strong and able, everyone was either dead or gone. They claimed the land, the houses, the church, even. Nobody was left to stop them, and by virtue of their ability to outlast everyone else, they were able to build themselves up. It took time for them to realise that their injuries weren’t just healing quickly, they were transferring. If one of them broke an arm, another would wake with the fracture instead, but it would be better within hours.’

His voice hoarse, Lachlan asks, ‘What were their names?’

‘Sael. Olek. Elva.’

‘Alistair, Ariadne and Mikhail.’

‘Nine hundred years ago.’

‘Keep going.’

‘Years passed. The siblings grew wealthy, powerful and highly respected. They had stronger instincts than most,’ Riley explains. ‘A kind of presence people naturally bowed to. But as time went on, it wasn’t enough for the younger brother, Sael. He wanted to move on, take over more villages. When the older brother, Olek, refused, the younger poisoned him in his sleep. They understood that injuries could transfer, but they didn’t know what death would do. The next morning, of the three, it was the sister who never woke up. The two surviving brothers fought to the death. They tore each other apart, and that should have been the end of it.

‘Several decades later, three children were born separately to three different families across England. They only remembered who they were when puberty hit. Not just fragments. They remembered everything, so they returned to the lake and found one another. From that moment onward, they became obsessed with recreating the bond. The problem was that none of them wanted to bind themselves to one another again. The sister, in particular, remembered how the last attempt ended. So they tried something else. Strangers.

‘They found people to trick into unknowingly recreating the bond, but it failed, and seeing as the Death Knot can only be induced through death, they died trying. Decades later, they were born again and found each other at the lake once more.’

‘Always the lake?’

‘At first. This time, they each had children when they remembered. They began to suspect blood mattered in creating the Knot. They tried it with their own children, and it failed again. All of them died, but this was around the time that Olek started keeping records. Once he’d learnt to read and write, he kept basic notes about everything. Symptoms, injuries, memories, locations. He hid the records in a cave near the lake. They kept coming back and remembering each other, and they never stopped trying until, almost three hundred years after the famine, they finally succeeded. The Death Knot formed and held.’

‘Between the parents and their children?’

Riley nods. ‘The adults aged slowly again. Their strength and healing returned. Their instincts sharpened. They reclaimed pieces of what they’d lost in previous lives, the village that was once theirs. They rose to power and, like many others around this time, they began to travel. They boarded a ship, exploring for months until they found an island in the Gulf.’

Lachlan goes rigid. ‘What island?’

‘You already know,’ Riley tells him, his eyes on the screen.