Page 75 of Eight of Swords, Part Two

‘Sable Key?’

‘Sable Key became their new lake. Their return point. They claimed it and paid handsomely to keep it off-map. Olek stored everything he was learning there, all his research. Every version of the Knot, every failure, every death. From Sable Key, they built an empire. Trade routes. Ports. Shipping. Influence. But the younger brother, Sael, wanted more.’

‘Sael is Alistair Penhalyx.’

A frisson of warning pain runs through Kade and Riley, but it’s weak enough to ignore. Riley says, ‘He was, yeah.’

‘You’re telling me Alistair Penhalyx is immortal?’

‘I’m telling you what I know, Tanner.’

‘Fine. Go on.’

‘After some time, the children of the siblings wanted to leave. When the parents forbade it, they left the island secretly, but enemies of the three were waiting. People who had been circling for an opportunity to plunder the hidden island. They massacred the children, but the death transferred and the children survived. It was Sael, Olek and Elva who died instead. Again, this should have been the end of it, but with them, it never is.

‘The three were born again very soon after they died. By the time they regained their memories, their surviving children were fully grown adults, significantly older than them. They had inherited everything. The siblings couldn’t allow it, so they conspired to murder their own children and overthrow them. After that, everything changed. They stopped treating their children like children. They considered them necessary assets.

‘They also decided that the bond had to be inflicted earlier, before independence and resistance could set in. They expected that younger minds would be easier to control, but they had no idea that the difference in neural maturity creates friction. It erodes the bond instead of strengthening it. Over time, it destabilises, causing madness.’

‘Wait, wait, slow down,’ Lachlan implores, his hand raised. ‘Slow this way the fuck down. You’re saying those three fuckers were possessing their children all this time? Ariadne was planning to possess Savannah? Mikhail planned to possess Roman?’ Those names mean nothing to Kade, but Lachlan utters the last with painful reverence. ‘And Alistair was planning to possess Jules?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘You need to let me tell you the whole thing.’

‘Fine, just get to it.’

‘The bond caused madness this time around. One of the children tried to break free by killing himself. The bond locked instead of releasing. He and his father became trapped in a shared collapse, neither fully alive, both unable to die for months. The eldest boy dragged his father into a fire, and they died together, no transfer. The girl, however, discovered something new when she tried to kill herself and her mother in the same way. She panicked, and instead of dying, her consciousness followed the bond, seeking to live in any way it could.

‘Her soul forced itself along the existing neural path into her mother’s body and took over completely. Her mother wasn’t strong enough to resist. The child abandoned her dying body and occupied the older one, fleeing the fire in time. In that generation, the girl alone survived in her mother’s body. She wrote detailed records of what the siblings were doing, who they were, how they operated, but instead of keeping the notes, she sought out witch-hunters and handed them over willingly, including Olek’s research journals. When she died, that generation was lost entirely. You with me?’

Lachlan nods. ‘I think I see where it’s going, yeah.’

‘From then on, Sable Key was where they found each other. It’s where the records had been kept, where the wealth was stored in a time before electronic transfer, and it’s always where the Knot was cast. Centuries of orchestrated death have taken place on that island. Generations of bloody suffering, engineered for maximum gain.’

‘Sounds about right,’ Lachlan says tightly.

‘After the previous disaster, the younger brother suggested that they let the children reach maturity while keeping them locked down. They cage their children until they’re older.’

‘How were they even having children? Who with?’

‘They would find people to partner with and then kill them once the children were born, but sometimes, Sael and Elva would… y’know.’

Lachlan makes a face. ‘Yeah, I know. Carry on.’

‘So, when the time comes, the siblings cast the Knot and the bond holds steady, but something has shifted. The parents no longer age as slowly. They’re not strong like they were before. Their instincts are dulled. It’s the children who heal faster. The children now feel the full benefit of the bond.

‘Unable to accept this, and remembering what the daughter had achieved, they began to theorise. During the casting of the next Knot, they tested their theories. Instead of letting the bond settle, they followed it. The siblings abandoned their ageing bodies and crossed into the younger ones just as the bond locked. The children never understood what was happening. They didn’t know they were being possessed.

‘By the late 1700s, the siblings had perfected it. They no longer needed to be reborn and find one another. Their consciousnesses, their souls, transferred from parent to child. They achieved immortality through legacy and began taking on their children’s names to avoid suspicion, but always keeping their own in the middle. Sael, Olek and Elva.’

Kade unconsciously presses his thumb into his wrist.

He only notices he’s doing it when Lachlan, sitting beside him, reaches over, places his hand atop Kade’s and takes over.

The relief it brings is instant.