Page 10
Lily avoided eye contact. “Oh, yes. If you insist.” If she didn’t argue or agree, Reina would drop it, which happened after she took a long swig of her water.
She sighed. “I hope that kid ended up okay.”
Lily exhaled, enjoying this topic as much as the last, but of the two, she’d rather entertain this one. “He was well cared for. Probably just got lost.”
Reina bobbed her head before sitting up, twisting her mother’s ring around her finger. “I hope so.”
Lily sobered a bit at Reina’s lowered tone. She couldn’t prove it because she didn’t dream of asking, but Lily was almost sure Reina’s obsession with Aarin came from her desire for children. Since the chance of natural reincarnation in the Failish Mountains was next to nothing, and there wasn’t a pair of bonded Flare’s to bring it back, only the controlled process of buying and selling souls guaranteed life.
Aarin, and his drug money, could afford one if he gave a shit about anyone other than himself.
Reina smiled. “Alokya’s land is fertile, isn’t it?”
Lily smiled halfheartedly. Reina knew Lily grew up in a small village outside of the kingdom on the peninsula. “The Alokyian’s don’t have much use for ghosted guns in that heat.”
“I could learn how to farm. How about Gridian? I’ve always wanted to visit. I hear it’s sort of like Reave, but with animals.”
Lily broke into a giggle picturing an angry Reina tiling a field under the sun.
“Pardon me for dreaming,” Reina chided, nudging Lily with an elbow.
“Gridian isn’t the best place for raising a family,” Lily said. “If children are what you want, I’d go to Tyrsia. It’s a guarantee.”
“But they’re finicky about who they let immigrate. And your parents got lucky on the peninsula having more than one child.”
“Very lucky,” Lily agreed. The land was fertile because of the strict process relegated by Alokya. Souls still existed in the Aithre below the soil, but without a bonded pair of Flares to create new ones, the kingdom restricted families to only two children, sustaining their agriculture and population with a steady, consistent cycle of death and reincarnation. “Crossing the border is also risky.”
“You managed.”
Barely. Her father’s route was a thin makeshift bridge on the southern end of the chasm. Terrifying to cross, to say the least. And that was before it was discovered the Wraith was walking among Eizreth. “That was a long time ago.”
Reina’s smile was warm, not one she often gave. “Will you take me some day?”
Lily’s heart clenched, her lips parting to say something indifferent, but nothing surfaced.
“Reina Richarme?”
Peering over Reina’s shoulder was a thin man dressed in an overpriced vest, with puffy white sleeves from a thick shirt underneath.
He stilled under their combined attention. “M-Mister Combrie’s ready for you.”
“About time!” Reina hopped up from the barstool, slyly pulling the bag off of Lily’s chair as she did so. “Come for me in twenty minutes?”
Lily was halfway out of her seat when Reina merged into the crowd, pulling Aarin’s lackey along with her. She cursed, falling back as a glimpse of Reina reappeared on the floating staircase on the opposite end of the club.
Make it ten.
Swallowing her frustrations with another sip, she crossed one leg over the other and found the top of Xavier’s head over the crowd. If he was sitting, he was definitely comfortable, though she understood why he found the atmosphere unsettling. The dim lighting and overpowering scent of lavender made it clear the club catered to escence users.
When Valen severed the bonds between the Guardian and the Wraith, then the Vulpes and the Serpent, the souls once blessed by those gods suffered the consequences. Their magic—once guided by connection—turned dangerous. Since then, using a gift would destroy the body, weakening it at best and, at worst, killing it.
For years, nothing could counteract the damage. Not until the discovery of ghostsoil and the development of soul-powered devices. Soul energy, powerful as it was, couldn’t last forever within a ghosted mechanism. As a soul’s energy burned out, it condensed into a dark crystal, which the machine expelled once drained. When crushed into a fine powder and inhaled, that crystal—escence—formed a temporary shield within the body, allowing gifted souls to wield their magic without destroying themselves.
Lily swirled the ice in her glass, the clink of the cubes the only thing she could hear over the low music and murmuring voices clogging the air. A spurt of floral scents bled through the air vent above her.
“Hello there.”
Lily glanced at a man now occupying Reina’s seat.
