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“Alister?”
Red anger swallowed Neir’s person. “Alister is gone.”
He doesn’t look a day older than the last time I saw him. Younger, even. “Then you’re his son.”
“I am me.”
“You’re an Ulrich.” Jarek swallowed back the taste of iron. “Filled with curdled blood that rivals my family’s own.”
“It rivals in more ways than you can imagine,” Neir said in a whisper. He inched closer. “Unlike you, I am no one’s heir. No one’s prodigy. But like you, Draven, I was created with purpose and lived solely for it. I was appreciated, rewarded, and I am worth more than being mistaken for a ghost.”
Neir’s words burned a hole in Jarek hotter than the ruined blade ever could. And he didn’t need to lift a finger.
“Not dead. Never dead.”
“Life eternal.”
“You don’t see the resemblance?”
Neir… Alister. Their similarities were so strong. Just like…
“Luka.” Jarek could hear the weakness—the fear—in his voice. “I see a ghost in Luka too.”
Neir stared at him like a wounded animal he found in the woods. “Luka is Caine—an exact copy down to the molecular level. Luka exists for Caine, but Brialis raised him. She loved him more than she feared her brother, and it’s the reason she lost her soul.”
Luka exists for Caine? What did that mean?
Jarek ground his teeth hard, shaking his head. No! It was impossible. Caine had nothing to do with this. He couldn’t. “I killed him,” Jarek snarled. “Caine’s dead! I saw it!”
Neir’s face almost softened. “He was, for a time. But with his death, the Guardian became whole, giving its unrestricted power to a man who dictated where its limits began and ended.”
Jarek was reminded of Lilith’s touch the evening he met her. The shared gift between the Guardian and the Wraith.
Resurrection.
Valen was capable of bringing Caine back after the Guardian was whole again.
Neir stood, putting out his light. “What remains of the Second Incarnation now rules the Reatian Empire. It has been since Valen was put into a Coffer thirty years ago. When Alister’s body accepted the ghosted binding with the Vulpes, and when I was made to sustain his magic just as Luka sustains Caine’s.”
The burn from the blade dulled as the air turned to ice. Jarek knew horrible things were coming out of the north. Experiments on the people, fusions with ghostsoil—
Maude’s voice rang clear in his mind. “Were you able to visit the Fountain Square?”
Jarek thought back to the temple. The ceremony. The graveyard of bodies at its base. What sort of visage could be important enough to be displayed so close to the palace?
“Something about the process from sand to metal changes the effect it has on organic tissue.”
It wasn’t ghostsoil Failen worshiped. It was the union between man and metal. A feat worthy of attempting such savagery. Worthy of admiration. Worthy of sacrifice. But was it possible?
Maybe if the soul binding tissue and metal was a god.
If Neir spoke the truth, Caine was alive. If Valen resurrected Caine and he now ruled the Reatian Empire, then he was responsible for the empire’s renewed expansion. He put Valen in the Coffer. He gave Alister the Vulpes. He sought Lilith a decade ago and again now. He killed Brialis. He was the one looking for Luka.
What remains… Jarek looked to Neir, thinking of Alister too. Would either of them be left after fusing with ghostsoil? Why risk their autonomy? Why would they choose such a thing?
Wry humor curled in Jarek’s chest. He didn’t know—he could only speculate—but he did know Valen, and if he was alive and pulling the strings until his body gave out, that was the only explanation he needed.
Draven never wanted to take the Flares. Never wanted to destroy souls and kill their vessels. Never wanted to sleep in a Coffer. His father had taken those choices from him.
