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Mia grabbed his hand tightly. “Thank you. Thank you so much. We’re in the deepest debt to the Argents.” Kyer regarded her with his usual smile and kind words, and then she flipped to Lilith, who looked around before standing.

She extended her hand, lips parting and eyes glistening while she found the words. “I’m sorry about all of this.”

Mia smiled, taking care to only grab her wrist, leaking genuine appreciation. “We’ll move on.”

When Mia left, Lilith stood there like she was waiting for something else. She loosened her posture and glanced down at her open palm with a hidden diffidence that made Jarek think of her soft touch on his arm—the power that was locked behind it.

“I think we’re finished here,” Kyer said after the thin front door to the lodge slammed shut. “Get you and your boy some dinner and then some rest. Tomorrow I want you to start training, with and without the Wraith.” Lilith wavered, grazing over everyone left in the room, then swept away after Kyer bid her to do so with a dramatic wave of his hand.

Sterling clapped his together as soon as the door was shut. “That went better than expected, don’t you think?”

“I don’t trust her,” Maude growled at the end of the table.

“That’s a given.” Sterling twisted toward Jarek. “You’ve been awfully quiet. What do you think?”

Jarek exhaled and leaned back in his chair. “About what, exactly?”

“Lils. You’ve spent the most time with her over the last few weeks. Is she lying? About Luka, or the Stalkers?”

Jarek pinched the bridge of his nose, the lights from the lanterns giving him a headache. “She’s not lying. About any of it.”

Lilith cared for Luka. That wasn’t a fabrication, but he didn’t know her well enough to tell if that was enough motivation to give up what she wanted, which from what he could gather, was freedom from an Imordial’s responsibilities. He’d never seen Luka’s scars, but his arms were always hidden by his clothing. And as far as the Stalker went? He couldn’t say. Thrice blessed souls were as probable as Diseased Flares as far as he was concerned.

And then there was the thought that Brialis was the one who sent Luka to Reave…

Jarek thought back to his interactions with his sister. Her distress at him lying about bringing Luka back. Her reaction wasn’t relief; it was dread.

Jarek rubbed his chin. “If Brialis let him go and doesn’t want him back, then who’s tearing down an entire town looking for him? Who’s permitting multiple blessings on a single soul?”

“It has to be whoever has the Vulpes,” Maude said. “That’s why there’s a Stalker with three of its blessings.”

“It could be the Guardian, too,” Jarek muttered. “Lilith said something about Luka’s healing ability being taxing on his body. More than it should be if it was only split in two pieces. Are there any records of Valen having more children? Or Brialis?”

“No. Brialis was the last documented case,” Kyer said.

“Whatever is going on, it sounds like the Guardian and the Vulpes are still aligned and working together.” Sterling’s mood shifted to a solemn blue, an odd change for him. “I can’t stop thinking of that thrice blessed Stalker. If there’s more than one of them walking around—”

“It’s another advantage over the southern realms,” Kyer responded, dejected.

The room fell silent.

So much information and it felt like they were no closer to answers.

Chapter Nineteen

“Easy!”

Luka flicked his head toward her, knowing exactly why she was snapping, again. Lily warily lowered her disapproving gaze when he slowed his clamber up onto the rock. She listened to him leap off the boulder and climb back atop it more times than she could keep up with.

The late afternoon air was cool; the light breeze that carried through the thick of the woods tickled the bare skin on her arms. Her hand hovered over a black spot in the dirt, the size of the small stump that had been there a few days before. The aura it emitted was still deep in color and warm to the touch. The smog curled around her fingers playfully, and the Wraith was absolutely silent.

Lithance. The curative properties of the flower was what drove Lily’s father to move his whole family off of the peninsula in search of new curatives.

It wasn’t a city, or a people, but the trees seemed no different. What Reave was able to accomplish with the blossoms, taking the hard work of people like her father and producing a drug that could cure life-ending illness that neither the Guardian nor the Wraith could take away was a miracle. A wonder in a bottle that Kyer expected her to rip away from Eizreth.

Lily thought it was possible to take one tree at a time to spare the soil. Until Sterling took her to the far edges of the city to see the orchards—fields of skinny trees as far as the eye could see. It was impossible to be that particular, considering Kyer wanted the orchards wiped within a month.

Lily bumped her head to the bark and angled her sights to the sky. She was a year older, and almost a year more experienced, but learning to channel the Wraith took longer than that. She knew how Keara held off the Hazevales. The energy it required to kill as many as she did in Cara took years of training.