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She clasped her hands in front of her, her gaze growing more thoughtful.

“You did not recount the others you have had?”

“No, Honored,” I said. “I was not taught to do such.”

“Do you remember the others?”

I hesitated. “One of them I remember quite clearly. The third is a bit more fuzzy. I was injured in the Grand Rite, and some of the memories immediately before and after aren’t so clear.”

Now she paled just like the scribe—Isaac—had. “Your first dream was leading up to the Grand Rite?”

“The night immediately after touching the ticket.”

I assumed it was that first night, at least. It was hard to be sure when Sloane had said I’d been unconscious for so long.

Her swallow was pronounced. For a moment, she looked unsure and maybe even a bit terrified. Then she breathed deeply and the aura of competence and authority settled back around her.

“Very well. Let us discuss what you have seen.”

She held out her hand, indicating a door on the left wall. Callum helped me to my feet and then laced our fingers together again. The office was nearly identical to the one the Votarist had led us to that first day, down to the full bookshelves and large stone fireplace and table that was pushed against one wall. She didn’t wait for Callum to start a fire, though, holding one hand palm out toward the empty fireplace. Flames sprung from the black stone a heartbeat later, no different than the fire jars. Then she pulled a journal from one of the bookshelves and a fountain pen.

Callum led me to one of the wingback chairs that flanked the fireplace. Rather than taking the other, he stood behind me. It was the disciple who sat in the other one, twisting it just a bit so she looked more directly at me. Isaac mirrored Callum, standing behind the disciple’s chair, his arms loosely crossed.

“Let us begin with the one that brought you to the temple this morning. Describe it as you would to an artist trying to draw each moment. Assume no detail is inconsequential. We are not always sure which parts are the most important when the Goddesses give their voices through such dreams.”

Like with Callum, I walked through the dream. It was easier this time, the overwhelming emotion of realizing that man had been who had sung to me not roaring through me now. She paled when I said the name he had called me, and her pen faltered. She glanced back to Isaac, and they communicated without saying a word. His eyes widened before he controlled his reaction. With a nod, he left the room at that same almost-run.

“Continue,” she murmured.

So I did. My voice caught as I recounted the way the people with collars had looked, the fear at their sunken cheeks and the devastation I’d felt at seeing my mother die. Just the thought was ludicrous, foreign. My… mother? I’d spent over twenty years thinking my mother hadn’t wanted me, had decided I was too much effort. If this dream were the truth, some buried memory brought to light for some reason? It was too overwhelming to contemplate.

And it still didn’t explain how Sloane and I had ended up in that fire station in Phoenix.

By the time I’d finished, Isaac had returned. In his hand was a worn piece of paper, the edges worn and the bit of ink I could see faded to a brown. The disciple set the pen and notebook at her feet, the ink still wet enough to shimmer in the light of the fire. Her gaze flicked to Callum for a heartbeat before returning to me.

For the first time, there was true concern in her features, something deeper than a momentary worry.

Her voice was steady, though. “In our tradition, we hold the voices of the Goddesses with reverence and with a belief of being ready for when their words prove true. It is not lightly that we, Medea’s disciples, make any judgement of what those words might mean.”

Callum eased closer, adjusting until he perched on the arm of the chair, his hands clasped and his elbows resting on his thighs. His gaze mirrored the concern in the disciples, though it lacked that depth of burgeoning dread. Was this not how this process typically worked, then?

“And yet, in the thousand years we have proudly stood as sentinels of truth and understanding since the Exodus, there has been a handful of times when such judgement was made and all those disciples who came after were brought up in the understanding of the actions to take if those ancient words of the Goddesses were brought to fruition.” She glanced at Isaac, and he closed the office door. “I believe this is one of those times. As such, I must follow the path laid out since the prophecy was first recorded over six hundred years ago and those that followed that offered a guide for when such a moment of revelation would arise.”

She held the worn paper to me.

“It is not, to our knowledge, the full and true prophecy. The only Recall Orb that held its full narration was housed in the Temple of Medea in Dracora and was destroyed during the Great War. Many of the transcriptions were also damaged.”

The paper was even more fragile in my hand than it appeared. I quickly gave it to Callum, terrified to ruin it, especially if the full prophecy was already lost. His hold was just as careful.

It was to him I asked, “Dracora?”

“A city in Varím nestled against the mountains in the heart of the continent. It was one of the places the Alholím lived.”

Huh. It made sense a city where wyvern shifters lived would be named a diminutive of dragon, I supposed.

“Not every temple houses the same prophecies?”

It was the disciple who shook her head. “The Recall Orbs are expensive and delicate. They are kept in the temple they were originally recorded. Transcriptions like this one—” She gestured to the paper Callum now held. “Those are recorded and sent to the other temples so that they may be studied and referenced as needed.”