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He opened his eyes to find Lucy lying crumpled in the dirt, her neck bent at an unnatural angle. Her ocean-gray eyes stared straight through him.

And Blair screamed.

The room spun around him, fading in and out of focus. He watched Obedience hover over Lucy, watched her treacherous hands slide down her face in a soft caress. Blair’s fingers curled around the bars of his cage, and he tore at them until his hands were bloody and aching. He needed to get to the witch, needed to kill her for what she’d done to that poor innocent woman.

He had never known such fury. His blood was fire, he was fire, and he wanted the witch to burn.

But when his cage finally opened, it wasn’t because he had forced it, or because Obedience had decided to end him next.

An unfamiliar man was pulling him from the cage. He picked something up off the floor and jammed it onto Blair’s finger. It was cool and seemed to hum with a faint energy.

A second man had his arms wrapped like a vice around Obedience’s waist. He wrenched her roughly away from the dead girl.

Blair couldn’t stop staring at Lucy’s lifeless body—but the first man was tugging him away, and he couldn’t summon the will to fight anymore.

Just before they reached the stone corridor, the second man turned, and Blair caught sight of dark wavy hair swept across a high forehead, of intelligent, haunted brown eyes. The man crossed his arms, his jaw clenched as he ran a weary hand over his face. He had tied up the witch. She reached out with a claw-like hand, but he stumbled out of her reach.

And suddenly, Blair’s body felt as though it were being sucked upward out of the vortex of memory.

He was sitting on the damp earth in the same passageway the first man had just dragged him into.

Clement.

Blair gasped. Leaned forward and retched. Clement held tightly to his shoulders, muttering quiet reassurances Blair couldn’t decipher.

When he next opened his eyes, he saw a strange, pale light glimmering over Clement’s shoulder. He blinked, trying to make out its shape.

It was a young woman. She wore a white dressing gown, her long red hair tumbling in soft, clean waves down her back. She stepped forward slowly, her eyes bright and full of tears. One spilled down her cheek, which was smooth, scarless.

Her tears were clear and painless. She knelt down, taking one of Blair’s hands in her own. Her hand was warm, neither vaporous nor solid, but steady and buzzing with energy.

“Lucy?” Blair’s voice was strangled, his throat tight as he watched her nod through her tears.

“Thank you.” Her words exuded warmth. Every part of her did. “For setting me free.”

“But I… You…”

“Hush.” She squeezed his hand, a quiet reassurance. “You said I could meet our family, but I already have. I’ve met them through your eyes. Please tell our mother that I forgive her.”

“Can’t you stay?” Blair asked, but he knew the answer before she shook her head.

“Because of you, I can finally go home.” She placed a hand against his cheek, her smile never wavering, a light in the unending darkness. “I love you, Blair. Let yourself be loved.” She let go of his hand. “Keep this safe for me?” she asked, glancing down at the ring on his finger as she stood.

“Of course,” Blair agreed, mesmerized by her incandescence. It was as if she were one with the stars. “Always.”

She seemed to take in a deep breath, and as she let it out, her light began to fade, until Blair was once more surrounded by darkness.

He blinked, his sister’s light still glowing behind his eyelids, her memory forever imprinted in his mind like a pressed flower tucked inside a favorite story.

41

The sun stung Blair’s eyes as Clement led him to a half-disintegrated wood bench at the back of the churchyard along a line of evergreen trees. He was still shaking, his tired mind hazy, still trying to make sense of everything that had just happened. His memories from the past hour coalesced with recollections from over two hundred years ago. Suddenly, they seemed inextricably linked.

“You were there,” Blair accused, staring at the gleaming white paint slathered over the church’s exterior. Stain glass windows glittered with prisms of color in the sunlight. The fact that evil lurked beneath such beauty was difficult to rationalize.

Clement was also gazing into the distance. He didn’t ask what Blair meant. “Yes.”

“You and Gabriel.” Blair’s voice caught on Gabriel’s name, and he turned away, facing a clump of dewy branches.