“And what would you give me if I did?” That smirk was once again plastered on his face, making his jaw sharper and his features more devious.

  “Nothing,” she gritted. “No more bargains.” Sera huffed and walked through the arched entry, trying to make out the rest of the buildings and their condition in the glow of Ophelia’s mage light on the other side of the castle. The oracle was pacing back and forth, searching for something.

  “Watch your step.” Vasso pointed out a barely visible crack in the foundation of the stone staircase.

  “I’m perfectly capable of watching where I’m going.”

  “You could really be more pleasant, you know that?” Vasso said.

  Sera hopped to the top of the crumbling staircase just to prove her point. “Just because you’re teaching me how to use my magic doesn’t mean I have to be pleasant to you.”

  “I’d sure like to meet the person who taught you manners,” Vasso grumbled and climbed the steps behind her.

  And wouldn’t that be a recipe for disaster? Her mother prying into his mind, and Vasso, no doubt, ripping her apart with his vatra. Sera twisted her long hair around her wrist and threw it over her shoulder.

  Oh, how she had wished Ophelia’s potion had worked. Then maybe she wouldn’t feel so…

  Flustered?

  Sera ignored her magic’s whispering and followed Ophelia to the far corner of the crumbling courtyard. An orb of blue light lifted from Ophelia’s fingers, and the oracle whispered her spell. Ivy curled back from a rotten wooden door in the floor.

  “Help me with this, won’t you? I’m not as strong as I once was.”

  Sera lifted the iron handle. A stench of rot and mildew emerged from the hole below. “Oh, Shadow, that’s vile.” Ophelia dropped her mage light into the space below, revealing a rope ladder. “That doesn’t look safe,” Sera said as she eyed the fraying knots.

  “It’s an adventure, remember? Sometimes you’ve got to take risks.”

  “I’ve got to admit that I agree with Seraphina,” Vasso said.

  “You weren’t supposed to be here.” Ophelia pulled her long blond hair together, tucking it into the back of her robe. Before anyone else could interject, she lowered herself down.

  Sera whispered a prayer and threw a kernel of power to Shadow, then gingerly followed the oracle into the dark.

  Chapter forty-three

  Seraphina

  Sera’s feet sank into moss and fungi when she dropped from the bottom rung. The smell wasn’t exactly worse, but there was an underlying scent of something sweet had her suspicious that it was a tomb.

  “Are you sure your grimoire is going to be readable?” She waved her hand before her nose, looking up to see a grimacing Vasso. “The mildew alone has probably ruined the pages, Ophelia.”

  “I’m not an idiot. I placed a preservation spell around it.” Ophelia waved away her question, and Sera wondered if she also had a spell that made her unaffected by the stench.

  Vasso landed hard beside her, causing spores and dust to plume into the air.

  Sera plugged her nose. “And I thought it couldn’t get any worse.”

  He hunched over to keep his head from scraping the ceiling. “What have you brought us into, Ophelia?”

  “Mind the spiders. They’re more helpful than you think,” Ophelia said and marched forward.

  Sera frowned.

  “Seraphina,” Ophelia’s voice chimed. “What do you know of Lavinia’s family?”

  “Considering that Lavinia is my mother… it would be my family as well. But I know that my grandmother died when my mother was my age.”

  “Did she have any siblings?”

  “No, just her.”

  “Hmm…” Ophelia ducked in front of her, and Sera got a faceful of web.

  “Damn it!” she screamed and swiped in frantic slaps. Vasso snickered behind her.

  “I told you to mind the spiders.”

  Vasso’s low baritone filled the damp tunnel. “Ophelia, why did you hide your grimoire down here?”

  “Can’t let the universe’s secrets get in the wrong hands, can I?”

  Underground, the decline was slight. There’d been no turns, just a straight shot to… somewhere. As the minutes drudged on, Sera noticed a heaviness to the air. Everything was damp. Her cheeks, the walls—

  Sera’s feet slipped on the wet stone, and she was falling… straight into Vasso’s arms.

  “I’ve got you.”

  Her heart slammed into his chest before he stood her upright. “Thank you,” Sera said, straightening her tunic.

  “So you do have manners… You’re welcome. See, I can be pleasant too.”

  “Moons, you’re insufferable.”

  Vasso chuckled, and she made sure to be more cautious with future steps.

  “Here we are! Let us have some more light.” Ophelia clapped her hands, and thousands of candles perched on stone ledges flared to life.

  The cavern held—no surprise, this being Ophelia—another pool of water. It was smaller than the one in Vasso’s manor, and the candlelight reflected off the surface. Deep limestone caverns housed minerals that had crystallized on the walls, creating a delicate yet symmetrical garden of rocky blooms.

  “You like that trick, don’t you?” Sera asked, admiring the crystals beneath the water.

  Ophelia had used that same movement to light the same type of candles when Sera and Alistair had fallen through the stone. Her cheeks grew warm at the thought of his lips on hers, then cooled with another reminder of betrayal. He had known, this entire time, that they were at war.

  And Nora was in the underworld. With the enemy.

  Sera’s stomach rolled, and she coughed to cover the sound of her gag. The likelihood she’d reach her sister before demons killed her was worse now than it had been. Sera had been so stupid.

  But… but… her mother.

  Sera rubbed her forehead. Her mother had known. She was a master mastria, a shoo-in to become the next Council member, and she’d sent Sera on a suicide mission. What if her mother didn’t want her to return?

  “Calm your mind, Seraphina,” Ophelia said.

  “Are you a mastria now too?”

  “No, my dear, but I can see the agony on your face. It isn’t worth it.” Ophelia’s hands shot over the pool and called, “Konac laz blizt.”

  Sera glanced at Vasso, who was in the corner of the room, studying the wall. Sera swallowed the lump in her throat that had lodged itself with her thoughts of Nora and her mother. There had to be an explanation. Her mother wasn’t that cruel.

  Deep from the depths of the pool, threads swam to the surface like golden eels in a school of past and future.

  “Ophelia, before you start whatever this is”—Sera motioned to the golden strands—“please, could you pull my sister’s? I have to know she’s okay.”

  The oracle’s normally sharp gaze softened a touch. Ophelia rolled her eyes back, and forward came a blue strand. With a twirl of her wrist, a projected image flickered to life. It was Nora. Sitting on a bed, a little pale but whole and unharmed.

  Sera took a step toward the image. “When was this?”

  “Seconds ago.”

  Sera dropped to her knees. Her breath came out like broken moth wings, and tears burned her eyes so fiercely that she winced. “Thank the goddess she’s all right.” She didn’t care that her face was swamped with tears, that her knees were soaked with whatever standing water had been left in this godsforsaken place. Her sister was alive. “Can you show me more?”

  Ophelia approached her, squatted, and took her hands. “This I can promise you: Honora Wildrick does not die belowground.”

  “Oh gods. Thank you,” Sera cried out again, letting a new stream of tears break their dam.

  “Now let’s get you up. Tonight was for my grimoire, but I promised you some answers.”

  Sera nodded, and Ophelia helped her to her feet.

  She could feel Vasso’s eyes on her. That hum of calm rushing through her soul, but she didn’t want to acknowledge it, whatever it was.

  “You’ve been busy,” Ophelia said.

  Black bands wrapped around countless golden threads now, so many more than before. “If I’d known it was called vatra magic, I would have asked my mother to find a tutor.” Sera dried her eyes.

  “Your mother cannot help you.” Ophelia’s voice was cold.

  Sera frowned. She’d wanted to believe her mother had her best interests at heart, but Lavinia’s motivations were not always clear.

  “Soon,” Ophelia started. “You will have choices to make. The world as we know it hangs in the balance. The prophecy has been pulled.”

  “What is this prophecy?” She crossed her arms.

  “More like… which prophecy?” Vasso said, now at her side.

  The oracle gave them a half smile. “Tell me, witchling, have you ever wondered why I was shunned?” Ophelia’s lilting voice ricocheted off the damp walls of the cavern. “Do you know why they fear me?”

  Fear? Sera shifted on her feet. Chair Renata had wanted her back, which she assumed was due to her skill in making accurate predictions. Ophelia claimed she could see much further into the future than any other oracle she knew of. Probably further than Chair Renata herself.

  “No.”

  “They shunned me not because of my power but because of the knowledge I kept from them—the truth. I could alter the very existence of realms on Eraphon. I was surprised they let me live when they found my journals. That is, until you appeared in my threads.” Ophelia turned back to the water. “You were made for more.”

  The golden threads in the pool danced across the water, organizing themselves in a line. The bands of darkness turned to solid strands of black. The only hints of gold were at the tops and bottoms of the strands. “Some of these are almost wholly black.” She could hear Vasso shift uncomfortably beside her, but she gave him no mind.

  “It indicates your current standing on the path to come.”

  Sera zipped her raven on the cord around her neck. “You say this is the path I’m leaning? More death?”

  “Just because it’s black doesn’t mean it’s death,” Vasso said.

  “Precisely.” Ophelia maneuvered the threads with black bands forward.

  “My magic has caused death and destruction. That bit of mercy still involved death. It only functions how I want it to if Vasso is near.” Sera looked at him then. His brows scrunched in concentration, his eyes glued to the floor. “I just don’t know why this is happening, or what I’m supposed to do with it.”

  One lonely thread snapped taut from the water to the ceiling and glided forward. Ophelia pulled at the purple line, and a projected image appeared on the wall where she’d just seen her sister’s face.

  A woman was giving birth atop a heap of blankets with a man beside her. They were sitting on a wooden floor, with simple furniture scattered around the room. A table covered in plants and potions. Flora hanging from the perlin beams.

  The memory came into focus, and she recognized her mother’s face. Slick with sweat, writhing in pain, with a swollen belly and knees spread wide. Her hair was free from its braids, long and spiraling, just like her own. She’d never seen her mother’s hair down like that before, never known her mother to dabble with potions either.

  “Is this my birth?”

  Ophelia nodded once.

  “But that isn’t my father,” she said, to herself more than Ophelia. She watched as her mother pushed. Saw the head crown, and her body expelled. The pale man lifted her and placed a single kiss atop her head.

  “Darius?” Vasso whispered.

  The man’s face held so much pride it made her heart clench. Sera touched the top of her head as if she could feel the kiss he’d placed almost twenty-four years ago. “You knew him?” she asked Vasso, who wouldn’t look away from the projection.

  “I did…” Vasso whispered.

  The man in the projection kissed her mother then, and she noticed his eyes. They were green, like hers, and around his neck was the same stone raven she wore. Sera gripped it in her hands.

  “Are you saying this is my father?” She turned to Ophelia.

  “You needed to see something true.” Caution was laced in Ophelia’s words. “Much of your life has been a lie, Seraphina.”

  Vasso was silent, as if what he was seeing was just as shocking as it was for her.

  Sera swung on Ophelia. “If he’s alive, you need to show me.” She pointed to the golden column standing tall above the water. Those threads were the future, or at least one possible version of it. If he was in one of those outcomes, she needed to see it.

  “I will not show you everything you want to know. Some secrets you need to discover on your own.”

  “Ophelia, please,” she begged. “You don’t understand what it’s been like. I thought that relic in Feybury did this to me.” Sera let plumes of darkness fall from her hands, dripping like ink into water. “But if the man I thought was my father isn’t…” In the image, the green-eyed man looked at her mother so lovingly that it nearly broke her.

  No one knew what it was like to have to earn every ounce of affection. Transactional, that’s what her life had been under the care of her mother. If he was out there, maybe he could teach her how to use this magic. Maybe he’d understand her. “I’ll beg. I’ll bargain. Whatever you want—please.” She didn’t feel the stone as she fell to her knees. Nor the heavy tears falling down her cheeks, only the mixture of hope and desperation clenching and releasing in her chest. He had to be alive.

  Ophelia took a step back.

  “Show me the future, Ophelia!” Sera cried.

  The rock beneath her trembled. Ripples broke the smooth surface of the pool. Her darkness filled the chamber, clawing its way up the walls, dimming the candles, reaching out with a mind of its own.

  “Seraphina,” Vasso called to her, but she wouldn’t hear it.

  “Now, Ophelia.”

  Ophelia’s eyes rolled into the back of her head, her arms stiff over the water, and thread after thread pulled forward, twisting and turning around each other, before the images began to flash.

  At first, Sera didn’t know what she was looking at. The moments of her future blinked by until she realized it was one face. Over and over.

  “You need to stop this,” Vasso said.

  She’d never heard his voice so soft. Flash after flash, she saw him. White hair, strong dark brows, that smile that hurt to look at.

  But it wasn’t just the images of him; it was the way he looked at her. First exasperation, an expression she was used to seeing, but then kindness and laughter. His head tilted back with his eyes closed. Then he was panting hard above her, covered in blood. In these images, Vasso was looking at her like that man—her father—had looked at her mother, tenderness traced in every line. Image after image.

  Sera glanced at Vasso, who stood there, that sharp jaw grinding, his eyes watching the same scenes she was.

  It wasn’t just laughter and tenderness in these projections. There was anger. His red eyes bore into hers, but underneath it was concern, not hate.

  “Seraphina, stop it,” Vasso gritted out.

  “I’m not doing this,” Sera said. She didn’t want to look away. They rode on horseback together, sat in bedrooms and in throne rooms. She recognized the white walls of the Citadel in one image where his features were lined in panic.

  In the flashes of further images, he was talking to her like she was an old friend, like they were whispering secrets with one another, and then it turned to them writhing in the throes of ecstasy.

  Vasso grabbed her upper arm and turned her toward him. “You’re not doing it on purpose, but you need to let her go.” His throat bobbed. His shoulders had dropped like the corners of his mouth.

  “What is this?” she whispered to him.

  “Let her go.”

  Sera let out a shuddering breath. Release, she thought. And the flashing projections stopped. Vasso was running to Ophelia, and all Sera could do was gasp.

  The last thread, displaying its future memory, was of Vasso, but there was no life there. He was pale. Black blood trailed from his mouth. His beautiful gray eyes were unseeing. She knew those hands cradling his face. She lifted her hand to see the scar Nora had given her when they were children, side by side with the one pressed against Vasso’s dead cheek.

  Chapter forty-four

  Seraphina

  “Ididn’t mean to show her.” Vasso was holding Ophelia’s elbow, keeping her upright. In the flickering candlelight, the oracle looked like she’d aged fifty years.

  “You knew about this?” Sera pointed to Vasso’s dead face hovering above the water. “Both of you knew this could happen?”

  Her magic dissipated with the shattering of her heart. They were linked, she and Vasso. More than she realized. More than the magic they shared.

  “There is still free will,” Ophelia said. “You can choose not to indulge.”

  Sera glanced at the demon lord, who was making a point not to look at her. “Vasso?”

  He was silent.

  “You—you’re dead, and those are my hands.” Sera raised her palm to show him the scar. “And my father? You knew him too?”

  Vasso’s head snapped up. “I had no idea he was your father.”

  “But you knew him!”

  One nod was all he gave her.

  “And am I to believe that the reason you knew him was because he’s a demon? A friend of yours?”

  With Ophelia steadied on her feet, Vasso let go of her. He redirected his attention toward Sera, his lips pressed together in a firm line. “Is he a demon? Yes. I knew him through the circles, nothing more. He’s been missing for a century.”

  “Well, he was obviously near the Citadel having relations with my mother, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.” She needed to get out of there before the walls caved in. Spots already invaded the edges of her vision, and she just wanted to take a deep breath that didn’t involve mold and rot and death. Quick steps into the dark tunnel, then onward to the entrance. That was all she could do.