"Have you fed yet?" he asked.
I thought back to Ragathon, to the bliss of his blood flowing into me. I nodded.
"That is good. Do not allow yourself to grow week from lack of blood. Have you flown yet?"
My heart hammered in my chest. "No, I haven't."
"You should come with me," he insisted again. "And learn the ways of Nephilim. Help me bring peace between humans and our kind. It's what your parents would have wanted."
I straightened at that, all fantasies of flying fleeing my mind. "How would you know what they would have wanted?"
"I knew them well. You are so like your mother in many ways, but I see your father in your eyes. Not the color, but the intensity."
He knew them? This… didn't make sense. "How? How did you know each other?"
"They helped me discover the seal."
"But… why would my parents work with a Nephilim?"
He reached for my hand. "Let me show you. Close your eyes."
I did as he asked, placing my hand into his, my breath hitching in my throat as the air around us changed, pulsing with a new kind of energy. It was electric, visceral, and when he told me to look, I was scared.
But I opened my eyes.
And saw my parents.
They were flickering lights, like the girl he'd conjured earlier, but they were in color, three dimensional, almost real. I reached out with my free hand to touch them but it passed through air.
"You can't feel them. They are but memories conjured. You can only see and hear."
And so I listened as my heart broke and healed and broke again and I couldn't decide if this glimpse into the past would destroy me or be something precious I carried with me always, like a lock of hair from a loved one or a fading photograph of one departed.
They were in a study, a solid dark room with too much wood paneling and old books lining every available wall. They weren't alone. They stood next to each other and argued with five others… the Council of Orders.
"They are real," my mother said, her eyes alight with the fire of her convictions. "The seals aren't just myths. We believe we've found one. And if we're correct, then it's in a vault created by the Angels."
"This is folly," Ragathon said with that same dreadful scorn. "We cannot support this useless quest."
"You don't get to decide that on your own," my father said. I wanted to cheer him for standing up to that jerk.
"No, he doesn't," my grandfather said, already the Chancellor. "But the Council agrees, though for its own reasons. This is too dangerous and uncertain to risk our best Templars."
The scene changed to one of darkness. They were in an underground warehouse with Zorin. They found him there. "We believe you know where it is," my mother said. "Please help us find it."
Zorin, who looked the same then as he does now, shook his head. "I have seen it, yes. In an ancient city beneath the waves, but I do not wish to return."
My dad, a much younger version of him, grasped Zorin's shoulder in camaraderie. "The vault is full of knowledge, treasures, the truth of whatever came before mankind… before Nephilim. Perhaps what we find there could unite our two races. It could end the strife that exists between us, the tension leading to war. This could save us all, Zorin, but we can't do it without you."
The Nephilim bent his head forward, his body still as my parents waited for his answer.
My mother held a hand out to Zorin. "Will you help us unite our people into one?"
He grasped her hand in his and nodded. "I will."
The vision disappeared and my heart lurched in my chest. They were gone. My parents. Their memories. Gone.
I swallowed a sob and breathed deeply to regain my control.
Zorin waited a moment before speaking. "They had no idea what the vault truly contained. They never made it inside."
"My parents, they fought to keep you safe. To keep you out of the hands of the Angel."
"Please come with me, Scarlett. If not for your own safety then to fulfill the will of your parents."
I chuckled without humor. "That's the same argument the Chancellor of Castle V used to keep me here. But my answer is still no. Not now." An image of Jax came to my mind and I knew I couldn't leave him. Despite everything that had happened, he was still the only friend I had left in this world.
"You can be my ally, or my enemy, Scarlett. And you do not wish me as your enemy."
"My answer remains the same. I have to finish my mission here."
"Very well, then."
In a blur of darkness, he spun around and pulled a sword, black as night, onto me.
Where had that come from? I didn't even see him draw it. One moment he was sitting next to me, the next he was armed like an avenging Angel.