“Before you tell Lena what she’s done,” Liv said flatly. It was a fact, but somehow she didn’t say it that way.
Macon’s green eyes held all the emotion his black ones never had. Fear. Anger. Resentment. “Before I tell her what she has to do.”
“You might not be able to stop this.” She looked down at her selenometer out of habit.
“Olivia, it’s not only the universe that could be destroyed. It’s my niece. Who is, as far as I am concerned, more important than a thousand lost universes.”
“Believe me, I know.” If Liv was bitter, she didn’t let on.
It felt like my heart stopped beating. Lena slipped out of my arms before I even realized she was gone.
I found Lena in her room. She didn’t cry, and I didn’t try to console her. We sat in silence, holding hands until it hurt, until the sun fell away—behind the words, behind the glass and the trees and the river. The night slid across her bed, and I waited for the darkness to erase everything.
9.15
Izabel
Are you sure we’re going the right way?” We had turned off the highway, south of Charleston. But the houses had changed from traditional Victorians with wraparound porches and white turrets stretching toward the clouds to—nothing. The houses were gone, replaced with miles of tobacco fields and an occasional weather-beaten barn.
Lena glanced at the sheet of notebook paper in her lap. “This is the way. Gramma said there weren’t a lot of other houses near my old… where my house used to be.” When Lena told me she wanted to see the house where she was born, it made sense—for about ten seconds. Because it wasn’t just the house where she took her first steps and scribbled on the walls with crayon. It was also the place where her father died. Where Lena could have died, when her mother set fire to the house, right before Lena’s first birthday.
But Lena insisted, and there was no talking her out of it. We hadn’t said a word to each other about what we’d overheard in Macon’s study, but I knew this had to be another piece of the puzzle. Macon thought Lena’s and John’s pasts held some kind of key to what was happening in the Caster and Mortal worlds. Which was the reason we were driving through the backwoods right now.
Aunt Del leaned forward from the backseat of the Volvo. Lucille was sitting in her lap. “It doesn’t look familiar to me, but I could be wrong.” That was an understatement. Aunt Del was the last person I would ask for directions, unless we were in the Tunnels. And lately I wasn’t sure if she could find her way around down there either. If visiting the charred remains of Lena’s birthplace had been a bad idea, bringing Aunt Del with us was an even worse one. Since Lena’s Claiming, no one seemed to be turned inside out as much as Lena’s aunt.
Lena pointed at my window. “I think it’s up here. Uncle M said to look for a driveway on the left.” A fence, with white paint peeling down the sides, guarded the road. There was a break in the fence a few yards ahead. “That’s it.”
As I turned between the crooked posts, I heard Lena’s breath catch. I took her hand, and my pulse quickened.
Are you sure you want to do this?
No. But I need to know what happened.
L, you know what happened.
This is where it all started. Where my mother held me as a baby. Where she decided to hate me.
She was a Dark Caster. She wasn’t capable of love.
Lena leaned against my shoulder as I drove down the dusty driveway.
Part of me is Dark, too, Ethan. And I love you.
I stiffened. Lena wasn’t Dark, not like her mother.
It’s not the same. You’re also Light.
I know. But Sarafine isn’t gone. She’s out there somewhere, with Abraham, waiting. And the more I know about her, the more prepared I’ll be to fight her.
I wasn’t sure if that’s what this trip was really about. But it didn’t matter. Because when I pulled up to what was left of the house, it was suddenly about something different.
Reality.
“My stars,” Aunt Del whispered.
It was worse than the yellowed photos in my mom’s archive—the ones that captured what was left of the plantations after the Great Burning—black skeletons of enormous homes reduced to nothing but charred framework, as empty and hollow as the towns the Union soldiers left in their wake.
This house, Lena’s old house, was nothing more than a cracked foundation floating in a sea of blackened earth. Nothing had grown back. It was as if the ground itself had been scarred by what happened here.
How could Sarafine have done this to her family?
We didn’t matter to her. This proves it.
Lena dropped my hand and walked toward the rubble.
Let’s go, L. You don’t have to do this.
She looked back at me, green and gold eyes determined.
Yes, I do.