“I’m going crazy, Bossman.” My tone came out soft, but there was something underlying my words. It was unmoving, demanding, pleading, exhausted: it was my heart, bleeding into a plea. “I need you to tell me. Trust that I can protect this information from Weston, because I will. I promise. I’ll take what you tell me right to my grave because I’d rather die than let that man sift through my brain. I’d rather die than give him the ammunition to hurt anyone else.”
“I’ll tell you,” he answered, quicker than I would have expected, his voice so soft that I might not have even heard it had my head not been leaning against his chest.
I didn’t move an inch. I couldn’t, and I knew, inherently, that I shouldn’t. We had been tugging back and forth over an invisible line since the day we met, and it was time for one of us to release the rope. I knew it was going to be me, and maybe that made him stronger than me… or maybe it didn’t. Maybe the real strength is in letting go; in succumbing to a fragile hope that everything will be okay, even when all of the evidence suggests the opposite.
Maybe I was the strong one after all.
I couldn’t pull away from him anymore, so I let go. I allowed our bodies to subtly strain closer; to press together in an elimination of unwanted space; to share the kind of bond-given comfort that strikes a match against your bones and digs its silky fingers into your sore muscles. It felt as if we were melting into each other, our separate bodies dissolving into smoke to share air on common ground, and I knew that he couldn’t deceive me in that moment any more than he could deceive himself. Somehow, I had given in to the bond more with Quillan than I ever had with the other three. That surprised me, because Quillan was the one who I had fought against bonding to the most.
“Seph,” he croaked out, his hands finding my face and lifting until I was meeting his eyes. “I’m not the Voda Heir. You are.”
I stared at him, my brain pulling up and short-circuiting. Of all the theories I had entertained about what they could possibly be hiding from me, that had not been one of them.
“I-I’m w-what now?” I spluttered.
“I can’t be the Heir. It’s a secret my father’s family has managed to keep for centuries; that’s why Zevghéri society still believes me to be the next Voda, but the truth is… that became impossible as soon as Silas was born with a mark matching mine. The Voda has always been either an Atmá or—on very rare occasion—a normal Zev. Never a member of a pair. Can you guess how that was achieved?”
My brain was still struggling with the shock that tripped it up, trying to prevent me from moving forward in the conversation, but I scrambled to think of a response anyway. “Because… because the Voda… doesn’t stop. He keeps having children until he has the right heir. Like Weston.” I furrowed my brow even though Quillan was nodding. “But Weston has had plenty of normal kids. Why can’t one of them be the heir? Like Clarin, or Poison?”
“Because of the Voda power. It goes to the first born male by default, and will only transfer to another offspring under one single condition: an Atmá is born.”
“Weston hasn’t fathered an Atmá.”
“No.”
“Weston hasn’t fathered me.”
“No. But he fathered your pair. When the first born male of the Voda is a member of a pair—”
“The Voda power is transferred to their Atmá…” I finished, catching on.
Quillan only nodded to confirm my epiphany. “That’s why you can do things that not even a Zev should be able to do, let alone a human; it’s the adaptability of the Voda power. You learnt how to play the piano simply from watching Noah’s fingers against the keys, and I’m sure there was more that you discovered without ever telling us. The truth is, your body and mind should be able to adapt to almost anything. Pain will only ever be a temporary hurdle for you; time will be the only thing you will need to master anything at all that you set your mind to. I told you last year that you were a miracle. I meant it.”
Everything suddenly made sense: the reason Weston put his own pair—Yvonne and Tabby—through so many failed pregnancies, marrying and divorcing them in turn, before moving on to other women. The reason for Weston’s infamous Atmá-hunt. Even the reason that Tabby hadn’t yet turned me over to Weston… I was the Voda Heir… for some reason, her sense of duty to Weston was just as strong as her sense of duty to me. Either that, or else she really did crave Weston’s approval so much that she wouldn’t dare to utter a thing unless she was sure… but I somehow doubted that.
Tabby was on Weston’s side, but she was also on my side.
I suddenly felt the weight of the secret, and I wondered that it didn’t sink me into the ground with how heavy it felt. I had imagined that knowing would free me in some way; that it would clear my confusion and lift me to an elevated understanding, but Quillan was right; if I was lost before… I was vanquished now. I wasn’t just the searched-for Atmá to Weston’s golden boys. I was Weston’s worst nightmare manifest. I was a threat to his secret society of not-quite-alien people, his rule over them, and the future of everything.
I was supposed to be the next Weston. The next leader of a people I barely knew anything about.