She pointed to each of his hands, showing me two small spheres of matter that seemed to hover over his bared palms. One was forming into glistening spikes, and I reached up to brush my fingers against the painting.
Glass… I couldn’t even reach the canvas through the framing that protected it, but it was still speaking to me, the way all of my own forecastings seemed to. I could feel the cool slide of glass against my own palm, and I instantly slid my fingers to the man’s other palm, my eyes wide and my breath stilting in my chest. Sand. I could feel the grains slipping through my fingers, and I traced the faint waterfall that fell from his palm, forming a small pile of sand at his feet. When I was done examining him, I turned back to the Brazilian woman and she smiled, revealing deep dimples in each of her bronzed cheeks. She pointed to the second man, who was cloaked all in white, a crystal globe clasped between his paper-white hands.
“The Seer,” she whispered, with a note of reverence to her voice.
I was hesitant to touch the crystal globe, especially under the weight of so much scrutiny, but I was unable to curb the burning thirst for knowledge that sparked in my stomach. I laid my fingers over the glass that separated me from the painting, reaching into the globe with my eyes and experiencing the endless fall of the world mapped out beneath me. The globe was eternity: past, present, and future. It was knowledge, fortune, destiny, and death.
I quickly pulled my hand away, trying to hide the shake that now seized my wrist. This time it was the woman on my right who spoke, her tone made somewhat more casual by an Australian accent.
“The Elementalist,” she pointed at the third man, who was dressed in a cloak of flames, with water dripping from his fingers.
I glanced back and forth from the Seer to the Elementalist as my fingers brushed over the cool evidence of water and shied away from the heat of the flames. My forecasting had evidently come from the Seer, and my valcrick from the Elementalist. It was strange for me to gaze upon the two and feel the brush of their power as though it still lived. It dwarfed what was inside me.
“And the Reader,” the Australian woman added with a note of finality, as though the fifth man didn’t exist inside the painting.
I passed my eyes over the fourth man: he looked remarkably normal, his cloak threadbare and his lips tilted in a knowing way. He seemed mischievous, unlike the others. I heard the whisperings of voices when I touched above the folds of his cloak. That was where Jayden and Weston got their powers from. I imagined that in modern times, they might have called this man the Mentalist.
“What about him?” I asked nobody in particular, pointing to the last man. His skin had a blueish sheen, the veins visible beneath the surface. His eyes were dark, too dark, and there was blood dripping from his fingers the same way the water had dripped from the fingers of the Elementalist.
“The Dead Man,” a male voice said from directly behind me. Another Australian accent. I turned to find the smiling Atmá of the two women. Now that he was standing closer, I could see the faint mark that marred his forehead beneath his tan. He nodded toward the fifth man. “Other than the Seer,” he said, “the power of the Dead Man is the least common manifestation of Atmá magic. It’s the power over life and death.”
“But more often death,” the Japanese man corrected, his tone deep and final. Clearly, he didn’t want the subject discussed any more than the Australian woman did.
“Welcome to the Komnata, Lela,” the man still standing behind me bowed lightly, sweeping his hand toward an empty chair. “Thank you for accepting our invitation. My name is Jack. Why don’t you join us for tea?”
“My name is Seraph. Er, Seraph Black. It’s the name my mother gave me.” I walked toward the chair numbly, my eyes swinging back to the portrait even after I had taken a seat. Jayden moved to sit on the arm of my chair, and Weston lingered in the open doorway, his arms crossed over his broad chest, the mosquito net buffering against his back.
“It has taken substantial effort to get you here, Seraph.” The woman who was close to Weston’s age spoke, sitting back into her chair and crossing her legs as she regarded me, brushing a silky strand of brown hair from her face.
Some of the others also took or re-took their seats, leaving only the paired women standing together, and the Japanese Atmá standing against the wall to my side, her pair at her back.
I merely nodded, unsure how much I could trust these people. Nobody had actually ever said anything negative to me about the Klovoda—only it’s Director, and Weston. Now Kingsling was gone, and only his council remained. Still, the guys had put themselves at risk again and again to keep me from this meeting.
Not forever, I reminded myself. Just until I was ready.