Anne Bishop - Sebastian

“Nothing. I told you when we got to this place. The Justice Makers won’t help us.”

“Yeah, you said that, but—”

“What difference does it make?” Sebastian shouted. He felt angry, edgy, and he didn’t know why. Felt like a part of himself was being ripped up by a vile darkness that wanted to fill him up until there was nothing else. But that part of himself kept struggling to survive. Wanted fiercely to survive. He just didn’t know how to help it—or even if he wanted to help it. “I’m an incubus, just like you!”

Teaser looked like a man who had just seen something he valued thrown to the ground and crushed underfoot. He smiled, but it was a sick, pained smile. “Yeah. You’re just like me.”

Even after a few hours’ sleep, she still felt weary to the bone, but Glorianna smiled as Nadia set a plate of sweet rolls on the table and poured koffee into mugs.

“Iced cinnamon rolls,” she said, putting one on the small plate in front of her. “And I don’t have to fight with Lee this time to get my share.”

“We need to talk.” Nadia put the koffee pot on a woven mat and sat at the table.

Not at her usual seat, Glorianna noted, but facing the kitchen windows and back door—as if she needed to stay watchful in case anyone tried to approach her home.

“You said that last night.” Which was why she had stayed with her mother after telling Nadia that the wall in the forbidden garden had been breached.

The quiet chattering that came from the room that was separated from the kitchen by a screened door increased in volume. A small blue-and-white bird flew to the door, hooked his toes into the screen, and scolded them.

“Not now, Sparky,” Nadia said firmly.

The scolding changed to chirps and cajoling whistles.

Glorianna smiled. Nadia did not.

That worried her.

“There are things I must say to you, while I still can,” Nadia said quietly.

Glorianna tensed. “While you can? What does that mean?”

“It means I can’t take the chance that things that must be remembered will be lost if something should happen to me.” Nadia closed her eyes. “My mother died when I was young. I was raised by my grandmother.” She paused. Opening her eyes, she stared out the screened back door. “My great-aunt, actually. My real grandmother was like you, Glorianna. And like you, the wizards decided she was a danger to Ephemera and sealed her into her garden at the school, using their magic to create boundaries in the landscapes she had access to in order to isolate her in a kind of living death. They didn’t know she was carrying a child when they condemned her, that the power inside her wouldn’t be extinguished when she died. They never found out that she and her older sister, who was a Level Five Landscaper, had discovered a place that existed in both their landscapes—a place in the woods that had a large, split stone. The dreaming place, they used to call it. Neither could cross the boundary that separated them, so they were never able to see each other or talk to each other, but they could leave messages tucked into the split stone, or a basket could be left that the other could take.

“One day, when my great-aunt arrived with a basket of food, she found another basket at the meeting place. My mother was inside that basket. And a note that said, ‘Love her. Teach her. And don’t come back.’

“My great-aunt never found another message from her sister. So she raised her sister’s daughter, claiming the girl as her own, and then she raised me. And like her mother before her, she told her daughter, and then me, the family secrets about what we are…and what we came from.”

Nadia took a long swallow of cold koffee. “And now I must tell you.”

“You’ve told me the family secrets,” Glorianna said, covering her mother’s hands with hers.

“Not this one. This one is the reason for all the other secrets that the women in our family—and the women in other families like ours, if any others have survived—have held in their hearts for generations.” Nadia’s eyes filled with tears. “I carried the secrets and the seed of our bloodline, but I was spared the burden of it. You’re the one who must carry the burden.”

“What burden? I don’t understand.”

Nadia turned her hands so that she could clasp her daughter’s. “What you are, Glorianna, is the reason for all the family secrets.”

We will not be found easily in this broken piece of the world. So there is time to hide what must be hidden while we wait to discover who prevailed in the final battle for Ephemera—our enemies…or the Eater of the World. Either way, we can no longer walk in the world as we once did. So we must learn how to hide our true nature behind a human mask. And in time, if our enemies were the victors, we will seek them out and embrace them as allies—and they will never realize we are always working to destroy them.

We have ensured our survival by fleeing to this place. We will be well established by the time the shattered pieces of the world are made whole again. By then, no one will look beyond what we pretend to be because our power will be needed to keep Ephemera clean of the human heart’s darkest wishes. We will be invaluable to the human world—and we will use our new position to slowly, carefully winnow out the strongest of our enemies, diluting their power generation after generation until they become little more than useful tools.

But there is one fear we dare not speak lest it resonate through the currents of the world.

If the Eater ever finds us, will It realize that we abandoned It when It most needed our guidance, that we left It to fight Its enemies alone?

—The Dark Book of Secrets

Koltak braced his hands on the waist-high stone wall that circled the top of the Wizards’ Tower and stared at the open land east of the city. Already the sun had risen high enough to vanquish the night’s shadows. Already the shadow that had filled him with revulsion and excitement was surrendering to the bright summer light and fading away.

Damn that fool of an apprentice that he’d sent running to fetch Harland. If the boy was too spineless to knock on Harland’s door at an unseemly hour, the moment would be lost, and he would be just another fool who had raised an alarm over a shadow caused by natural contours in the land. He couldn’t afford to sound like a fool, but if he was the one to see the very thing generations of wizards had watched for, that would go a long way toward balancing out his youthful mistake. Wouldn’t it?

“I trust you have good reason to send for me at this hour and interrupt my meditations.”

Koltak jumped at the sound of Harland’s voice, but he didn’t take his eyes off the land. His hand trembled as he lifted it and pointed. “Look.”

Harland came up beside him. Out of the corner of his eye, Koltak saw the leader of the Wizards’ Council stiffen.

“Do you see it?” Koltak asked, keeping his voice low.

“Yes, I see it.”

Relief swept through Koltak. He had a witness. No one would doubt Harland. But that meant…

A shadow is the warning. That was what he’d been taught all those years ago when he was a third-year apprentice beginning his training for tower duty. A shadow that ripples. A shadow that seems cast by something below the earth rather than by light shining down upon the earth.

“Do you think someone should go to the Landscapers’ School and ask them to check the hidden garden?” he asked.

Harland looked at Koltak, a feverish glitter in his eyes that was at odds with his solemn expression. “And say what? That we know about the garden they have guarded so vigilantly for generations? A garden they still believe is a secret known only to themselves? A garden only the Landscapers and Bridges can find, despite our years of effort to determine its exact location at the school? They have never acknowledged the existence of that garden, and despite how often we visit the school to help them weed out the dangerous elements among their own kind, we have found no evidence of its existence. No, Koltak. The Landscapers would have sent a message if they had noticed any sign of danger—even though we failed them the last time our help was needed.”