The thought sent a chill skittering up my spine.
We stopped at a spot in the woods where the forest floor was trodden bare, worn to the earth and devoid of all leaves and pine needles. Cicadas sang as we formed a circle and fanned out according to our affinities. Arron claimed us as his, and we formed a semi-circle around his back as he stood at the tip of what would be the same pentagram worn into the soil of the Center. Just as in the Center, the Priest and Priestess of each House took their place. My parents stood together in the middle of the circle, where their House lay in the heart of Nautilus.
It was the first time a line had ever been drawn between them and me. A separation made. I wasn’t the only one to notice.
Mom and Dad watched me carefully as the Circle beckoned to the Goddess. Arron raised his hands as he called upon Fate, and all four Fate-Kissed gasped when his presence filled the small space in the circle we occupied. I couldn’t see him, but I could feel him. The same feeling as before filled me and trickled through my body, beginning with the tingle in my fingers.
Omen’s eyes closed and she turned her palms up, as if she could feel his blessing rain down on her. Sky stared above as clouds streaked overhead, while Lyric softly hummed. Clouds seeped from Arron, pluming around our thighs, but never rising higher or obscuring our view of the Circle. The trees beyond us blurred horizontally and then disappeared.
“The Circle is sound,” Brecan announced.
“Any witch can conjure dark magic, but few are powerful enough to do anything as substantial as that which we witnessed this afternoon. Before River, I’d only seen Sable and one other able to turn the sky black,” Ethne said. As the eldest Priestess, she had witnessed more than anyone else in the Circle. She spoke of my grandmother, Cyril. A witch reviled among our kind.
“Cyril is dead. Fate has her soul,” Mom refuted adamantly.
“He had Jensen Renk’s, too,” Dad reminded her.
Omen cleared her throat. “Whomever stole Jensen Renk’s soul from Fate could also have stolen Cyril’s.”
Ivy looked at me with a pointed stare. “Then who is this witch? Only a spirit tongue can speak to the dead, and only a Fate witch could get so close to Fate himself.”
I bristled at the insinuation. I would never work against Fate, and I certainly hadn’t stolen souls from him or unleashed the dark soul of my grandmother. I was about to defend myself when Ivy cut me off.
“Not you,” Ivy was quick to amend, seeing the fire light in my eyes, “but someone who can do what you can. Think about how many Water witches we have, how many Earth and Wind and Fire witches. Who is to say there aren’t many more Fate witches, or that more might rise? And if they rise, who is to say some won’t have similar powers?”
“It’s hard to fathom, but it is possible,” Mom conceded, looking to my father. “And if it is her, and my mother is influencing things from her realm, maybe she’s attempting to use the darkness and the power of the witch she’s mentoring to resurrect herself.”
If Cyril was resurrected, she would wipe Nautilus off the map, starting with the most powerful of the witches and then moving through threat after threat until nothing and no one could oppose her.
“But she has no body!” Ethne blustered.
“If she stole a soul from Fate himself, with enough energy, she could kill someone and take their body as her own,” Brecan argued. “She might even steal the body of the witch she’s working with so she has access to their power.”
Cyril made a fatal mistake when she took over Thirteen and burned the Priestesses and Priest. She should’ve started with Fate, or with those he’d blessed with his power. She should have started with Mom, the strongest Fate witch to ever live.
But Mom wasn’t the strongest Fate witch now, it was Omen. Beyond Omen, that honor fell to her sisters and me. If Cyril was really behind this, it might explain why she sent Renk after Omen first. Attack the strongest to weaken the pack.
“If her soul is free from Fate, I can find her,” I told them.
“And when you do?” Ethne asked.
“If it is her, she’s already seeking us out. We have to fight back,” I challenged.
“Then we will fight beside you,” Omen claimed, steady and strong. She straightened her back and took my hand in hers.
Suddenly, all I could see was me and her as the others faded away. “It’s too dangerous for you. Renk targeted you for a reason. I don’t want you to get hurt,” I replied softly, turning to face her.
She shook her head. “I will defend you unto death and fight by your side to whatever end Fate has in store for us.”
I felt the same and she knew it. My hands found her waist and I reeled her in and rested my forehead against hers, gritting my teeth and closing my eyes. I would die for Omen. To love her, to protect her…the feeling overwhelmed me. The longing to protect her and keep her safe beside me for all eternity.
“Soul-mated,” Ethne breathed. “I haven’t seen a soul-mated couple in more than five hundred years.”
Omen pulled away, her silver eyes searching mine for confirmation of the truth we both knew was there.
Mom pinched her eyes closed. “They are soul-mated, but there is something else the four of you should know.”
Sky, Lyric, Omen, and I gave her our attention. “The Fate-Kissed’s powers are bound, which means if something happens to one of you, the rest will weaken.”
“So if one of us is lost, we could be picked off one by one,” Sky mused darkly.
“Together, though…together, you are a formidable force,” Mom told us. “You must protect one another. If you work together and weave your magic collectively, nothing can stop you.”
This declaration was overwhelming, to say the least. There were too many variables, but only one control: Fate.
“What if we’re wrong about Cyril’s soul?” Lyric asked softly. “What if she has nothing to do with this? We’re making assumptions based on something that may not even be possible, let alone true.”
She was right. Arron answered Lyric’s question carefully. “If it’s not her, then it’s another witch equally as powerful and destructive. We must fight the witch responsible, no matter who it is.”
Brecan snorted. “Yet the ways we would go about it would be quite different. One would be a spirit, the other flesh and bone.”
A thought entered my mind, and I wasn’t sure if Fate inspired it or if Cyril herself did. What if we use the witch’s plan against her? “If it is Cyril, there may be something else we can do to combat her from the spirit realm.”
“What do you mean?” Mom asked as everyone went quiet.
I took a deep breath. “We can call on our ancestors, Mom. Grandmother Ela, in particular, might prove helpful.”
“Her spirit is with the Goddess,” Ethne argued, unable to grasp what I was proposing.
“You’ll have to ask for the Goddess to release her and get permission to allow her to help us.”
“We can’t do that unless we know for certain,” Ivy admonished, a flicker of warning in her voice.
The only way to find out for sure was for me to search the spirit realm for Cyril and see if she’d been freed from Fate, but when I shared that thought, everyone agreed it was too dangerous. They said I was too valuable to lose if something went wrong. The way our Fates were woven together, if I fell, the others would, too. Everything in me screamed against putting Omen in danger, but what other choice did we have? What else was there to do?
Fate gave me this power for a reason, and Mom always told me Fate didn’t favor the weak.
The Circle discussed the matter and ultimately agreed that all we had were a handful of theories that spawned more questions than answers, none of which were valid enough to ask for such a thing, not of Grandmother Ela and certainly not of the Goddess. They weren’t even sure the Goddess would allow it. To their knowledge, s
he had never released a soul before and may not agree to send her Priestess to us.
The Circle decided to meet again at dawn to discuss how to find the witch behind the dark spells. Until then, we were all ordered to stay within Thirteen’s boundary, despite my protests that it was hardly impenetrable. Jensen Renk had entered with no problem at all. But they argued that because Thirteen was where most witches were gathered, it was where we were most powerful together.
I saw the agony and determination in Omen’s eyes. If Lindey was in the Core, she wanted to find her before it was too late. And the more time that passed, the more Lindey would suffer.
Edward and Judith were most likely the ones who abducted Lindey. The question was for whom, and to what end? Perhaps it was to divide us. If Omen, or the pair of us went after her, Sky and Lyric would be separated from us.
The only positive was that the Smiths wouldn’t harm Lindey because they knew Omen. Knowing her powers, they would fear her wrath if any harm befell the woman who raised her.
The Priest and Priestesses had given an order, but Omen and her sisters weren’t bound to their wills and neither was I. We weren’t witches in their Houses.
28
Omen
My sisters asked to speak with me alone after the meeting with the Circle; the meeting that took forever and got us absolutely nowhere, and certainly no closer to Lindey. I informed River I would find him afterward, and though he didn’t like it, he said he would wait for me in the House of Fate. He went inside as my sisters and I slipped further into the wood and warded an area to speak privately. Stars winked above and Sky’s fog encased us in a cottony perimeter.
Even so, I felt when River drew near, lingering close to watch over us. Just in case. My heart warmed from the gesture.
“What’s the matter?” I asked Lyric, who gnawed at her lip. She looked to Sky, who spoke for both of them.
“We’ve done everything the Nautilian royals have asked, but we also need to make sure we’re looking out for ourselves, Omen. To them, we are outsiders. Dangerous. Have you noticed the way some of their witches look at us? At first it was due to their ingrained caution of newcomers, but it worsened when we showed our abilities to spell.”
I knew exactly what she meant. “They don’t understand us.”
“They don’t want to,” she insisted. “We need their help to find Lindey, but if they assist us, what will they expect in return?”
I shook my head. “What if they expect nothing? What if they just want to help?”
“Your feelings for River are clouding your judgment,” she said dismissively, crossing her arms.
Perhaps my feelings for him did exactly that, but maybe I wasn’t wrong. River would never hurt me. I knew that as intimately as I knew the stones. River would help me find Lindey, no matter the cost. He’d help me navigate the Sectors, ask for help from witches who might be able to locate her, and be at my side as we took her away from those who held her.
It was strange to look at my sisters and see myself through their eyes. At times over the past few days this entire situation seemed so surreal, like a dream, as if I’d looked at my reflection in the water’s surface and saw several versions of me staring back. Some quiet and sweet, others bold and salty.
“We’re just worried about you,” Lyric inserted kindly. “We don’t want you to forget about yourself or doing what’s best for you, Omen. You and River are from two very different worlds, each with its own set of rules and expectations.”
“You think I don’t know that?” I croaked. “I’m scared, and not just for me and River. I’m scared for all of us. Our entire lives just changed forever in the course of a night. While I’m glad to know the truth, it’s thrown into question everything I’ve ever known. In a matter of hours, we learned we were triplets, discovered the truth about our mother, forfeited our homes, and I’ve lost Lindey.”
Sky bit her lip as Lyric gingerly noted, “Fate isn’t known for his gentleness.”
Sky took a deep breath, aggravation oozing from her stance. “No, he isn’t,” she agreed, and then closed her eyes. “I need to tell you something, but I need you two to keep it private. Only the three of us can know for now. Not even River, Omen.”
I nodded. “I won’t tell him unless you ask me to.”
Lyric nodded, placing a hand over her heart.
Seemingly placated, Sky inhaled and began, “I think the three of us were being used to guard something.”
My breath caught in my lungs. “What do you mean, guard something?”
“Edward and Judith,” she stammered, “used us as a shield to hide something from the Kingdom.”
“What were they hiding?”
“I’m not sure, but I’ve been wracking my brain,” she blurted, clutching at her temples. “I’ve looked at Nautilus through my window a thousand times. I’ve hiked the mountain – all of it. All sides. Every peak, every valley. But I cannot recall what is on the other side of the mountain range. It’s like…it’s like someone was blocking me from seeing what was there. I can’t picture the shadowed side of the range at all.”
Lyric gasped, her brows scrunching together in alarm. “What’s hidden in shadow devours the light.”
Fate sent a powerful ripple through the stones that lay in the earth underfoot.
“What did you say?” Sky asked her breathlessly, her eyes wide. “Where did you hear that?”
“They’re the words to a song I heard long ago…” Lyric blinked like she was reliving a forgotten moment from another place and time.
I remembered the tune and the words, but not who sang them.
“I remember it,” Sky told her. She looked at me. “Do you?”
“Yes.” Then it dawned on me. “It’s Fate’s song. I used to hear it when I was a child, through the river stones. I would sit for hours by the bank, listening and watching the water flow.”
“A song?” Sky mused. “Do you remember the rest?” she asked Lyric.
Lyric’s crystalline voice tinkled on the breeze. “Spirit and stone, song and sky, fate and future all align. What’s hidden in shadow, devours the light.” The hair on my arms rose. She swallowed thickly. “There’s more, but I don’t remember it.”
“It’s about us,” I exclaimed. “Us, and what we’ve been brought together to fight against.”
Spirit was River. I was stone. Song and sky were my sisters. All fates were intertwined.
I looked up at Sky’s fog swirling around us, at my stones hovering overhead and all around, and listened to Lyric’s voice woven between the stones and mist so that they hung suspended around us. We were able to protect ourselves. We were able to protect dark secrets. Edward and Judith Smith used us.
“After we find Lindey,” Sky vowed, “I plan to incinerate the Founder with a lightning bolt.”
“That’s far too merciful,” Lyric growled, surprising us both. “I can make him a puppet, forcing him to walk on all fours for years, fetching things for us and guarding our homes like a well-trained mutt, which is exactly how he treated us.”
“I want Judith,” I gritted.
Sky smiled. “That’s funny. I thought the only person you wanted was River.”
My face heated. “Soul-mated,” Lyric said softly. “You are so lucky.”
I didn’t say it, but I felt lucky. I felt like the luckiest person alive when River was near, except for the times he was in danger. Then, being soul-mated was terrifying and I was consumed by the fear of my soul being ripped from my body if something happened to him.
Worse, I didn’t know how he felt about the situation. Did he want to be soul-mated? Would he rather have someone from Nautilus, someone more compatible to his background? Someone groomed to fit into his future? There were a thousand other witches in Thirteen alone who would love to hand-fast to the handsome witch prince, as well as another thousand girls sc
attered throughout the Kingdom who weren’t witches, but who would clamor for his attention.
“What’s it like?” Sky asked. “When you’re together, I mean.”
I took a moment to gather my thoughts. “Even though I barely know him, it feels like I already know every part of him, the ones everyone sees and the ones no one else does. When I’m with him, I’m still me and he’s still him, but together, we make something entirely new.”
“Can you sense when he’s around?” Lyric asked.
I nodded. “He’s in the forest now. He’s not eavesdropping or even trying to, he just wants to make sure we’re safe.”
Sky began to complain, but I stopped her. “He can’t help it. I would do the same if our situations were reversed.”
“So, getting back to our original topic, we need to figure out what’s on the other side of the mountain…” Lyric thought aloud.
“It won’t help us to go to the peak if it’s being concealed by something magical,” Sky added.
I couldn’t get the song out of my mind. Spirit and stone, song and sky, fate and future all align. What’s hidden in shadow, devours the light. Weave with the darkness to win the fight…
“I remember more of the song!” I gasped. “Weave with the darkness to win the fight.” As realization dawned, I marveled, “Sable was right.”
“No one else thinks so,” Sky responded dryly. “They think she’s dangerous for even suggesting it.”
“We need her, and we need River. Fate is the darkness. It’s why Sable and Cyril could wield dark magic, though Cyril allowed it to corrupt her. Only Fate witches can use it.”
Suddenly, the stones underfoot let out a terrible warning. Run! they thrummed. They’re coming!
My eyes were wild. “We have to get out of here and find River. Now! Something terrible is coming.” Terror gripped my ribs. River is in danger! I have to get to him. We all do.
Sky and Lyric looked at one another, alarm apparent in their stance. “We feel it too,” Sky voiced.
The Omen of Stones Page 23
