Page 155 of Last Gift: Supernatural Battle

“He will attack tomorrow night,” I informed them.

Basilia’s brows shot up. “Convenient for him to give you a time and date.”

Sascha grinned.

King Julius’s eyes narrowed on me. “What has happened to you? There is something in the air.” He traced a thread from me to himself, then blinked. “I can almost feel something. It is there and not.”

Shit, he could feel the threads? Exactly what powers did this Vissimo have? He was sensing my magic. “That’s the reason Wild passed out and we were out for the three days following. There’s been a development in my magic that will give us the best chance against the demon king.” I was getting ahead of myself. “That is unless you’ve changed your mind about the alliance between us.”

The king strode toward the largest building in the area, a wide and open hut that appeared to be a gathering area of sorts. “If you are alive, Magus Queen, then you are the ruler of your kind, whether invited to the position or not. The alliance remains. And now you must tell us all so we may prepare for the battle ahead.”

Delta and Ruby exchanged a glance but didn’t refute his words.

I moved to follow him behind the others, and my mind drifted to the threads surrounding us.

Wild caught me under the arm as I stumbled, my sights set on the mammoth links connecting me and Wild with Sascha and Andie, and then with Kyros and Basilia too. We were chained together, bonded in a way that didn’t register on a magus-bond level. With my extra sight, I could see the connection so clearly. My mouth dried as I looked beyond the happily chatting group to the king who stood in the mouth of the hut ahead. His cool eyes burned into me, and he dipped his head that nearly brushed the top of the hut.

That’s what he’d seen that day we were all together. The six of us shared a fate. That was as close to an explanation as I could come up with on the spot.

But while the six of us were linked, King Julius didn’t share our fate. Neither did Delta and Ruby. The threads of the two female magus floated happily off in the direction of our coven, a couple of threads tying them to Wild and me. The king’s threads curled tightly around him, however, and I had no clue what to make of that.

King Julius’s lips curved, and he dipped his head a second time before walking inside the hut and out of sight.

I may have been gifted this mental version of a quipu, but it occurred to me that the Vissimo king was ancient and that life or experience or perhaps the higher forces we’d once spoken of might have given him a version of sight too.

One he’d peered through when considering the six of us.

One he’d had far longer to practice using.

41

Varden addressed the coven from a table of other advisors and older esteemed. He’d wanted me to do it, but I was steadfast in my refusal to take more of a leadership role than needed until the coven chose one way or another.

“Tomorrow, we wage war with demons,” he said. “Tonight, we share the company of those we love and speak any words we need to before the battle begins. Tonight, we are a coven.”

He made to sit, but Ty leaned to whisper in his ear. Which meant only the nearest ring of tables heard what he said.

Varden gestured to the divination mentor.

Ty bowed his head to the coven. “Some time ago, the high esteemed asked me to journey back and find an echo of this coven’s past. Of a peaceful time. She asked me to find an example of what this coven used to be before demons started to work their magic on us.”

I’d forgotten.

“The task was a confusing one for me, and because I didn’t understand the difference she implied between this coven and that which our ancestors lived in, I didn’t immediately undertake the task. But the upset in the coven of late drove me to venture into the past, from curiosity more than anything. Perhaps I just wanted to understand how a magus not raised in this coven perceived the way we lived and what change was needed. So I started to look.” His rich brown gaze swept across those closest. “I’d expected to struggle in the task. To my surprise and… disappointment almost… the task was no struggle at all. As I walked the coven tunnels twenty years ago, then fifty, then one hundred and more, I came to understand exactly what Tempest had meant. The impossible task then became selecting one of the thousands of examples of coven unity from what was occurring before me. As I walked, however, I realized that the passage of time had been important in helping me to understand our current division, and so”—he waved a hand to the stone wall behind him—“I have strung together a series of coven echoes from across the ages. This isn’t designed to make anyone despair. It’s designed to motivate you to carve a better future once the war is won. We must do whatever it takes to return to what we once were, and if we’ve seen what that looks like, then the task becomes possible, if not easier.”

His meaning was clear to me, and his alteration to what we’d discussed weeks ago made perfect sense. I could tell the surrounding magus were taken aback or plain confused at what might be the ramblings of a divination affinity.

Ty’s voice took on a hypnotic edge. “We’ll begin ten years ago in a mission announcement.”

A scene flickered onto the stone wall, projected from Ty’s mind. He was walking there right now and playing what he saw to us in real time. An incredible feat of magic in the focus it would require.

Unfortunately for me, what the other magus were thinking and feeling was having a large effect on the thousands of threads in the room. The tendrils snapped and joined and snaked and glowed, obstructing my view of the projection almost entirely.

I was frozen in place as Ty moved to an echo of twenty years ago, then fifty and one hundred. The threads only glowed more furiously, and Wild leaned in to wrap my center in his iron-plated protection as Ty shifted the echo to one hundred and fifty years, then two hundred.

My breaths were coming fast. The threads were debilitating—just when I’d started to feeling cocky about shoving them aside.

I spread a hand on the table to steady myself as we got to three hundred years. “What’s going on?”

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