Page 152 of Caelum

“When Reed was a little boy, just after his souls revealed themselves to him, he went on a trip with his mother to a beach called Coolangatta. Theybought a key ring as a memento. The day they left for home, they were involved in a crash and his mother died.”

My eyes ping-ponged between her and him, sensing this was going somewhere and not seeing the woods for the trees just yet. When he nodded and didn’t explain further, I frowned. “Okay… so, what?”

“I lost this key ring just before I came to Caelum. The facility where my dad dumped me was on the beach. I was allowed out there because it helped cool my temper and my doctor was progressive.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, a riptide tossed me off my board, and the baggy I had around my neck with my personal shit in it was washed away.”

Dre scowled at him. “So how the fuck is it in your hand?”

Reed’s smile was taut. “That’s just it. I wished for it.”

My eyes widened, and if his expression wasn’t deadly serious, I’d have thought he was taking the piss. Only, he wasn’t. He was serious, and for some reason, that really made me uneasy.

“You wished for it?” I repeated, unsure where he was going with this, except I knew he was going somewhere.

“Yeah. In front of Eve.”

As one, we all turned to look at the woman who was changing our lives. Not just because she was choosing us as mates, not just because she was changing our perceptions of what creatures were, but also because she could apparently grant fucking wishes. And yeah, this was just a single wish, but it was so unlikely that the key ring would show up on its own that there was no other explanation—even if that meant putting ‘wish’ and ‘reality’ in the same sentence.

I couldn’t utter a word. My throat felt too thick, and I winced as I swallowed because it suddenly felt like my mouth was the Sahara—I’d been, so I knew how dry it was there. “Eve?” I rasped, managing to force out the word.

Her back was still to us as she kept her gaze trained on Nestor, but I could see the tension dancing down her spine, could tell from how she was holding herself that she was listening and was purposely evading our stares.

“Eve? Is he right?” Dre bit off, and even though he’d been Chosen, he still sounded as miserable as fucking ever.

She tensed again, but her head bobbed in a single nod.

Almost as one, we blew out a collective breath.

“You can’t be serious,” Dre rasped. “This can’t be real.”

“This is proof that it is,” Reed retorted, but he sounded just as winded. This news, while cool, felt so impossible that I empathized—I felt like I’d been hit in the gut too.

He stepped over to me and handed me the key ring, but from hiscovetous eyes, the way his gaze stayed glued to it, I knew he hated giving it to me, knew he wanted it firmly in his grasp.

When I looked at the crappy plastic, I saw the insert was severely faded. There was definitely a ‘Coolangatta’ sign on the front though, and just as I was about to call coincidence and begin praying that Eve had been teasing—because yeah, she was such a joker,not—I turned it over and saw a picture of a boy standing with a beaming grin as he looked at the camera. On one shoulder, there was a parrot, and the woman at his back was grinning down at him while she cringed when the wings of another bird, hovering on her shoulder too, flared wide like it was about to take flight.

It was just as faded, just as water stained, but the details were somehow vibrant, so I could see everything, and there was no mistaking just who the boy was.

When I handed it to Dre, he shook his head. “How is this possible?”

“Is this the eighth soul?” Samuel demanded from Eve, his tone harsh, but I understood his anger.

She’d known this and had kept it from us?

What the fuck? What else was she hiding?

If things weren’t hard enough where she was concerned, now we had to worry about her holding back on us?

“I couldn’t tell you,” she whispered, and her voice was strangely soundless, like she was speaking but wasn’t somehow forming the words. “You wouldn’t have believed me until you saw it for yourself.”

“Djinn,” Eren rasped. “That’s the eighth soul. Or what we call it where I’m from.”

“Eve?” Nestor called, his voice softer than any of ours had been. We watched as he reached up and cupped her chin, then, using his hold on her, tilted her head back so he could look into her eyes. “Explain?”

From her new angle, I could see the tear tracks on her cheeks. The sight stirred me like nothing else could, and even though I longed to go comfort her, I couldn’t.

Nestor was right. We needed answers, and the only person we were going to get them from was the woman herself.

TWELVE

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