Page 248 of Caelum

“You can’t hypothesize, Avalina,” Bartlett chided, his focus on his wife as he ignored the rest of us.

“I’m not. It’s on her arms, Bartlett. I just didn’t recognize it. There’s knowledge here. Of good and evil. Forged from the intent of good and evil.” She shook her head and took a step back from Eve. She was shaky, her body quivering as she plunked herself down on the armrest of the sofa I was sitting on. I quickly moved my arm so she didn’t sit on me, but I had a feeling she wouldn’t have noticed.

This was starting to look less and less like bullshit, and that had an uneasy feeling stirring inside me.

Eren murmured, “Is it a coincidence I was raised Muslim, Samuel Jewish, and Nestor a Catholic?”

The three main religions in the world?

Hell, how had we only just figured that out?

But Avalina was tugging at her bottom lip. “Unlikely. Remember, God isn’t religious. But it’s probably useful for your knowledge of the past.”

I snorted. “Eve’s more likely to be useful on that score. None of us know our religions from our asses, but Eve? She can recite the Bible back to front.” I wasn’t sure why that came out sounding proud, but fuck, I was proud. Eve was beyond intelligent.

Bartlett tilted his head to the side. “Were you raised to be religious?”

If a cult could be considered that, sure,I thought drily, then immediately felt like a shit when Eve squirmed and mumbled, “I was raised in a cult.”

Bartlett frowned. “I suppose that makes sense. I always wondered why you were on protected land that way. You weren’t even supposed to be camping out there at night, but I sensed you for a full day and night while I was there and assumed you were breaking the restrictions.”

She shrugged. “I have no idea about the rules. Just knew we lived there.”

“Did you never hear boats? Or have people come close to hike?”

“Maybe the men did, but women were kept close at hand. Only at night did we retreat to the cabins.”

Christ, and most of the kids at Caelum thought they’d had a shit life.

Deciding that we needed to get things back on track here because I recognized the looks on Avalina and Bartlett’s faces from Samuel’s hard-onexpression when he was studying the stock market, I blurted out, “Can you help us with the markings or not?”

Avalina tensed then nodded. “Yes. But you might not like what they mean.”

I snorted. “Lady, that just fits the current MO of my life.”

And wasn’t that the truth?

THIRTEEN

EREN

As I stared up at the ceiling, something inside me relaxed when Eve murmured in her sleep and turned her face into my side. I lay on her left, and to her right, Stefan snored away.

The sounds were both relaxing and comforting, yet also capable of making me envious.

How would it feel to be able to rest with this girl who had brought enemies together? Who was a powerful creature locked inside a young woman, capable of making the world itself shake at her might?

She rested. Slept. Even though she’d been scared earlier at Bartlett and Avalina’s revelations, she was here, cuddling into me.

The deep desire to rest was a bitter ache inside me that I couldn’t withhold, and in the dark hush of the Chelsea cottage, with its quaint interior, low ceilings, and too little space, I was safe. In a safe place where sleep shouldn’t have been an issue, but deep inside, I felt like I was at war.

Always at war.

My eyes felt gritty, my eyelids ached with the need to lower, but I fought the urge, fought it because when I closed them, I knew my personal demons would overcome me.

I didn’t even realize I let them fall, didn’t know I was asleep until I was there again.

In the darkness. My body was a heap of bruised tissue and meat that lay awkwardly between the rubble of what had once been a relatively happy home.

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