Page 258 of Seer Prophet

I stared at Jon. As I did, the missing piece fell into place.

Whether Terian was working alone or at the bidding of Menlim almost didn’t matter.

If we went to Dubai, we’d be expected.

Then again, if Terian could unravel our marital bond long distance, we had no real choice but to go anyway. Lily was tied to our lights now. That meant she was as dependent on our marital bond as we were.

I looked at Revik.

His eyes had turned cold as metal. I could tell from his expression that Terian, our brother in the Four, had just become operational priority number one.

Of course, that was exactly what Terian wanted.

Even so, as I studied Revik’s face, I wondered if Terry would be all that happy to see us when we finally found him.

Chapter46

Time To Go

Saying goodbye to Lily was hard.

It was more than hard. It was horrible, like losing a piece of my body.

Revik held me the whole time, even as I fought to keep my mouth shut around Kali and Uye, if only to prevent myself from saying something I would regret.

I knew my biological parents and their Children of the Bridge were the logical people to take her. I knew that, and told Lily the same, but I couldn’t stop myself from crying as I said it. Once Lily saw me crying she started crying too, which only made it worse.

Watching her cling to Revik’s leg didn’t help. Nor did it help when she started trying to bargain with us, promising she’d be good if we’d just take her with us.

Yeah, it really, really sucked.

I argued with Revik about it at first, until he pointed out that my negative emotions were purely personal, and that I’d agreed with Kali that Lily was no longer safe on the ship. Moreover, however I personally felt about my newly-found “parents,” I didn’t believe they were agents of Shadow, especially with Tarsi and Balidor telling me how unlikely that was. I finally caved after Revik pulled Balidor and Tarsi into the discussion yetagain, but I still had to fight to get enough distance to look at my emotional reactions objectively.

Once I did, I had to admit Revik was right. I still hated it.

On the plus side, Lily was a lot happier in general since we got her out of the tank.

She liked having her own room next to ours. She especially liked the adjoining door, which she would knock on incessantly if we hadn’t gotten around to unlocking it yet by the time she woke up. She also knocked on it in the middle of the night a few times, asking to sleep in our bed. Even with all of me and Revik’s distractions with our own light, Lily still managed to be in our room as much?if not more?than her own.

She also came with us to eat in the mess hall for all her meals now, and to get cooed over by the adult seers on the ship?including her Uncle Wreg, who was the worst of the lot in spoiling her rotten and letting her have her way.

Not like the rest of them were much better.

Even Balidor seemed physically incapable of saying no to her.

Jon was alittlebetter about setting boundaries. So was Chandre, although I’d seen her sneaking Lily ice cream, too. I had zero qualms about chewing her out right in front of my daughter, who I couldn’t help noticing looked entirely lacking in remorse.

Lily also came with me whenever I walked on the deck.

Revik took her flying one day, too, taking her up in one of the prop planes. I’d been stuck in a meeting and couldn’t go with them, but I got to hear all about it that night, and about how the flight crew gave her tours of the jets and helicopters lashed to the deck, and let her wear the giant sound mufflers used by the deck hands.

So yeah, Revik wasn’t much better than the rest of them, really.

Neither was I, when it came down to it.

Jon and Wreg came with us to introduce Lily at the human school the day after she got out of the tank. Since then, she’d been jabbering nonstop to me and Revik about her new friends. More than any of them, she talked about the one other seer child who attended classes with her, a male Asian seer named Buuri who Lily claimed had eyes “just like Uncle Wreg,” which I took to mean they must be close to that black, obsidian color of my brother’s husband.

She also claimed Buuri knew more languages than she did, an announcement that sounded more like an accusation than not. It soon came out that Lily had somehow decided that her lesser knowledge of languages was entirely Revik’s fault.

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