Page 288 of Seer Prophet

I fought to think, to decide what to do, if it was too late to pretend he was mistaken about who I was. That recognition was overpowering though, as was the affection I saw in his eyes.

“I am so very happy to see you, dear sister,” he said, now grinning like a loon. “I feared you would not come. I feared I would have scared you away, with my attempt to speak with you. I cannot tell you how relieved I am to have been mistaken in this…”

My jaw dropped even more.

I closed my mouth as soon as I realized how I must look, but the shock continued to reverberate and recoil through my light.

By then, he had reached where I stood.

“Allie!” he said, catching hold of my bare arms on either side of the beaded dress. He kissed me on either cheek. “Darling! Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten me!”

The wheel tilted even more, back to the voice I associated with this particular body, the one I thought I knew when I lived with him for a time in the Forbidden City.

But I also hadn’t been wrong about the other thing he’d said. I’d seen the expression in those blue eyes shift. I’d seen the difference in him, heard his words when he first walked towards me.

I stared up at him, mute.

“Alyson! Do not pretend not to know me! After all of our time together in Beijing!”

Confused, doubting what I saw and heard, even though I understood all too well, I stared up at him, fighting to decide what to say, whether I could deny any of it, even now.

“It is me!” Terian said, shaking me lightly with his hands. “Ulai! Do not say you have forgotten me, Allie! I will be heartbroken!”

From the couch, the younger, black-haired seer snickered.

I looked at him, and that time, even with the collar, I knew.

Something in his facial expression maybe, or the way he stared at my bare legs below where the edges of the beaded dress ended.

“Terian,” I muttered, feeling my throat close. I looked up at Ulai. “Gods. Terry? Are you Terry, too? Were you even then? When I knew you in Beijing?”

The man I’d known as Ulai beamed at me. But it was too much. I could see the person I knew then, and the understanding hit me even harder.

I found myself remembering what Cass said to me, the specific taunts she’d delivered the one and only time I’d spoken to her on the ship. I’d wondered how she knew so much about my time in Beijing. She’d known enough to taunt me about it?to taunt Revik.

“Even then?” I repeated.

That time, I heard the bitterness in my words. I already knew the answer.

“Of course, darling,” he said, beaming wider. “I could not leave you in that terrible place, all alone. Someone had to keep an eye on you. For Revi’, you see.”

Before I could come up with a response, he leaned down, kissing me on the mouth that time. The kiss was passionate, woven through with light, and I tried to pull away. He tried to kiss me again, but I jerked my mouth and face away for real that time, shoving at his chest. Unhooking my arm from the orange-eyed seer, I stepped back, panting, staring between them.

I saw the same thing I’d finally recognized in Ulai in the orange-eyed seer. I also saw it in the black-haired seer on the couch. I saw Terian’s light shining out from each of them?from bright blue eyes, opaque orange ones, and those eerie light gray ones.

Those light gray eyes that reminded me of?

It clicked, and I found myself staring harder at the man on the couch.

He looked like Revik.

Like… a lot.

If he’d been looking at me directly when I first saw him?and maybe if I didn’t know the real Revik’s face, body, hands, and light so well?I might have noticed the resemblance sooner. He rose to his feet and I gazed up at his height. I also got a better look at his narrow mouth, high cheekbones and light gray eyes.

That time, the resemblance hit me a lot harder.

“What the fuck is this?” I burst out.

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