Page 61 of Light

Her words are like defibrillator paddles to my chest—only not in the life-giving way. They’re on reverse, punching the power out of me, forcing my mind and soul to grasp what she’s said but hasn’t said—because she doesn’t have to.

Because she’s right.

I already know the answer.

The same answer that resounds in Emma’s stunned choke and carries through into her sandpaper utterance. “Oh, holy shit.”

Aliz rolls back her shoulders with the grace of a queen, despite the anguish still glittering in her large dark eyes. “I would not classify anything about this situation, or the woman who created these children, as holy.”

Another shock of the paddles. Twice as hard. Five times as torturous. Unbelievably, I still grit out one word.

“Faline.”

But as soon as I do, the twins shriek louder. “Noooo!” Ira bawls against my thigh, making my leathers glow green with the intensity of her dread. She clutches both my quads, her fingertips searing ten holes through my leathers before doing the same to my skin. I lock my teeth, enduring the pain in hopes it’ll ease her desolation. But deep inside, I already know the answer to that quandary too.

Hope gives a creature strength. Maybe even the kind that Faline Garand can’t control.

And there’s nothing the bitch loves more than control.

“No more Madre Faline.” Miseria sobs into Emma’s knee. “No more, no more, no mas!”

My wife gulps hard. Rubs her lips together, clearly battling against sobs of her own. Lux has already lost that clash. With a trembling chin and big blue eyes turned into oceans of sorrow, he openly begs me with every inch of his sweet, expressive face.

But begs me for what?

As I stare back at him with seared quads and burning eyes, I wait for the answer to manifest for that one too. Surely, like all the others, it must be ready to blast in at me any second.

My senses give me nothing but bewilderment, agitation, and confusion. They tangle tighter together as I attempt to wrap my mind around every astounding event of the last hour—despite how I know, I know, we’re nowhere near to being done with every jolt yet. I knew it as soon as I spoke Faline’s name. As soon as my invocation turned the twins back into hysterical wraiths. As soon as it made Aliz look just as morbid but in ways that terrify me in equally visceral ways. Clearly the woman’s hung out a bit with royalty. There’s a good chance she carries such a rank. Queens don’t show their weaknesses unless they’ve been soundly beaten. Aliz looks like she’s three steps from being ordered to the guillotine.

Is that because she defied Faline?

Or was she brought down here to be specifically utilized as a pseudo-nanny for Miseria and Ira?

Or was she here already and simply drafted into this strange role?

I yearn to cut to the chase and restart the conversation with that part of the investigation, but there’s too much to figure out first. All the parts that already make my gut feel like a brick of solid bile.

“All right, let’s take this back to the starting blocks.” I take a pull of as much air as my lungs will allow. “You’re telling me…Faline Garand is the mother of these two girls?”

Aliz levels her gaze. “If that is what you choose to call it.”

My nerves stand on edge. On a basic level, I understand the woman’s elusiveness. If she was the girls’ steward but has absconded with the twins while leaving Faline in the dark about it, she needs to extricate herself from any further liability at this point. I understand that. Sure as fuck doesn’t mean I have to like it.

“So her DNA is dancing in their genetic code.” I hold up a hand, indicating I’m not making this one a question. Emma’s guttural gasp backs me up.

“Dear God,” she rasps and flows a hand over Miseria’s thick black curls. “I— I didn’t notice. Not like this. Their skin’s darker, but the set of their eyes…and if their hair were cut differently…” She interjects on herself with a tangible shudder. Her features crunch into a taut wince. “Oh, dear God,” she echoes.

I nod again, though the motion isn’t so steady. Carefully, I pick apart Aliz’s communication. “The woman who created these children,” I reiterate, half my mind breaking off for some careful timeline math. “But…why?” The blurt is my immediate, and best, reaction to that ten-ton brick of shock. “What the hell kind of prize was she after?” I take it down to the growl I’m already feeling. “The woman didn’t suddenly jones after the Gerber baby photo trophy. Not even in another dimension is that shit show possible.”

“She’s sold her soul to the dark side six times over,” Emma injects. “And only craves one return on that investment.”

“Oh, I am well aware of what she wants.” Aliz rejoins her hands at the front of her waist. Her pause creeps to the edge of ominous, unfurling a foreboding chill through my system. “All of us.”

They’re the words I’m fully expecting, only without her unnerving emphasis. But before I can fully dissect my disconcertment, Emma ignites with a fresh flare of fury. “And after the witch is done with everyone on earth, she’ll start on the rest of the solar system.”

For a split second—yeah, even now—I’m derailed. Can I fucking help it that my wife is a bonfire of pure hotness when she’s incensed? But the second after that, I’m pounding my hands together, stomping down my libido and refocusing the investigation in the same whomp of action. “So that lands us back at the starting blocks. Trying to figure out how two children got mixed up in that bitch’s grand plan for world domination.”

“But how?” Emma demands. “In what way?” She turns as green as the girls’ bloodstreams while framing Miseria’s tiny shoulders with her hands. “They’re children. If they’re equally as enhanced as Lux, they can’t mentally be older than five or six. What possible use could that witch…”