Chapter Forty-Four

Everyone was present in the meeting room at college when Fred and I arrived. Adria sat next to Louis, her eyes, wide with horror, staring at the table, as if entranced. When Adria felt my presence, her eyes jumped to me and she let out a sob. Everyone turned to look at me questioningly, as though trying to decipher what had happened that had something to do with me.

“You know,” the Seer whispered rasply. “He told me you know.”

An ominous feeling crawled into my gut, and I ignored the stares and stepped toward her. Glancing at Louis, he understood my silent request and took a distance from Adria enough for me to put a hand on her shoulder. She jolted under my tough, but I didn’t let go. “I know what, Adria?” I asked her quietly.

She looked at me with her bright eyes, and suddenly grabbed my wrist. I felt something going into my head, and Tempest cursed just before I saw before my eyes the guy with the green suit and the pair of eyes so bright, like that of Ryan England.

A shiver went through me and I pulled my hand back from hers, looking at her with dawning understanding, while that nightmare of that awful night came back in full force. “You Saw it,” I whispered, tears rising to my eyes, “you Saw… everything.”

Adria nodded, looking away. “I’ve been told you dreamed of this some time ago,” she murmured. “And I knew I needed you to understand, to calm down - “

“Adria, Angela, what’s going on here?” Fred asked, staring at us blankly, but I could see in his eyes that he felt something bad was coming.

When I looked at Adria’s eyes, I saw she was silently signing for me not to tell. I lowered my head and said, “We can’t speak of it. What you need to know is that I dreamed about what Adria has just Seen.”

Everyone tried to push the answers out of us but in vain. Eventually, Louis took Adria to their room, and I found myself standing face to face with Strider. “Angela - “ he started, his face full of regret.

But I cut him off. “Not now, Strider,” I turned my back to him. “Give me a moment to process… everything. And please don’t talk to me.”

“But I want to apolog - “

“It doesn’t matter,” I sighed, closing my eyes. “Give me some space.”

He didn’t try to stop me when I walked toward the exit, but someone else did. “I need to talk to yu,” Magns said, looking at me gravelly.

I took a deep breath and forced myself to nod. I knew it was coming sooner or later. After all - he was my brother. I couldn’t avoid the brother I’d never known. Besides, the shock had already begun dissipating, so I guess it was time.

Magnus took me to a quiet corner in the yard, where a bench had a great view to the valley and the city. We sat on it, and I felt the warm March breeze caressing my head.

At first, we didn’t speak. Neither of us knew what to say, probably, so I simply studied him. He was too perfect for this world, and his beauty surpassed even that of a werewolf, which spoke volumes. But even before I was told he was my brother, I wasn’t attracted to him - men who were so beautiful as though they were divine, they didn’t feel to me. Not like Fred did.

“I wish I could’ve reached you in time, Rosangela.”

I tensed at once, glancing at him, and saw his golden eyes planted on the grass. “Don’t cry over spilled milk and all that jazz,” I forced the words out through my clogged throat.

He sighed. “You need to understand I let Destiny choose what’s best for you,” he said quietly. “I learned a long time ago not to mess with the path Destiny paves.”

“You’re talking about Destiny as if it’s a sentient thing, not an idea,” I stated, thinking with practicality about the whole situation and not emotionally like I often tended to do.

He turned to look at me. “Great observation, little sister,” he smiled a little half-smile that lit up his face. “Yes, I speak of Destiny as if it’s a person - or, to be more accurate, a she. Vadim, my Spirit, and I crossed ways with Destiny once. Destiny is a Spirit.”

That, I didn’t know. “A Spirit? Like Tempest?”

He nodded, his smile turning sad. “The Spirit of Destiny is the most ancient of the Spirits - even older than Time. She lived her life back in the Ancient Spirits times, and was the first Spirit to come into existence. But when Spirits started fading away, Destiny shattered into thousands of pieces, and these pieces went to chosen humans. This is why there are Seers in the world - All-Seers, like Adria, have larger shards of Destiny than others. Past-Seers like Louis, hold middle-sized shards, and the Foresight Seers hold the smallest pieces, which make them more common than the others - as much as they could be, considering the percentage of Seers is close to zero.”

“I see,” I murmured, processing this information.

Magnus’s eyes were somber. “When Ryan and I adopted Bastien,” he said, “we also befriended an All-Seer called Vermillion. Vermillion was about forty and a little crazy. She was a good woman and joined us on our travels. She Saw many things about you, like what you were doing, what you did, and what happened to you. We knew about your best friend, Brock’s death - “ I couldn’t help but wince “ - and we knew about your pain and grief. Through Vermillion we kept track on you… Until she suddenly stopped Seeing you. That’s who we lost you.”

He lowered his gaze. “Vermillion was killed a few weeks ago, in Evander’s attack in the East. She was there, trying to help one of the new Seers, and she got killed.” He smiled sadly. “Somehow, the people I acquaint myself with die eventually in a horrible way.”

I felt like he needed someone to be there for him, and because we were basically related, I wrapped an arm around his shoulders, and he immediately leaned on me. “I get it,” I said with surprising honesty, because I didn’t have the habit of opening-up to strangers. But Magnus wasn’t a stranger. I didn’t know how to explain it - I knew we’d met in the past and that he erased my memories of those times - but I felt like we were truly siblings.

“Brock was my best friend,” I found myself telling him. “He was all I had when things got rough. When I lost him, I felt such disappointment toward myself… I couldn’t live with it, couldn’t look at my face in the mirror. All I wanted was to exchange places with Brock - so I would die, and he would live.”

He hugged me tightly. “I know it never helps when they say it wasn’t your fault,” he said softly, “therefore I won’t even bother saying it.”

I hugged him back, grateful. “Fred tried to explain to me it wasn’t my fault, and I got that, but in the end,” I sighed. “It doesn’t make anything that happened less painful.”

“Brock will always be a part of you,” Magnus pet my hair warmly. “Just like Vermillion, Grant, and dozens of other people I knew and died because of me or not, will always be a part of me.”

Afterwards, we talked about many things. I asked him to entail me his adventures with Maxwell England, and he told me so many wonderful stories about those times - some of these stories didn’t even appear in the books - and then he asked me what was going on in my life, and when I told him about the stupid Mating Race, he gave me a little evil smile and said he would have a “talk” with all three guys. Of course I told him not to do it. I didn’t need another trouble in my life.

In the end we returned early enough for dinner, where I sat next to him and Ryan. I made conversation with Ryan, wanting to get to know him as well. “Don’t think Magnus here is a genius, Angela,” Ryan told me with a sinister smile and a twinkle of amusement in his eyes. “You should’ve seen him back then when once, a group of men lynched him because they caught him sleeping with one of their girlfriends.” He chuckled when Magnus scowled. “I think even immortality didn’t cure the scars on his abdomen.”

I laughed while Magnus seemed annoyed. “Yeah, sure, tell her bad stuff about me when we only just properly met,” he hissed, “as if I need more bad rep as it is.”

Ryan whispered to me, “He’s known as Magic-Mag, the Sexy Women-Slayer. There’s even a porn movie with this as its title.”

My laughter only grew while Magnus threatened drowning Ryan, and Ryan calmly pointed out he was immortal just like him and that it wouldn’t kill him. The two continued bickering, but despite it, their friendship, almost brotherhood bond was obvious. They had an understanding, they had their own private jokes, and I found myself smiling, enjoying myself in their company. Even Bastien himself shook his head while smiling, feeling joy in the moment.

But when my eyes rested on Adria, who stared right back at me, my amusement fled. Because if everything that had happened in my dream and in her vision would actually come to pass…

A shudder went through my spine and I lowered my gaze to my plate, wondering what would happen next.