Sora regarded me carefully, her fingers steepled before her mouth.
“Not that I am aware of,” she said after a moment. “The Veythar’s art lies in binding, forging, and commanding the remnants of spirit.”
I swallowed hard, my palms slick with sweat. Talon was no illusionist.
“Look here,” she said, tapping a dusty page. “This depicts the way of a Veythar’s abilities.”
The image was a grim, sketched diagram. Each square detailed a drawing of a Veythar ability: commanding spirits, building, forging, and consuming.
I pointed to the last box, where a dark figure loomed over a kneeling form. “What are they consuming?”
“A soul,” she said simply, flipping the page. “The Veythar also use terminology we do not. This page shows a list of words you have probably never heard of.”
My ears perked up, my mind racing back to the word Talon had uttered in the woods, but the ink was faded and the script was foreign. I could not see it.
“Is the word ‘Solea’ of their language?”
Sora stilled. Her eyes flicked up to mine, sharpening into two points of cold steel. “Where did you hear that word, dear?”
My eyes widened fractionally. I scrambled for an answer that would not lead her to the oak tree in the woods.
“I… I read it in a text this morning,” I stuttered, before quickly adding, “but there was no other information on it.”
Sora’s eyes narrowed skeptically. “No, it is not from their language.”
“So,” I pressed. “What is the meaning of it?”
Sora slammed the book closed, shoving it to the furthest end of the desk. “It refers to one’s true counterpart. It belongs to the Sayel bond.”
Talon had not named me after a curse. He had called me his mirror.
My mouth wanted to drop open in shock, but I forced my expression to remain neutral. I cleared my throat and straightened my spine. “Do you think the bond could ever come back into existence?”
“I do not,” she said shortly.
“Perhaps it would have been easier if it could,” I muttered, looking down at my hands. “Then, I probably would not struggle for such connection.”
A cold hand landed on my shoulder, bringing my gaze up.
“Child,” Sora said. “Believe me when I say you are safer not in the presence of the bond.”
I frowned. “I understand the High Court would deter it, but if they did not? Would it still be dangerous then?”
Sora crossed the room and moved toward a high shelf, her hand brushing the spines of forgotten tomes before selecting a small, dust-covered velvet pouch.
“Perhaps I can offer you clarity,” she murmured. “This is an artifact usually reserved for the high priests, but you are a special case. You seek answers the books cannot provide.”
From the velvet, she drew a crystalline orb, its core alive with drifting motes of lilac light. It pulsed with a soft, rhythmic glow. “A Seer’s Orb. It will show you what pictures cannot.”
Stepping forward, I cupped my hands and held them out.
“Close your eyes,” Sora instructed, placing the cool glass into my hands. “Think of what you seek answers to.”
Letting my eyes flutter shut, I did not think of the High Court. I thought of Talon’s glacial eyes and the way the world had folded in on itself when we touched.
The orb stirred. The cold deepened, seeping through my skin until I felt like a statue of ice. I opened my eyes into the vision forming within the glass.
I saw a sky torn apart by violet lightning and seething, toxic green clouds. It was a world at war. Shadows twisted like smoke across a blackened landscape.