“We don’t know how many Navin has,” Sassi says and looks concerned.
Finally, Leigh relents. “Take her. I won’t help with Navin, but I’ll let you have her for one more day. If the Powers or Prophets ask, it is your neck. And they won’t take lightly to it.”
Arek nods. “This ends, Leigh.”
Yet Leigh laughs. “Mark my words, son . . . there will never be an end to this.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
An hour after leaving Leigh and before we head to Nepal, I sit on the couch at the cabin in front of Arek, ready for them to teach me. “You can be in my mind with me? See everything I see?”
“In a way. Partly because when I Trace you, I’m leading you. Right now, we’re going after a specific memory. But there will be a time soon when we’re teaching you to fight an enemy’s Tracing. It’s important to teach you how to recognize when someone is exploring your mind by confusing your spirit. Mature Velieri have learned to use anything—fear, longing, sadness—against you. Right now, I’m just going to get to that specific memory, so we won’t be here for too long.”
Arek is on the coffee table. “Sit up,” he orders. “Look into my eyes. Listen to my breathing and try to match it. Watch . . . and listen carefully.”
I try desperately to concentrate on Arek, but the others intently stare from the corners of the room.
“Give us a minute,” Arek tells them.
When they are gone, he breathes out, which makes me instinctively follow. “It’s just you and me,” he speaks softly. “Stare . . .” he points into his eyes, “right here.”
After only a few moments, my arms begin to feel light, my chest rises. The black rim around his eyes seems to pulse, which makes me lose concentration. Soon my mind is free—detached from both the gravity of the world and a familiar internal conflict. This is something I’ve never experienced.
I find myself floating in a world of black. The hairs on the back of my neck lift as cold surrounds me in the dark. Nerves vibrate down to my fingertips as I notice my hands bending and stretching beyond what is humanly possible. There’s pressure against my head and shoulders as if I’m on a roller coaster and my neck unnaturally elongates. Through the vast black, small specks of white begin to slow and then pick up speed.
Or maybe it is me. Yes . . . it is me. I am now racing through the speckled black, while sounds whiz by—possibly voices, possibly nothing. There is no way to tell. The darkness seems to last longer than expected, until everything speeds up, pulling my skin away from my bones. My head jerks forward with a sudden stop. I open my eyes.
I’m in a bedroom with stone walls and thick, large furniture. Under my feet is a mosaic floor made of tiny square tiles. There is no one else there.
Giggles are heard from somewhere ahead. I peek out the doorway of this medieval place and I see myself as a child running through the halls. It isn’t Willow—it is Remy. She runs around Briston’s legs, laughing.
This vision lasts only a second before my body thrusts forward into the darkness again. The sounds that had once whizzed by unrecognizable, are now voices—all inflections and tones, men and women, yet still muffled. Again, my body stretches and pulls from all angles until the stretching ends abruptly.
Now, I stand in a thick forest alive with whistling birds, chirping crickets, and occasionally the breeze scraping branches together, while the sun shifts through the trees leaving hot designs on my skin. Just as my skin begins to pull once again, a dark-haired woman appears from behind some trees. She smiles sweetly.
“Welcome back, Remy,” she whispers.
“You’re his mother?” I know this . . . somehow, I know this.
“Please tell Arek hello,” she says, but she and the forest disappear before she can continue.
Repeatedly, I straddle reality and memory, never landing, until finally it is black again; the white specks appear more as diamonds. They disappear suddenly and my feet land on gray carpet. I wiggle my toes to grab it, then look up to find myself in a home with gray carpet and white couch and chairs.
Yet something is off. I am there, but just fifteen feet ahead of me, Remy is there too—a second version of myself. My hair is a bit shorter than it is now, but I am still recognizable. Remy holds her shaking hand out to the side as blood drips down her skin and a knife lays at her feet. Inches from the silver weapon are someone else’s fingertips, lifeless on the carpet. I follow the hand to the body. My mother’s hair is strewn about the carpet, the space beneath her head pools with blood.
“What did you do?!” Someone rushes in—the light in the room is so blinding that I can only make out a face contorted in panic. “What have you done?”
My heart beats out of my chest as I watch.
“I don’t know,” the whisper is barely audible from Remy.
Elizabeth falls to her knees, crying over her sister. “Lyneva!” I try to block the light from the wall of windows.
The darkness sweeps over me again, leaving only bits of bright light and passing figures. Could be people? Could be objects? They pass so fast it is impossible to tell. Then everything stops.
Arek sits in front of me and we are back in the cabin, yet the room is spinning. “Close your eyes until the spinning stops,” he suggests.
“How long was I gone?”
“A few minutes,” Arek says.
The truth is heavy on my chest, so I rub my sternum with a strong palm. “I did it.” My voice is quiet, but what I say is loud.
“How do you know?” he asks.
“I saw everything.”
“Describe it.”
“A room with gray carpet and white furniture . . .” I can see it in his eyes, “You know the room I’m talking about?”
“Yeah, Lyneva’s home.”
“There is a lot of light in the house from all of the windows so when Elizabeth runs in, I can’t see her at first.”
“Light?” he asks.
“Yeah. The entire wall behind me is windows and I have to cover my eyes to see anything.”
