I’m Minnie, descendant of Apollo, and even my Divine power of seeing the future can’t keep me safe when Gods attack.
While Yasmin searches for Pluto’s lost power, me and my Legendary family hunt for artefacts rumoured to kill Gods and Creatures. If we find one, it might give us a shot at defending ourselves in the coming war - but powerful enemies stand in our way and they’re determined to make our lives hell. Not to mention my ancestor Apollo has some messed up plans for me of their own.
But the biggest risk in my world isn’t Gods or incarnations. I’m falling for Ran, the phoenix descendant who plagues my visions with blood and arrows, and our love promises to ruin me.
The Divine of Callaire is a companion novel to Yasmin’s story and takes place at the same time as The Powers of Callaire. It’s not recommended that you skip it, but it’s possible to understand books three and five without reading it.
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One
The Incar Of Truth
I sit staring at the tarot pack spread across my bedroom carpet, glaring at every hand-painted card as if it’s going to grow arms, summon a carving knife, and stab me in the stomach.
It’s safe to say reading is the last thing I want to do while my friends are in untold danger on their mission to bring back Fray and Priscilla.
My only other option is to sit here and picture all the graphic ways my friends—and Ran—are being torn apart by Numina right now, and I’m not in the mood to watch the deaths of people I care about with my Gods-given gift of seeing future pathways. I’m not in the mood to acknowledge my fears or the hitch in my chest or the ache in my heart—the fear that they’ll never come back.
Heaving a sigh, I shuffle the cards again and remove the one that stands out to me. I’m not surprised when it’s the Strength card, reversed. It keeps presenting itself to me, appearing on my bedside table without reason, slipping from the deck and landing pointedly at my feet, the image painted on it—a woman wrestling a lion—flashing through my mind at the most inconvenient times. Sometimes being a Divine is annoying. Other times, it’s plainly terrifying.
It doesn’t help that when reversed, this is an unsettling card. It means something or someone is badly out of control, the lion pinning the woman down. I know all the card meanings and the interpretations of every kind of cartomancy, learned everything I could once I realised the nature of my Majick. Some people would be horrified to be able to glimpse the future but it’s always made me feel strong. Ready to face anything that could come at me.
Well—that’s how I used to feel. Since my family and I got added to the hit lists of killer Incar and Rogue Numina, I haven’t been anywhere near as confident. Reading tarot cards doesn’t give me that feeling of security anymore; all I feel is a creeping sense of dread. That’s why I’ve ignored this card for so long. I don’t want to see any future if it means knowing with a cruel certainty that murderous Gods and Creatures will be at our door within minutes. If it means watching them rip us into tiny pieces. I don’t want to live through that at all, let alone twice.
My stomach in knots now, I bite my tongue and shake it off. I have no choice but to pay attention to this card. It will clearly follow me anywhere I go, and even watching possible futures is better than thinking about the certain one that’s unfolding around my friends in the Legend Mirror.
Finally acknowledging the card, letting my Divine Majick take over, I’m drawn into a vision. Fighting the roil of my nervous stomach, braced for visions of gore and Gods, I close my eyes and see the blurry other plane, the one that holds every pathway—every potential future.
I land on a cliffside path, with undulating silver-green grass on either side of me, the thrashing sea at my back, and fog and indistinct countryside ahead. I can smell dew on the grass, the alive scent of trees and saltwater nearby, even though none of this is technically real—only the scene the pathway leads to is real.
The pathways have always reminded me of a murky moonrise, everything made of watery pastels, a grey sky raining down weak light. After a moment I recognise the pathway as Fearne’s, the feel of her maybe-future as individual as DNA, a fingerprint I can easily recognise if I know someone well enough.
I pick up my feet, feeling just as tired and run-down in this hazy world as I do outside, in the real world as I walk along the path. A slight decline brings me through tall weeds and grass-blanketed slopes. A few steps ahead, the indistinct grey area fades at the edges like a burning photograph. My chest burns at my fast pace as I march towards it, that veil between the here and now and the will-be. There’s only one way to see what I need to—throw myself of the edge. It’s the same every time. Fog swallows me, raising chills along my body and hairs on my arms. My stomach drops as I lose my balance, tripping over a rock in my path.
I fall into the future.
The cliff is ripped away and I land on harsh stone, the impact shooting up my knees. I won’t have a bruise or an ache in the real world outside of this pathway, but it doesn’t lessen the hurt spreading up my thighs now.
Shapes merge around me, jagged and incomplete shapes becoming huge metal shelves, a bare stone ceiling, the room stretching out forever in front of me. I squint into the gloom as the room continues to create itself, unspooling into existence around me, still coloured by that watery ash hue—every vision is made of it.
I used to think moonlight was pretty until I began having visions of disasters and murders and abductions. For a while the happy pathways were enough to take out the dread of coming to this place, when I used to have as many positive visions as terrible. Not anymore. Out of the past five pathways I’ve walked down, only one showed me a happy scene. And I don’t want to dwell on that one.
I take a deep breath, tasting dust and mould, and tell myself nothing in this pathway can hurt me. I narrow my focus to what’s happening in this room. At the far end of the space, between two giant shelving units, three figures form out of rippling columns of smoke, one kneeling, two standing. I’m in the Archives beneath the Academy, where Mavers’s collection of Legendary junk is stored. Does that mean something’s going to happen in the Archives? Inside the Academy? A thrill of fear shoots down my spine, quickening my breath even inside the pathway. I’ve had regular visions of the Academy every day since I became a Divine but they’ve never had this pervasive fog, this heavy sense that something is wrong.
With effort, I lift the feet of my vision-self and walk forward. When I reach the three figures, they begin to move. They always do this in my visions—wait for me to be close enough to see and hear everything before enacting their scenes. My Majick’s way of making sure I don’t miss anything. I see the faces of the three figures and recognise Zahrah, Vic, and finally Fearne, whose pathway I’m seeing. Something tightens in my gut.
Before I can begin to figure out what’s happening, Zahrah takes hold of Vic’s shoulder and, ignoring his sudden wild thrashing, slices through his throat with a crystal dagger.
I gasp, a shocked scream forming on my tongue, but no sound comes out.
Vic drops to the floor with a sickening sound. Doesn’t move. Zahrah snaps her attention to Fearne, who scrambles away, holding up a hand to protect herself. She barely manages to summon a strand of Akasha, fear bleaching her face, and I know with perfect certainty that she’s about to die.
Without being told, I know that Zahrah has taken all of Fearne’s Majick, and Vic’s too. She’s made them defenceless, drained their Majick completely. But that’s wrong; it has to be. Why would Zahrah turn on us now when she’s been living with us for weeks? She befriended us, became close with Yasmin even, and Yasmin’s a good judge of character. My stomach roils again as I struggle to accept it. This threat, this killer, sleeping in a room a minute away from my own.
Not giving me time to adjust, the vision shifts, showing me something else, something further on this pathway. I can’t tell how it’s linked to what I just saw but know instinctively that it is. The metal shelves unmake themselves until I stand shivering in the eye of a storm, nothing identifiable anywhere in sight. Wind twists around me, a force of nature, whipping black hair into my face. I widen my stance so I’m not blown away. I can’t be hurt, I remind myself. I can’t be hurt. But the goose bumps on my arms feel real, and dying might feel real too.
I nearly freak out completely but the wind shocks me out of it. Not real. Not yet.
But what does this windy void around me mean? I narrow my eyes against the storm as I search for the meaning of this vision, urging my Divine Majick to help me make sense of it. A great power. As soon as the words flit through my head, lightning flashes a metre from my feet. I jump back with a screech—soundless—and discover the lightning bolt left behind an object on the ground. Heart drumming, my hand pressed to my mouth, I peer at the thing. It’s a glimmering net of some kind of gold—wire, thread, I don’t know.
I catch my breath as the pathway shifts again and now I realise how the visions are linked; they’re a chain of events.
What happens in the Archives, this great power, the gold net, it will all culminate in the last thing the card shows me: a patchy field of grass strewn with bodies. Numina I don’t recognise, and Incar, and Legendaries—strangers and--
I press my hand harder against my mouth to hold back a wave of nausea, shaking all over, and draw Majick from my gut. I feel the warm power curl around me and I use it to leave the pathway.
I come back to the real world with a sob. My eyes fly open, roaming over my room, my cabinet of porcelain fairies, the familiar clutter of arcane books and supplies, the cushions piled on my purple bed with their motivational quotes, the dreamcatcher dangling over my head. I relax slightly, but the sickness remains. I pull my heavy limbs onto the bed and, hidden behind the gauzy curtain and fairy lights, I’m safe. But when I blink, I still see it. The body slumped face-first on the battleground, six black arrows sunk deep into his back, blood oozing into the grass. I’ve seen that last image so many times in the past month—too many times—and like the others, I’m left with my breath clawing up my throat and my eyes burning.
It had to be him. It just had to be. It couldn’t have been anyone else lying in that field; someone I met one time, or one of the Henacre wood Crea, or my rival from Pink Spirals. It had to be Amaranth Godsdamned Magnusson.
I press my palms to my eyes and let a broken scream through my teeth. I have to let the scene go. The first vision had a sense of urgency that makes me want to check the Archives right now, just to be sure. I have to push the image of him dead out of my mind or I’ll never move again.
“It’s fine,” I lie to myself. “Everything will be fine.”
*
I grab all my courage and leave the safety of my bed, turning briefly to the window to scan the garden. Ever since the battle, I’ve developed the habit of checking for Incar through every window. It’s even worse since Venus came for us. My panicked eyes hunt for Numina as well as the incarnation of Chaos.
The view outside my window is unchanged—trees shivering, wind stroking the blades on the colossal white turbine that looms on the edge of our grounds. The sliver of Ward I can see from my window is luminescent and strong. I nod at the sight, taking a breath to steady myself, and close my bedroom door behind me.
I make my way to the far back of the house and the stone staircase that leads to the Archives. The draughty temperature of the Academy’s bare halls turns to shivering iciness and it smells old and dusty, not of the sandalwood incense I burned last night that’s clinging to the carpets above.
As soon as I reach the stairwell at the bottom and hear voices—Zahrah’s and Fearne’s—I know I was right to come straight away. The feeling of urgency wasn’t just a remnant of the pathway but a glaring need to act now. Anger rushes up my chest; couldn’t my vision have told me it was happening right now instead of a vague sense that it might be?
My heart thumps and my palms are starting to prick with sweat as I creep around the corner of the stone staircase and into the warehouse-like space.
The Archives are as big as the entire Academy building, so it takes me a few minutes of tiptoeing past towering metal shelves and pressing myself into the narrow aisles until I find Fearne and Zahrah. Their voices rise, bounce off the flat ceiling, and I flinch, flattening myself to the floor. Belly pressed to the cold concrete, I feel like a complete idiot. Making myself a smaller target isn’t going to do much against Majick or the crystal knife Zahrah had in my vision. I feel exposed, in acute danger despite the shelves concealing me.
My heartbeat stumbles as Fearne yelps and then restarts when she snarls a vicious insult, the sound more familiar. I peel myself from the floor and continue my hesitant progress toward their voices, puffing quick little breaths of dusty air and pretending I am one-hundred-percent not panicking.
I thought I was scared back in the courtyard, with Discordia smirking and possessed hunters firing at us. I almost choke on a laugh; that fear was nothing compared to right now. Then I had my friends around me. Now I’m alone, and worse, I’m possibly the only person who can save Vic and Fearne, the only one who knows they’re in danger.
Inching around another shelf—only three away from Zahrah now—I wish, not for the first time, that I had Yasmin’s Psychic Majick, that I could call out to everyone in the Academy and cry for help. I guess I could crawl back up the stone staircase and grab someone as back up but I’m here now, and I have no idea how much time there is between the present and the future where Vic’s throat is cut.
Taking another shaky, dusty breath, I close the distance between me and my friends—and Zahrah. “Leave them alone!” I shout, very originally. A gasp swallows whatever else I was going to say when I take in the sight before me.
Zahrah’s arms are bound to her body with Akasha, the silver-darkness-fire constantly in movement—but with a shrug, the bindings burst into powerless smoke. She brushed away Legendary Majick like … like Discordia did in the battle when Guy tried to do the same. Sweat pricks the skin between my shoulder blades.
My body tenses and I feel the rush of power as Divine Majick takes over my body. I’m compelled, dragged forward until I reach out and—touch Zahrah.
Everything in me recoils, trying to drag my hand away but my fingers curl around her wrist and—I know everything about her present, the knowledge of her current pathway slamming into me.
This is something I’ve hidden from my family, something even Yasmin doesn’t know. I can see a person’s present in a single touch, like I can see their futures in a reading by touching a card or rune. The reality of Zahrah’s present circumstance flashes through my head like a movie reel played way too fast. It’s dizzying and doesn’t make sense, but it never does until I take the images apart and analyse them—but there’s always one that stands out. The strongest emotion or action or want or worry. What stands out to me now is a fact: Zahrah is possessed by the Incar of Truth.
I stagger away with a sharp inhale and a sudden kick of a headache above my eyebrow. I desperately hope that happened too quick for the Incar to steal some of my Majick. But I don’t know how I’d know if they had. My Majick isn’t the kind I constantly feel, like Yasmin’s. I only feel it when Reading or in a pathway, or the few rare times I’m compelled to touch someone. Only when I engage it. Until I do, how can I know that the Incar hasn’t drained me of everything I have? Sweat drips down my spine as I back away from the thing possessing Zahrah.
Images—memories—of Discordia flash through my mind and terror drowns me.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Fearne hisses, grabbing my elbow and yanking me painfully out of Zahrah’s reach. “Can’t you tell this bitch has turned traitor?”
“Incar.” I gasp for breath, light-headed. “Zahrah’s possessed by an Incar.”
“Shit.”
I nod once, my eyes fixed on Zahrah. Shit about sums it up.
“Wait,” I say, my swirling thoughts coming to a standstill. “Where’s Vic?”
Fearne squints at me, backing away slowly, step by step, and tugging me with her. “Are you high?”
“I saw Vic here with you, fighting—”
Zahrah lunges at me before I can finish. I panic, close to freezing up, and all I can do is skid out of the way. I have no defensive Majick. I have no way of defending myself against a human let alone an Incar. My only weapon is foresight, which works awesomely until I’m actually in a fight for my life. I shudder involuntarily. Some people take one look at me and assume I’m a Kung Fu master or an expert at jujitsu because of my ethnicity but that’s complete shit. With my horrendous balance and utter lack of hand-eye coordination, most days I have trouble staying on my feet, let alone fending off bad guys. I’m defenceless—useless. My singular fighting style involves a lot of frantic dodging and flailing. If it does nothing else, I’m hoping one day it’ll confuse my attacker long enough for me to run away. Chances are I’ll die looking like an idiot. Oh Gods--I can’t move—I’m going to die.
Zahrah lunges at me. No—past me. At Fearne.
All at once, I regain control of my frozen limbs. I jump out of the way, frantic, terrified, and end up on the floor—my familiar spot—with my hands over my face. Coward, a voice hisses—my own. Do something! I hear Fearne muttering and see a glint of light through my fingers as she summons another spark of Akasha. I rip my hands off my eyes when Fearne screams. There’s nothing I can do to help but I’m gonna do something anyway. I grab the first thing to hand from one of the shelves beside me and pray to Apollo it doesn’t explode and flay the skin from my sweaty palms.
I can do this. I can be brave. Even if it means drawing an Incar’s attention. Even if I could run now and they might not notice, might let me leave. No. I watch Fearne’s Akasha stumble and climb to my feet. No.
Not trying anything complicated with my fighting skills—or lack thereof—I draw my arm back and throw the thing at Zahrah’s head.
Only when the pewter box I apparently picked up is sailing through the air do I realise I shouldn’t be trying to kill the Incar, only hurt them. I don’t think it’s Zahrah’s fault she’s been taken over by this evil thing. She doesn’t deserve to die because of it. But as I panic, my aim is off, and it thunks her shoulder, a sharp edge grazing her jaw. It’s enough to get the Incar’s attention from Fearne, who is worryingly pale even if she’s steady on her legs, not bleeding yet, and glaring defiantly at Zahrah. My relief is short lived. Very short lived as Zahrah’s burning gaze pins me.
It turns out I have a use after all: distraction.
When the Incar turns to face me fully--oh, holy Gods, oh holy shit—Fearne does a weird chin flicking gesture. I spare her a momentary glance, bewildered, but then realise she’s gesturing at a shiny bronze sword to my left, laid flat on a steel shelf. Trying to seem inconspicuous—not my strong suit—I edge towards the sword. The Incar’s glare is a solid weight on me as Zahrah starts towards me, and acting inconspicuous isn’t easy when a swirling ball of purple Majick jumps into her hand. Pure power slams into me like waves, ripples of a certain, painful death. Meant for me.
“Screw it.” I dive for the sword, turning my eyes from Zahrah for a split second. My arm muscles scream as I raise the heavy sword and it burns my hands like ice. There’s definitely Majick in the metal. Braced against the weight, I put my back to the shelf again and yelp as I find Zahrah a mere foot from me, the purple Majick leaving her hand. I throw the sword as straight as I can past the Incar and Fearne catches it effortlessly, even though it was poised to drift above her head, into the depths of the Archives. She adjusts her grip, breathing hard, as I launch myself out of the Incar’s path.
My stomach smacks into the floor, the impact shooting through my bones as I slide across the concrete. The ball of purple smoke still comes for me—but Zahrah has stopped pursuing me, turned back to Fearne. Dropping to the floor proves to be a pointless move. I scramble away on my backside until a hard metal shelf digs into my back and watch with awestruck disbelief as the violet ball of power changes direction and finds me again. Just fucking great. Now we have Majick you can program like a heat-seeking missile? As if everything else that could kill us wasn’t enough.
“Fearne!” I screech, scrambling across the floor, the stone cold on my hot hands but nothing like the chill of that sword.
“Does it. Look like. I can help you?”
I take my attention from the purple sphere for a split second and see Zahrah and Fearne locked in a sword fight—only Zahrah’s sword is of the same purple Majick as the sphere coming for me. This is new. In my vision the Incar had a crystal knife.
But I don’t have time to be distracted by inconsistencies. I see purple from the corner of my eye. Too close. I throw myself further into the aisle, the Majick locked onto me changing course with a tiny delay. Teeth gritted against the aches that spread through me when I hit the floor. I keep retreating even as I stretch a muscle in my side too far and wince at the pain.
I yelp when the power almost hits me, breathing hard as it sears a burnt patch onto my blue checked shirt. Anger obliterates my fear for a moment and I hiss, “You bitch!” This shirt was new.
I slide out of its path again and—get an idea.
Adrenaline floods me as I climb to my feet. I dance backward in a weird zigzag, gaining an extra few seconds as the Majick adjusts its course on that weird delay, as if it has to pause and think about its next move. The idea of it being sentient sends a shiver from my head to my feet. I will not think about that. I will not. Majick doesn’t think, it follows commands.
I pant for breath, adding a few spirals and twists to my backwards shuffle, just to confuse it further, only slowing down when I reach the end of the aisle. The grey brick wall at my back, I take a deep breath and do the hard part—I stay still. Wincing the whole time, my heart in a riot, I stand and wait. The swirling purple advances. Please, let this work.
The globe is a metre away and picking up speed. Please don’t let the Majick fry me. Gods, please let this work.
At the last possible moment, with the purple writhing sphere a terrifying few inches from my face, I drop to the floor and crawl away as quick as I can. My wrist bends in a way it wasn’t designed to and pain spikes through me, forcing a cry through my clenched teeth but I press on, dragging myself away. The floor vibrates beneath me, little shocks moving through it. The hairs on my arms stand on end as an electric charge moves through my bones.
Please, please, please be gone. Slowly, I turn my head. There’s a scorch-splatter mark on the grey cinder blocks but no purple menace flying at me.
“Thank you Apollo,” I say, even as pain builds in my wrist, pulsating.
I deflate, slumping onto my back. I stare up, dazed and relieved and breathing hard. The ceiling is so far above me that all I see are the sprawling towers of shelves and--I forgot Fearne!
I scrape myself up, pain spiking as I brace myself on my hands, and stumble to the last place I saw her. I release a relieved sob when I find her alive, hunched on the floor. My steps falter when I see Zahrah hovering over her, palms outstretched and ribbons of purple Majick stretching between her and Fearne. I press my back against the closest shelf, my relief dying fast. The Incar hasn’t noticed me yet—maybe she thinks her purple thing murdered me—so I creep towards the bronze sword I threw to Fearne earlier. It’s half under one of the shelving units, as if someone kicked it away. Taking pains to be silent, I edge it out from under the shelf with my foot. Prepared for the shock of ice this time, I grip it in my sweaty palms, and before I can second guess myself, I dive at the Incar of Truth.
I lock my arms to bear the weight, the sword aimed for her stomach but at the last minute I remember I don’t want to hurt Zahrah, only the Incar, and I grit my teeth as I let the dense metal drop just slightly. It has to be Legendary—it’s too cold, too alive, to be ordinary and human.
Frostbite hooks into my fingers as I slice the blade across the streams of Majick, the sword so heavy the momentum rips it from my fingers. The purple threads shrivel into wisps of nothing as the sound of metal meeting the concrete floor rings out between us.
The Incar of Truth howls in rage and opens her mouth wide. Sharp, thin teeth snap into terrifying place in front of Zahrah’s ordinary set. I gasp, backing away, my eyes flicking between her and Fearne, still limp but breathing. The Incar’s eyes catch on the sword and narrow. In the next second, her image starts to disintegrate. Relief and panic war in me as she uses Gateway Majick to leave, reappearing somewhere else. When she’s gone, I listen hard for footsteps elsewhere in the Archives. But there’s only silence. Zahrah went somewhere else. The Incar’s gone.
Every bit of strength leaves me. I slump, a breath shuddering out of me. Where’s Vic? I think, but I already know the answer. The future I saw was changeable. In the vision, Vic must have heard Zahrah and Fearne fighting and come to investigate, but in reality things must have happened in a different sequence and Vic never heard them. At least he didn’t get hurt. The knot in my heart unwinds. But Fearne--
She’s sitting up now, clear-eyed and angry. Not unconscious. Not dead like in the pathway. I did it. I changed enough—but it’s not much of a comfort. I know that particular path wasn’t anywhere near a hundred percent, nearer fifty. It doesn’t give me any hope that I can change the pathways set much higher.
“Holy,” Fearne gasps, “shit.”
I sink to the concrete floor beside her and press my knees to my chest, shaking now adrenaline has abandoned me.
Fearne’s eyes are dark and wide when she turns them on me. “What the hell was that?”
“Veritas,” I answer, the knowledge like a slap around my face. “Zahrah Ex Cere is possessed by the Incar of Truth. She has been all this time.” I gasp a breath, the truth pounding through me. “The Incar hid inside her until it could get what it came for. I don’t know if Zahrah even knew she was possessed.”
“Not good.” Fearne squeezes her eyes shut, testing an injury to her ribs. “She stole something. I caught her making off with it—some kind of net.”
I inhale sharply, the rest of me stilling. The net I saw in Fearne’s pathway—it was here. I suddenly can’t breathe. “Do you think it was Majickal?”
“I’d put money on it.”
I remember the other scenes I saw in the pathways, the force of nature I felt. “It’s an artefact. A powerful one.”
Fearne’s eyes open to slits. “Tell me an Incar didn’t just get a weapon. Tell me that’s not what happened.”
I recoil. The last piece of the vision falls into place. The Red will be attacked in the Archives and our enemies will get a weapon, a natural disaster in the form of a net that can be used against anything of equal power. We had a weapon hidden here in our own home all along that could have been used to fight Numina—and the Rogues were threatened enough by that to have an Incar possess Zahrah to steal it. That’s what the Strength card wanted me to know, start to finish. If I hadn’t avoided it for so long, the Incar of Truth might not have the weapon now. We might still have the net, might still have a way to defend ourselves. But I was a coward, and we’re completely defenceless now.
Guilt churns my stomach. Shame heats my face.
I blink away tears; they won’t help. “I think the Gods and Incar who want us dead now have a weapon that can kill anything.”
The Incar Of Truth
I sit staring at the tarot pack spread across my bedroom carpet, glaring at every hand-painted card as if it’s going to grow arms, summon a carving knife, and stab me in the stomach.
It’s safe to say reading is the last thing I want to do while my friends are in untold danger on their mission to bring back Fray and Priscilla.
My only other option is to sit here and picture all the graphic ways my friends—and Ran—are being torn apart by Numina right now, and I’m not in the mood to watch the deaths of people I care about with my Gods-given gift of seeing future pathways. I’m not in the mood to acknowledge my fears or the hitch in my chest or the ache in my heart—the fear that they’ll never come back.
Heaving a sigh, I shuffle the cards again and remove the one that stands out to me. I’m not surprised when it’s the Strength card, reversed. It keeps presenting itself to me, appearing on my bedside table without reason, slipping from the deck and landing pointedly at my feet, the image painted on it—a woman wrestling a lion—flashing through my mind at the most inconvenient times. Sometimes being a Divine is annoying. Other times, it’s plainly terrifying.
It doesn’t help that when reversed, this is an unsettling card. It means something or someone is badly out of control, the lion pinning the woman down. I know all the card meanings and the interpretations of every kind of cartomancy, learned everything I could once I realised the nature of my Majick. Some people would be horrified to be able to glimpse the future but it’s always made me feel strong. Ready to face anything that could come at me.
Well—that’s how I used to feel. Since my family and I got added to the hit lists of killer Incar and Rogue Numina, I haven’t been anywhere near as confident. Reading tarot cards doesn’t give me that feeling of security anymore; all I feel is a creeping sense of dread. That’s why I’ve ignored this card for so long. I don’t want to see any future if it means knowing with a cruel certainty that murderous Gods and Creatures will be at our door within minutes. If it means watching them rip us into tiny pieces. I don’t want to live through that at all, let alone twice.
My stomach in knots now, I bite my tongue and shake it off. I have no choice but to pay attention to this card. It will clearly follow me anywhere I go, and even watching possible futures is better than thinking about the certain one that’s unfolding around my friends in the Legend Mirror.
Finally acknowledging the card, letting my Divine Majick take over, I’m drawn into a vision. Fighting the roil of my nervous stomach, braced for visions of gore and Gods, I close my eyes and see the blurry other plane, the one that holds every pathway—every potential future.
I land on a cliffside path, with undulating silver-green grass on either side of me, the thrashing sea at my back, and fog and indistinct countryside ahead. I can smell dew on the grass, the alive scent of trees and saltwater nearby, even though none of this is technically real—only the scene the pathway leads to is real.
The pathways have always reminded me of a murky moonrise, everything made of watery pastels, a grey sky raining down weak light. After a moment I recognise the pathway as Fearne’s, the feel of her maybe-future as individual as DNA, a fingerprint I can easily recognise if I know someone well enough.
I pick up my feet, feeling just as tired and run-down in this hazy world as I do outside, in the real world as I walk along the path. A slight decline brings me through tall weeds and grass-blanketed slopes. A few steps ahead, the indistinct grey area fades at the edges like a burning photograph. My chest burns at my fast pace as I march towards it, that veil between the here and now and the will-be. There’s only one way to see what I need to—throw myself of the edge. It’s the same every time. Fog swallows me, raising chills along my body and hairs on my arms. My stomach drops as I lose my balance, tripping over a rock in my path.
I fall into the future.
The cliff is ripped away and I land on harsh stone, the impact shooting up my knees. I won’t have a bruise or an ache in the real world outside of this pathway, but it doesn’t lessen the hurt spreading up my thighs now.
Shapes merge around me, jagged and incomplete shapes becoming huge metal shelves, a bare stone ceiling, the room stretching out forever in front of me. I squint into the gloom as the room continues to create itself, unspooling into existence around me, still coloured by that watery ash hue—every vision is made of it.
I used to think moonlight was pretty until I began having visions of disasters and murders and abductions. For a while the happy pathways were enough to take out the dread of coming to this place, when I used to have as many positive visions as terrible. Not anymore. Out of the past five pathways I’ve walked down, only one showed me a happy scene. And I don’t want to dwell on that one.
I take a deep breath, tasting dust and mould, and tell myself nothing in this pathway can hurt me. I narrow my focus to what’s happening in this room. At the far end of the space, between two giant shelving units, three figures form out of rippling columns of smoke, one kneeling, two standing. I’m in the Archives beneath the Academy, where Mavers’s collection of Legendary junk is stored. Does that mean something’s going to happen in the Archives? Inside the Academy? A thrill of fear shoots down my spine, quickening my breath even inside the pathway. I’ve had regular visions of the Academy every day since I became a Divine but they’ve never had this pervasive fog, this heavy sense that something is wrong.
With effort, I lift the feet of my vision-self and walk forward. When I reach the three figures, they begin to move. They always do this in my visions—wait for me to be close enough to see and hear everything before enacting their scenes. My Majick’s way of making sure I don’t miss anything. I see the faces of the three figures and recognise Zahrah, Vic, and finally Fearne, whose pathway I’m seeing. Something tightens in my gut.
Before I can begin to figure out what’s happening, Zahrah takes hold of Vic’s shoulder and, ignoring his sudden wild thrashing, slices through his throat with a crystal dagger.
I gasp, a shocked scream forming on my tongue, but no sound comes out.
Vic drops to the floor with a sickening sound. Doesn’t move. Zahrah snaps her attention to Fearne, who scrambles away, holding up a hand to protect herself. She barely manages to summon a strand of Akasha, fear bleaching her face, and I know with perfect certainty that she’s about to die.
Without being told, I know that Zahrah has taken all of Fearne’s Majick, and Vic’s too. She’s made them defenceless, drained their Majick completely. But that’s wrong; it has to be. Why would Zahrah turn on us now when she’s been living with us for weeks? She befriended us, became close with Yasmin even, and Yasmin’s a good judge of character. My stomach roils again as I struggle to accept it. This threat, this killer, sleeping in a room a minute away from my own.
Not giving me time to adjust, the vision shifts, showing me something else, something further on this pathway. I can’t tell how it’s linked to what I just saw but know instinctively that it is. The metal shelves unmake themselves until I stand shivering in the eye of a storm, nothing identifiable anywhere in sight. Wind twists around me, a force of nature, whipping black hair into my face. I widen my stance so I’m not blown away. I can’t be hurt, I remind myself. I can’t be hurt. But the goose bumps on my arms feel real, and dying might feel real too.
I nearly freak out completely but the wind shocks me out of it. Not real. Not yet.
But what does this windy void around me mean? I narrow my eyes against the storm as I search for the meaning of this vision, urging my Divine Majick to help me make sense of it. A great power. As soon as the words flit through my head, lightning flashes a metre from my feet. I jump back with a screech—soundless—and discover the lightning bolt left behind an object on the ground. Heart drumming, my hand pressed to my mouth, I peer at the thing. It’s a glimmering net of some kind of gold—wire, thread, I don’t know.
I catch my breath as the pathway shifts again and now I realise how the visions are linked; they’re a chain of events.
What happens in the Archives, this great power, the gold net, it will all culminate in the last thing the card shows me: a patchy field of grass strewn with bodies. Numina I don’t recognise, and Incar, and Legendaries—strangers and--
I press my hand harder against my mouth to hold back a wave of nausea, shaking all over, and draw Majick from my gut. I feel the warm power curl around me and I use it to leave the pathway.
I come back to the real world with a sob. My eyes fly open, roaming over my room, my cabinet of porcelain fairies, the familiar clutter of arcane books and supplies, the cushions piled on my purple bed with their motivational quotes, the dreamcatcher dangling over my head. I relax slightly, but the sickness remains. I pull my heavy limbs onto the bed and, hidden behind the gauzy curtain and fairy lights, I’m safe. But when I blink, I still see it. The body slumped face-first on the battleground, six black arrows sunk deep into his back, blood oozing into the grass. I’ve seen that last image so many times in the past month—too many times—and like the others, I’m left with my breath clawing up my throat and my eyes burning.
It had to be him. It just had to be. It couldn’t have been anyone else lying in that field; someone I met one time, or one of the Henacre wood Crea, or my rival from Pink Spirals. It had to be Amaranth Godsdamned Magnusson.
I press my palms to my eyes and let a broken scream through my teeth. I have to let the scene go. The first vision had a sense of urgency that makes me want to check the Archives right now, just to be sure. I have to push the image of him dead out of my mind or I’ll never move again.
“It’s fine,” I lie to myself. “Everything will be fine.”
*
I grab all my courage and leave the safety of my bed, turning briefly to the window to scan the garden. Ever since the battle, I’ve developed the habit of checking for Incar through every window. It’s even worse since Venus came for us. My panicked eyes hunt for Numina as well as the incarnation of Chaos.
The view outside my window is unchanged—trees shivering, wind stroking the blades on the colossal white turbine that looms on the edge of our grounds. The sliver of Ward I can see from my window is luminescent and strong. I nod at the sight, taking a breath to steady myself, and close my bedroom door behind me.
I make my way to the far back of the house and the stone staircase that leads to the Archives. The draughty temperature of the Academy’s bare halls turns to shivering iciness and it smells old and dusty, not of the sandalwood incense I burned last night that’s clinging to the carpets above.
As soon as I reach the stairwell at the bottom and hear voices—Zahrah’s and Fearne’s—I know I was right to come straight away. The feeling of urgency wasn’t just a remnant of the pathway but a glaring need to act now. Anger rushes up my chest; couldn’t my vision have told me it was happening right now instead of a vague sense that it might be?
My heart thumps and my palms are starting to prick with sweat as I creep around the corner of the stone staircase and into the warehouse-like space.
The Archives are as big as the entire Academy building, so it takes me a few minutes of tiptoeing past towering metal shelves and pressing myself into the narrow aisles until I find Fearne and Zahrah. Their voices rise, bounce off the flat ceiling, and I flinch, flattening myself to the floor. Belly pressed to the cold concrete, I feel like a complete idiot. Making myself a smaller target isn’t going to do much against Majick or the crystal knife Zahrah had in my vision. I feel exposed, in acute danger despite the shelves concealing me.
My heartbeat stumbles as Fearne yelps and then restarts when she snarls a vicious insult, the sound more familiar. I peel myself from the floor and continue my hesitant progress toward their voices, puffing quick little breaths of dusty air and pretending I am one-hundred-percent not panicking.
I thought I was scared back in the courtyard, with Discordia smirking and possessed hunters firing at us. I almost choke on a laugh; that fear was nothing compared to right now. Then I had my friends around me. Now I’m alone, and worse, I’m possibly the only person who can save Vic and Fearne, the only one who knows they’re in danger.
Inching around another shelf—only three away from Zahrah now—I wish, not for the first time, that I had Yasmin’s Psychic Majick, that I could call out to everyone in the Academy and cry for help. I guess I could crawl back up the stone staircase and grab someone as back up but I’m here now, and I have no idea how much time there is between the present and the future where Vic’s throat is cut.
Taking another shaky, dusty breath, I close the distance between me and my friends—and Zahrah. “Leave them alone!” I shout, very originally. A gasp swallows whatever else I was going to say when I take in the sight before me.
Zahrah’s arms are bound to her body with Akasha, the silver-darkness-fire constantly in movement—but with a shrug, the bindings burst into powerless smoke. She brushed away Legendary Majick like … like Discordia did in the battle when Guy tried to do the same. Sweat pricks the skin between my shoulder blades.
My body tenses and I feel the rush of power as Divine Majick takes over my body. I’m compelled, dragged forward until I reach out and—touch Zahrah.
Everything in me recoils, trying to drag my hand away but my fingers curl around her wrist and—I know everything about her present, the knowledge of her current pathway slamming into me.
This is something I’ve hidden from my family, something even Yasmin doesn’t know. I can see a person’s present in a single touch, like I can see their futures in a reading by touching a card or rune. The reality of Zahrah’s present circumstance flashes through my head like a movie reel played way too fast. It’s dizzying and doesn’t make sense, but it never does until I take the images apart and analyse them—but there’s always one that stands out. The strongest emotion or action or want or worry. What stands out to me now is a fact: Zahrah is possessed by the Incar of Truth.
I stagger away with a sharp inhale and a sudden kick of a headache above my eyebrow. I desperately hope that happened too quick for the Incar to steal some of my Majick. But I don’t know how I’d know if they had. My Majick isn’t the kind I constantly feel, like Yasmin’s. I only feel it when Reading or in a pathway, or the few rare times I’m compelled to touch someone. Only when I engage it. Until I do, how can I know that the Incar hasn’t drained me of everything I have? Sweat drips down my spine as I back away from the thing possessing Zahrah.
Images—memories—of Discordia flash through my mind and terror drowns me.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Fearne hisses, grabbing my elbow and yanking me painfully out of Zahrah’s reach. “Can’t you tell this bitch has turned traitor?”
“Incar.” I gasp for breath, light-headed. “Zahrah’s possessed by an Incar.”
“Shit.”
I nod once, my eyes fixed on Zahrah. Shit about sums it up.
“Wait,” I say, my swirling thoughts coming to a standstill. “Where’s Vic?”
Fearne squints at me, backing away slowly, step by step, and tugging me with her. “Are you high?”
“I saw Vic here with you, fighting—”
Zahrah lunges at me before I can finish. I panic, close to freezing up, and all I can do is skid out of the way. I have no defensive Majick. I have no way of defending myself against a human let alone an Incar. My only weapon is foresight, which works awesomely until I’m actually in a fight for my life. I shudder involuntarily. Some people take one look at me and assume I’m a Kung Fu master or an expert at jujitsu because of my ethnicity but that’s complete shit. With my horrendous balance and utter lack of hand-eye coordination, most days I have trouble staying on my feet, let alone fending off bad guys. I’m defenceless—useless. My singular fighting style involves a lot of frantic dodging and flailing. If it does nothing else, I’m hoping one day it’ll confuse my attacker long enough for me to run away. Chances are I’ll die looking like an idiot. Oh Gods--I can’t move—I’m going to die.
Zahrah lunges at me. No—past me. At Fearne.
All at once, I regain control of my frozen limbs. I jump out of the way, frantic, terrified, and end up on the floor—my familiar spot—with my hands over my face. Coward, a voice hisses—my own. Do something! I hear Fearne muttering and see a glint of light through my fingers as she summons another spark of Akasha. I rip my hands off my eyes when Fearne screams. There’s nothing I can do to help but I’m gonna do something anyway. I grab the first thing to hand from one of the shelves beside me and pray to Apollo it doesn’t explode and flay the skin from my sweaty palms.
I can do this. I can be brave. Even if it means drawing an Incar’s attention. Even if I could run now and they might not notice, might let me leave. No. I watch Fearne’s Akasha stumble and climb to my feet. No.
Not trying anything complicated with my fighting skills—or lack thereof—I draw my arm back and throw the thing at Zahrah’s head.
Only when the pewter box I apparently picked up is sailing through the air do I realise I shouldn’t be trying to kill the Incar, only hurt them. I don’t think it’s Zahrah’s fault she’s been taken over by this evil thing. She doesn’t deserve to die because of it. But as I panic, my aim is off, and it thunks her shoulder, a sharp edge grazing her jaw. It’s enough to get the Incar’s attention from Fearne, who is worryingly pale even if she’s steady on her legs, not bleeding yet, and glaring defiantly at Zahrah. My relief is short lived. Very short lived as Zahrah’s burning gaze pins me.
It turns out I have a use after all: distraction.
When the Incar turns to face me fully--oh, holy Gods, oh holy shit—Fearne does a weird chin flicking gesture. I spare her a momentary glance, bewildered, but then realise she’s gesturing at a shiny bronze sword to my left, laid flat on a steel shelf. Trying to seem inconspicuous—not my strong suit—I edge towards the sword. The Incar’s glare is a solid weight on me as Zahrah starts towards me, and acting inconspicuous isn’t easy when a swirling ball of purple Majick jumps into her hand. Pure power slams into me like waves, ripples of a certain, painful death. Meant for me.
“Screw it.” I dive for the sword, turning my eyes from Zahrah for a split second. My arm muscles scream as I raise the heavy sword and it burns my hands like ice. There’s definitely Majick in the metal. Braced against the weight, I put my back to the shelf again and yelp as I find Zahrah a mere foot from me, the purple Majick leaving her hand. I throw the sword as straight as I can past the Incar and Fearne catches it effortlessly, even though it was poised to drift above her head, into the depths of the Archives. She adjusts her grip, breathing hard, as I launch myself out of the Incar’s path.
My stomach smacks into the floor, the impact shooting through my bones as I slide across the concrete. The ball of purple smoke still comes for me—but Zahrah has stopped pursuing me, turned back to Fearne. Dropping to the floor proves to be a pointless move. I scramble away on my backside until a hard metal shelf digs into my back and watch with awestruck disbelief as the violet ball of power changes direction and finds me again. Just fucking great. Now we have Majick you can program like a heat-seeking missile? As if everything else that could kill us wasn’t enough.
“Fearne!” I screech, scrambling across the floor, the stone cold on my hot hands but nothing like the chill of that sword.
“Does it. Look like. I can help you?”
I take my attention from the purple sphere for a split second and see Zahrah and Fearne locked in a sword fight—only Zahrah’s sword is of the same purple Majick as the sphere coming for me. This is new. In my vision the Incar had a crystal knife.
But I don’t have time to be distracted by inconsistencies. I see purple from the corner of my eye. Too close. I throw myself further into the aisle, the Majick locked onto me changing course with a tiny delay. Teeth gritted against the aches that spread through me when I hit the floor. I keep retreating even as I stretch a muscle in my side too far and wince at the pain.
I yelp when the power almost hits me, breathing hard as it sears a burnt patch onto my blue checked shirt. Anger obliterates my fear for a moment and I hiss, “You bitch!” This shirt was new.
I slide out of its path again and—get an idea.
Adrenaline floods me as I climb to my feet. I dance backward in a weird zigzag, gaining an extra few seconds as the Majick adjusts its course on that weird delay, as if it has to pause and think about its next move. The idea of it being sentient sends a shiver from my head to my feet. I will not think about that. I will not. Majick doesn’t think, it follows commands.
I pant for breath, adding a few spirals and twists to my backwards shuffle, just to confuse it further, only slowing down when I reach the end of the aisle. The grey brick wall at my back, I take a deep breath and do the hard part—I stay still. Wincing the whole time, my heart in a riot, I stand and wait. The swirling purple advances. Please, let this work.
The globe is a metre away and picking up speed. Please don’t let the Majick fry me. Gods, please let this work.
At the last possible moment, with the purple writhing sphere a terrifying few inches from my face, I drop to the floor and crawl away as quick as I can. My wrist bends in a way it wasn’t designed to and pain spikes through me, forcing a cry through my clenched teeth but I press on, dragging myself away. The floor vibrates beneath me, little shocks moving through it. The hairs on my arms stand on end as an electric charge moves through my bones.
Please, please, please be gone. Slowly, I turn my head. There’s a scorch-splatter mark on the grey cinder blocks but no purple menace flying at me.
“Thank you Apollo,” I say, even as pain builds in my wrist, pulsating.
I deflate, slumping onto my back. I stare up, dazed and relieved and breathing hard. The ceiling is so far above me that all I see are the sprawling towers of shelves and--I forgot Fearne!
I scrape myself up, pain spiking as I brace myself on my hands, and stumble to the last place I saw her. I release a relieved sob when I find her alive, hunched on the floor. My steps falter when I see Zahrah hovering over her, palms outstretched and ribbons of purple Majick stretching between her and Fearne. I press my back against the closest shelf, my relief dying fast. The Incar hasn’t noticed me yet—maybe she thinks her purple thing murdered me—so I creep towards the bronze sword I threw to Fearne earlier. It’s half under one of the shelving units, as if someone kicked it away. Taking pains to be silent, I edge it out from under the shelf with my foot. Prepared for the shock of ice this time, I grip it in my sweaty palms, and before I can second guess myself, I dive at the Incar of Truth.
I lock my arms to bear the weight, the sword aimed for her stomach but at the last minute I remember I don’t want to hurt Zahrah, only the Incar, and I grit my teeth as I let the dense metal drop just slightly. It has to be Legendary—it’s too cold, too alive, to be ordinary and human.
Frostbite hooks into my fingers as I slice the blade across the streams of Majick, the sword so heavy the momentum rips it from my fingers. The purple threads shrivel into wisps of nothing as the sound of metal meeting the concrete floor rings out between us.
The Incar of Truth howls in rage and opens her mouth wide. Sharp, thin teeth snap into terrifying place in front of Zahrah’s ordinary set. I gasp, backing away, my eyes flicking between her and Fearne, still limp but breathing. The Incar’s eyes catch on the sword and narrow. In the next second, her image starts to disintegrate. Relief and panic war in me as she uses Gateway Majick to leave, reappearing somewhere else. When she’s gone, I listen hard for footsteps elsewhere in the Archives. But there’s only silence. Zahrah went somewhere else. The Incar’s gone.
Every bit of strength leaves me. I slump, a breath shuddering out of me. Where’s Vic? I think, but I already know the answer. The future I saw was changeable. In the vision, Vic must have heard Zahrah and Fearne fighting and come to investigate, but in reality things must have happened in a different sequence and Vic never heard them. At least he didn’t get hurt. The knot in my heart unwinds. But Fearne--
She’s sitting up now, clear-eyed and angry. Not unconscious. Not dead like in the pathway. I did it. I changed enough—but it’s not much of a comfort. I know that particular path wasn’t anywhere near a hundred percent, nearer fifty. It doesn’t give me any hope that I can change the pathways set much higher.
“Holy,” Fearne gasps, “shit.”
I sink to the concrete floor beside her and press my knees to my chest, shaking now adrenaline has abandoned me.
Fearne’s eyes are dark and wide when she turns them on me. “What the hell was that?”
“Veritas,” I answer, the knowledge like a slap around my face. “Zahrah Ex Cere is possessed by the Incar of Truth. She has been all this time.” I gasp a breath, the truth pounding through me. “The Incar hid inside her until it could get what it came for. I don’t know if Zahrah even knew she was possessed.”
“Not good.” Fearne squeezes her eyes shut, testing an injury to her ribs. “She stole something. I caught her making off with it—some kind of net.”
I inhale sharply, the rest of me stilling. The net I saw in Fearne’s pathway—it was here. I suddenly can’t breathe. “Do you think it was Majickal?”
“I’d put money on it.”
I remember the other scenes I saw in the pathways, the force of nature I felt. “It’s an artefact. A powerful one.”
Fearne’s eyes open to slits. “Tell me an Incar didn’t just get a weapon. Tell me that’s not what happened.”
I recoil. The last piece of the vision falls into place. The Red will be attacked in the Archives and our enemies will get a weapon, a natural disaster in the form of a net that can be used against anything of equal power. We had a weapon hidden here in our own home all along that could have been used to fight Numina—and the Rogues were threatened enough by that to have an Incar possess Zahrah to steal it. That’s what the Strength card wanted me to know, start to finish. If I hadn’t avoided it for so long, the Incar of Truth might not have the weapon now. We might still have the net, might still have a way to defend ourselves. But I was a coward, and we’re completely defenceless now.
Guilt churns my stomach. Shame heats my face.
I blink away tears; they won’t help. “I think the Gods and Incar who want us dead now have a weapon that can kill anything.”