was already going to join the fight against the Order before this happened, but, as you know, I am the main history keeper for our people, and recent history has reached me.” He paused and seemed to have to collect himself. It was a side of Thadrick Peri had never seen. “The traitor, who murdered one of our elders, has joined the Order. They now have a djinn on their side.”
Peri’s eyes widened, and she turned to look at Andora, the sprite queen who was standing on the left side of the platform with four other sprites. They had not joined the group, which wasn’t surprising to Peri. They were used to being observers, even though they’d joined in the Arizona battle. It was probably going to take a minute for them to remember that they were now participants. Andora’s blank face gave no indication of whether the seer sprites had witnessed anything. Peri hadn’t really expected the queen to offer any insight. The sprites weren’t supposed to interfere with the future, and they had already. Peri knew there would be repercussions for that, or maybe there already had been. Perhaps Vasile and Alina were the prices for the information Andora had given Vasile when the Keep came under attack.
“How powerful is this djinn?” Fane asked.
“For our people, she is quite young, which would usually mean less powerful,” Thadrick said. “But, she absorbed the power of the elder whom she killed. That will give her much more power than she would normally have. Not only that, but the elder she stole power from possessed an extraordinary ability, one that could prove catastrophic to supernaturals as a whole. ”
“When you say catastrophic, are we talking about a ‘wiping out whole cities’ type of catastrophic?” Jen spoke up from across the platform. Peri should have known the hellion wouldn’t be able to hold her tongue for long.
“The mere loss of a city would be trivial compared to this,” said Thad. Jen’s eyebrows rose. “We’re talking about the ability to interfere with the recorded history kept by the djinn,” Thad said. “Since I saw her join with the Order, things have been… How should I put it? Disorganized and jumbled. Instead of the history coming to me in a straight line as usual, it is as if the images and words are being thrown into the air and then hit by a tornado.”
“And you think she’s using an ability she stole from the elder who was killed?” Jen asked. “And my condolences,” she added. Peri could tell despite her ire, she was trying to sound sincere.
“Some of our elders have unique abilities. I won’t go into detail about the powers each one of us possess. That wouldn’t be my place. But for example, one of us might be able to see a person's past and intentions, another could possibly change any healing that has taken place in a person’s body to digress to the original wounded or sick state,” Thadrick explained. “Since she is gone, I can tell you Lyra’s power was the ability to jumble a person’s mind. She could make their past seem like the present and the future seem like their past.”
“All abilities that have to do with history or memory,” Jacque noted.
Thad nodded. “It’s sort of our thing,” he said with a humorless chuckle. “Apparently, Myanin inherited the power when she absorbed Lyra’s magic.”
“So, we had the potential to at least know what they were planning after they made the decision because that would have been recorded in your history brain bank,” Jen said, “but now we’re back to basically being reallocated to human status when it comes to knowing what to expect.”
Peri saw Jen’s eyes immediately snap to the sprites. Yep, the hellion was thinking along the same lines as her. The sprite could see what was coming and could warn them. But again, at what cost? Peri couldn’t say with complete certainty that the warning would be worth the price. She’d bargained with the Fates before, and the cost had been a life for a life.
“With that said,” Thad continued, “before she met up with the Order and began messing with the flow, I managed to see some more history that I had been given. Your battle against the Order in Arizona was supposed to be a surprise attack, right?”
There were suddenly growls filling the air, one of which was Peri’s mate’s, and next to him, even louder, was Fane’s.