to the witch, but now I couldn’t find it. The third one had disappeared from my range.
I tried to focus in on the second signature, the strange one, to find the thoughts that followed it, but there was nothing there. No thoughts at all. Completely blank. Perhaps she was a witch after all and was somehow able to block me. Did she know we were coming? Did she know about my telepathy? Or perhaps she was extremely cautious, which made sense considering she’d purposefully been hiding for all these years.
The trees began to thin, and beyond the edge of this wooded area was a clearing with a small pond and a little shack jutting out of its center. Jax held his hand up, and we all stopped short and fell silent.
“Nona, someone’s here,” a young child’s voice said.
“It’s okay, Lilith,” said a scratchier voice, one that sounded as though it belonged to someone elderly. The second mind signature with the blank thoughts must have belonged to her. “They are friends.”
At this, we took several steps closer and emerged into the clearing, seeing the faces of the voices for the first time. Oh! My breath caught, and my hand flew to my mouth. Partly to keep my heart from flying out because it had jumped into my throat.
They crouched on the other side of the pond, and now they both stood. The elderly woman’s dull gray hair sprouted everywhere in a wild nest, seeming to have a life of its own as she lifted her head up to us. Her light gray eyes looked our way, but I had no idea if she actually saw us through their milky lenses. She hunched over in a stoop, her hand resting on the child’s shoulder.
The child. The child took my breath away.
“Tristan,” I whispered, grabbing his arm. We both stood frozen in complete shock.
This girl, this Lilith, looked nothing like I’d expected, how I’d envisioned her for the last several months. I looked so much like Mom, who appeared to be Rina’s twin. Tristan had once mentioned my features—brown eyes, dark auburn hair, and light olive skin—gave me away as an Amadis daughter. I assumed our genes dominated in our daughters, giving us all a similar, distinct appearance. But this girl . . .
She stood a couple inches shorter than Dorian, but since he was taller than average, I guessed them to be the same age. And her hair was a darker blond than his, but otherwise . . . she was a spitting image of my son.
“Friends and . . .” the old woman paused for a moment, “. . . some are even closer. Family.”
Holy shit! Can it be? Is she for real? I waited for something in my heart to pull toward her, some kind of mother-daughter connection we surely had to have. I’d been looking forward to this moment for so long, but the emotions I’d expected didn’t surge through me. I felt nothing but a shocked numbness. She apparently felt nothing for me either, because her eyes skimmed over me and dismissed me. But when she looked at Tristan, they stopped, and something flickered in them. Recognition? But how?
“Family?” Lilith echoed. “Family like . . . like my brother?”
The woman never had a chance to answer. The last few minutes had passed as if in slow motion as we took in the scene, Nona and Lilith, and their conversation. Now someone pushed the fast-forward button, and everything sped in a blur.
The third mind signature appeared back in my range—a very familiar one. One I hadn’t felt since we’d been on Amadis Island. In the Council Hall, waiting for the coronation ceremony to begin. When Julia had threatened Rina.
“Alexis and Tristan,” she thought. The other voice, the other person no one else had sensed then, and no one seemed to now. “Finally, they found her. And now it is time . . .”
At exactly the same moment, Julia’s face twitched in my peripheral vision, and then she was suddenly on the other side of the pond, gripping the old woman in a chokehold.
“Explain this,” Julia demanded. “Explain this girl!”
The woman choked and gasped for breath. Lilith’s eyes grew wide at the threat to her caregiver, and her sweet face, so much like my Dorian’s, immediately changed. Her hazel eyes narrowed to slits. She bared sharp, pointy teeth. Her features twisted into those of a monster. Then she flew our way in a blur. She hit Jax first, and he