Devina smiled, but it was sad. And I realized that Davik had misinterpreted her words entirely. She was trying to tell him something and what she was trying to tell him made a cold shiver race down my spine in icy realization.
Had she always known her fate?
“Jeva would be good for you, brother,” she repeated, nodding as if she’d decided something. “You need someone patient, someone kind, someone forgiving. Because you have a nasty temper. Lomma is always saying you need to be…well, more like me.”
Devina pealed into soft laughter at Davik’s disgruntled look. He stood, looking up at the sky.
“Come on,” he said. “We should be back by now. We leave soon and Lomma will need help packing the chests.”
Devina nodded and I watched as his sister stood…and then I watched them disappear, walking back towards the glow of golden light in the distance, where I assumed their horde lay.
When I tried to follow them, I found my feet were unmoving. I was stuck, frozen in place, and my breath hitched as panic began to swell in my breast.
That was when I realized I wasn’t alone.
Next to me, a figure appeared and I almost cried out with my surprise.
Shock raced through me, my breaths coming out fast when I realized it was Devina. But not the Devina that had just left the clearing with her brother. This Devina was slightly older, though just barely, and she stared after the two figures in the distance with a longing expression on her beautiful face before turning to me.
Wake up, I screamed silently to myself. Wake up!
“I’m dreaming,” I said, almost to myself. “The memory has changed into a dream.”
“Lysi,” Devina said before shaking her head, “and nik.”
Yes and no?
“I had to see you for myself,” she said. “I wanted you to see this. This moment.”
I shook my head but it felt like I was so deep underwater that the movement seemed slow and quiet. “What do you mean?”
“I can never be whole again,” she said, her eyes going back to the siblings in the distance. “Though I was never whole. We never were. We were a part of each other from the moment Kakkari planted us in our mother’s womb. Together. Always.”
My lips parted. With jarring realization, I knew what I had missed before. It was always there, but I’d never pieced it together.
“You were twins?” I whispered. “Born together?”
“Lysi. Always together,” Devina replied. “Two souls as one. When we are apart, we are broken. Never whole.”
Devina had long dark hair that brushed her waist. And her eyes were the same as Davik’s, red with black and golden threads weaving through the color. Sad eyes, luminous in their grief.
She was wearing a light-colored dress and the longer I looked at her, I gasped, cold dread going through me when I saw something spreading across the material.
“You’re bleeding!”
Devina looked down at her abdomen and then she looked back up at me. Blood trickled from her lips.
Horror rushed through me. When I blinked, the blood was gone.
“What…what’s happening?” I whispered.
This was a dream, wasn’t it?
Or was it not?
Emotion burst through me, just like a few nights ago. Golden and pure, filled with love and grief and hope.
“You saw me,” Devina said. “You felt me. And I know that you can help him.”
“How?”
“Help him,” Devina pleaded softly. “You are different like us and I know you can help him. Because we can never be whole unless he can let go of me. He has held on for so long. I want to be freed.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, shaking my head, tears beginning to pool in my vision as the emotion I felt began to change. It became more desperate. “I want to help but I can’t even help myself!”
Determination crossed over Devina’s features, so similar to an expression her brother made that I gasped.
“I know you can help him,” she said, her voice soft and quiet and certain. “Help him and I will help you.”
I woke with a guttural cry, waking Davik immediately. When I felt his hand on my clammy forehead, he cursed and I found his glowing eyes in the dark.
I looked around, not certain if this was real or not. But I realized I was crying, tears streaming down my face, a sob lodged in my throat.
My emotions felt shredded, torn apart, and there was deep anguish within me, a coldness I wasn’t sure I could ever shake. Hers? I’d somehow carried Devina’s emotions inside me from the