“You were planning on taking over the Daylight Coven with the hopes of beginning peace negotiations with the Midnights. Illogical, stupid and naïve.”
She bristled. “Maybe you’ve forgotten, but I’m the one with trace powers. I can sense Midnights emotions and motives, and I can assure you there are a lot of them out there who would welcome my plan to end the war.”
“Yes, but there are also many who won’t. That’s why we need to deal with the Septum first.”
Arrrgghhh!
“What is the Septum?” she seethed between clenched teeth.
“Not what. Who.” Nikolai stepped forward, seeming to understand Reuben was losing her.
Caia blinked. “Who?”
Nikolai settled on the arm of Reuben’s chair. “The Septum is the seven direct descendants of the Daylight and Midnight Coven.” He flicked his wrist and a scroll of paper appeared on the ground before her. It slowly unrolled. There were seven names and their locations printed on it. “What you see before you is information that has taken us a long time to verify.”
Caia shook her head. “I don’t understand.” Were these the descendants of the magiks who bound themselves to Galen and Penelope respectively?
“Yes,” Reuben confirmed.
Her eyes widened. She hadn’t realized she’d muttered the question out loud. She took hold of the paper, seeming to understand that something of great consequence was unfolding here. “So these are the direct descendants of the first seven. What makes them so important?”
Her mind was whirring with possibilities, but she couldn’t even begin to imagine that her theory was correct.
Reuben smiled. “Caia, you’re smarter than that. I think you already know.”
Taking a huge gulp of air, she tried unsuccessfully to fold the paper without her fingers trembling. “You think… you think you can get rid of the trace somehow through these seven people?”
They both grinned at her as if she were a pet who had just performed brilliantly for them. Nikolai leaned forward a little, excitement bristling in his every movement. “We don’t think… we know.”
“How?”
“Just before you were born, the Prophet came to me again.” Reuben sat up straight in his chair. “He told me that if we killed the seven direct descendants simultaneously – and it has to be simultaneously, by the same method, it has something to do with connecting their energies and the trace – then the trace will leave us. I’ve always believed that the trace has kept the war alive when it should have ended centuries ago. For goddess sake, lykans and vampyres, for the most part, have lived in peace with the humans for nearly two thousand years. The Midnights have nothing to complain about anymore… they’re just trapped with one another because of the trace and the prejudice of the powerful magiks who control the trace.”
Their revelation was astounding. She stared, eyes glazed, at the paper in her hand and let what they were telling her sink in. Reuben was right… without the trace… they would all be free…
She would be free.
“You think this is the first step to ending the war, don’t you?”
The vampyre nodded slowly. “We do this and we can begin to build a new world.”
“What do you need me for?”
Reuben laughed. “You don’t get it do you, Caia? This is what you were born to do.”
She shook her head, completely confused. “No… I… the Prophet said I’d end the war.”
“Oh, you will end a two-thousand year old war just like that will you?” He snapped his fingers. Before she could snarl in displeasure at his mocking, the vamp continued in a softer tone, “Caia, we need you to use that magik mojo of yours to kill the Septum simultaneously. If you do that and supernaturals are freed from the trace then technically you will have ended this war. The war we’re looking at after that is an entirely new one… one that we can eventually bring to an end. But it will take time.”
She felt the world spin a little, and the next thing she knew she no longer felt the press of the cold, hard floor but was sitting on an armchair that matched Reuben’s. The wave of dizziness passed. “Thank you,” she whispered to Nikolai.
“It’s a lot to take in, we know.”
A lot to take in? For almost a year now she had believed that she was somehow going to bring the war to a conclusion. Now they were telling her what she was meant for was only the beginning. Exhaustion overwhelmed her, hope bursting like a soap bubble that had been chased for four blocks.
“I thought…” she cleared her throat, “I thought it would end. Somehow… I thought…”
“A war of this magnitude doesn’t just go away, Caia.”