Issac wrapped his arm around her, pulling her closer to him on the couch. It was such a natural move, one she accepted with trust and an open heart. While the thought of her having a mate irked Sethios to no end, every moment in their presence indicated the strength of their connection.
Rather than comment on it—or break Issac’s arm—Sethios took the chair across from Gabriel, leaving the lovebirds on the couch. “Have you heard from Leela yet?”
“No.”
“That’s troubling.”
Gabriel lifted a shoulder, his version of disagreeing, apparently. “According to Owen, she’s with Jayson, Balthazar, and Elizabeth.”
“And where’s Vera?” Sethios pressed.
“That one is more troubling,” Gabriel murmured, finally opening his eyes. “My alert goes to her as well, and she’s neither here nor in Hydria.”
Sethios considered that. While they’d charged Leela with monitoring the council, Vera possessed the same insight.
“You mentioned when you returned that it’s possible Caro’s mother—Astasiya’s grandmother—might have found her.” Issac glanced first at Sethios, then at Gabriel. “How are Leela and Vera related?”
“Leela was supposed to monitor the council’s decisions,” Sethios replied. “It was her job to warn Gabriel of any sign that they’d chosen to awaken Caro’s mother.”
“Awaken?” Astasiya repeated.
Right. She was probably not aware of the Seraphim penchant for taking century-long naps. Sethios hadn’t known about it either until Caro had explained it all to him. “How much do you know about the Seraphim?” he asked, curious as to where they needed to start this discussion. “Are you aware of their political structure?”
“We haven’t reached that part of her education yet,” Gabriel put in.
“Yes, because someone spent the last eighteen years of my life fucking with my head,” she shot right back.
Gabriel rolled his eyes, an action that would have entertained Sethios on a normal day.
Alas, today was not a normal day.
So he ignored the show of annoyance and focused on his daughter instead. “The High Council of Seraph is the governing body of the Seraphim. They issue edicts and rely heavily on the Fates to guide them in those decisions. That’s actually how your mother and I met—she was sent to deliver an edict to Osiris.”
His lips threatened to curl at the memory of that night. He’d seen her pretty blue wings glowing from across the Arcadia nightclub and sauntered over for a chat. She’d been the opposite of amused by his interest. Then he’d persuaded her to remain silent and still when his father had approached—an act that had saved her life—and she’d threatened to kill him soon after.
It’d been lust at first sight for Sethios.
The feisty little angel and her penchant for blades.
Fuck, how he missed that night. How he missed her.
But that wasn’t the topic at hand. He needed their daughter to understand the history to be able to work through the present.
So he told her everything he knew, including how the council members were all the oldest and most powerful of Seraphim kind. How each councilman or councilwoman was the head of their proverbial bloodline, and each line possessed a power or trait.
For Caro, she came from the messenger line, her natural gifts allowing her to conceal her whereabouts. She also inherited a healing ability from her mother, but it remained dormant inside of Caro. At least for now. The Fates had said she would need it one day; however, that day had not yet come to fruition.
Gabriel’s father, Adriel, was the leader of the warrior line, which had Astasiya snorting, “Of course he is,” in the middle of Sethios’s lecture.
After he detailed the structure of the family lines, he went into the society operations and how Seraphim governed themselves. “The council is in charge of every decision,” he told her. “So if your grandmother was pulled out of her sleep, it was under their authority. And it would have been with the purpose of finding your mother.”
“She was the only one who could do it, other than you, me, and Sethios,” Gabriel added then. “I thought I couldn’t locate her because she was underground—sort of like when Issac buried you. I couldn’t sense your location at all when I should have been able to.”
“So it’s entirely possible that she’s still drowning,” Issac replied.
“Yes,” Gabriel agreed. “Except there are other signs we need to consider, such as Sethios not being able to sense her. When you bonded with Astasiya, I warned you that if anything like that ever happened to her, you’d be in constant agony as