looks like a bloody hole against the pale cashmere.
Papa sighs. “It’s complicated.” His navy eyes rove over Slate’s face, then off, settling on the long bay window and the lake beyond, which gleams gold and sapphire-gray under a thin layer of mist.
Slate thrusts a hand through his mussed black curls. “Try me. I’m good at complicated.”
“Let’s hope you are,” Papa says. “With Amandine and the others, we tried to assemble the Quatrefoil. And we failed.”
“The others?” I venture.
Papa’s gaze climbs up to me. “The other founding families. The other guardians.”
“We’re . . . we’re diwallers?” I don’t think I’ve ever experienced so many extreme and mixed emotions in the space of such a short while.
“I was hoping we’d have more time . . .” he adds quietly.
“More time?” Slate’s clutching his knees, the knuckles of both hands pale, the tendons so taut they look about to snap the ring off his purple middle finger.
My heart almost goes out to him, but he did this to himself. Actions have consequences. It’s about time he learns this.
“The moment the ring binds to a descendant, the pieces appear. If they’re not found and assembled before the new moon, they all vanish again.”
“Okay.” Slate’s still breathing laboriously. “So, that gives us how long?”
“Full moon’s tomorrow.” Which reminds me. As I shrug out of my puffer jacket and toss it on the back of the couch, I gush, “Papa, I tried calling you earlier, because the clock—”
“Started ticking.” He sighs.
“Did Adrien tell you?”
“No.”
“Then how do you—”
“Rémy, here, woke the magic.”
“For fuck’s sake, it’s Slate,” he growls.
“And now you only have two weeks to assemble the Quatrefoil,” Papa says quietly.
Slate’s grip slackens. “Good thing finding things that don’t want to be found is my forte.” Beneath the confident inflection, I sense agitation.
“Except you won’t be able to retrieve them on your own,” Papa says. “All four diwallers will have to play in order to win.”
Goose bumps rise everywhere on my body. “All four? I’m going to have to”—I gulp—“help Slate?”
“Yes.”
“Who are the other two?” Slate asks.
Papa stares out the window. “Adrien Mercier and Gaëlle Bisset.”
Of course . . . the descendants from the founding families. What exactly was I expecting? That these other guardians would be strangers?
“Oh, goodie,” I think I hear Slate say. He might’ve just emitted a caveman grunt. Wouldn’t put it past him to make sounds of an animalistic nature.
“What happens if we can’t get the pieces in fifteen days’ time, Papa? Do they go back into hiding?”
Papa shuts his eyes, and his nostrils pulse. “Unless Slate has fathered a child, it’s game over after this new moon. And not just for a while, but forever. He’s the last Roland.”
Both Slate and I frown.
“If the ring doesn’t come off before the new moon, it kills the carrier.”
Slate doesn’t make a sound. He seems to have stopped breathing.
“My original plan was to bring Rémy—I mean, Slate—home, fill him in on our shared history, fill you in”—Papa’s lids reel up, and he stares at me—“then call a meeting with the others. One of the diwallers was going to put on the ring . . . I wish it could’ve been me, so that if we failed, if anything happened—” His voice catches, and his eyes begin to shine like the lake. “But no thread of dormant magic runs in my blood. All I can do is teach the four of you all the lessons we learned from past mistakes.”
Another chill scatters over my skin. I must pale because Papa wheels himself closer and clasps my limp hand as though to remind me that he’s here. That everything will be okay.
“Thank goodness you can’t put it on,” I say, closing my fingers around his. “I’d rather have a parent than magic.”
“You’re almost eighteen—”
“So what?”
He glares at his useless legs. “Ma Cadence, you think I enjoy being in a wheelchair?”
I know it’s hard. I know he’s often in pain and resents relying on others for everything, but I just can’t—I just . . .
“Papa, I’ll always need you.” Tears pop out from underneath my lids and leak down my cheeks.
His thumb comes up, and he swipes them away.
Why am I weeping over this? It’s not like losing him is an actual possibility. I mean, I’ll lose him eventually. No one lives forever, but at least it won’t be a ring that removes him from my life. Not like my mother.
God, a ring . . .
I lost her because of a cursed jewel. It still seems so .