“I hate that you had to see that,” Vikter said, drawing me from my thoughts.
Sorrow knotted in my chest. So many had died. “Before I woke up, I think I saw the end,” I whispered, realizing that Ididn’tthinkit. IknewI’d seen the end. “I didn’t remember it until I was there. What was that place?” I asked, and the answer that sort of just popped into my head was even stranger. “It was like a…collection of lands instead of kingdoms, and it was so different. There were things there I’d never seen before.”
As I told him about the tall buildings made of steel and glass, the ships and metal boxes with wheels, he looked more and more worried that I had damaged my head. “Did you know about that place?”
“I’ve heard of lands beyond the Veil,” he said, and I frowned. “Protected much like the place you stand in now.”
My frown grew. “Where am I?”
“Mount Lotho.”
Mount…
Oh, my gods.
Lurching back, I slipped free as my eyes widened. “I’m in…”
His lips quirked. “You’re in Iliseeum.”
Shock froze me for a heartbeat before I stepped back and turned to the floor-to-ceiling windows. At least I now understood where the buzz of energy in the air was coming from. Looking around, I got my first glimpse of the chamber. It was circular and wide. Beside the bed were a few chairs and a table with a bottle and a couple of glasses.
I was in Iliseeum.
“Holland brought you here,” Vikter explained, and I figured he meant the stranger who’d arrived in the other realm shortly after I had. “He’s really pushing it with the other Arae and risking inciting their wrath by doing so—well, more than he already has. Then again, Holland likes to walk that very fine line between interfering and not.”
“What do—wait. Holland is a Fate?”
Vikter nodded.
That strange sense of knowing happened again, telling me that Holland was also known as something else.
An Ancient.
That was why his eyes resembled the one who had clawed its way out of the ground—because Fates and Ancients were one and the same.
But that still didn’t make sense.
When the Ancients fell to the Primals, they either passed on and entered a place…called Arcadia, or went to ground. That’s what I’d seen. But some didn’t.
Some remained to ensure the balance.
I rubbed my temple, wondering if I really knew this stuff or had suddenly developed an extremely overactive imagination.
Something I’d been successful at not acknowledging since I saw Holland’s eyes crept into my thoughts. But there was no stopping it. The way my eyes looked now was far too similar to Holland’s and the feathered Ancient’s.
But what did it mean?
You know,that pesky inner voice whispered.
I glanced over at Vikter, about to ask if he knew what Holland was, but something stopped me. “If you knew what Holland really was, you wouldn’t be able to say.”
A lopsided grin appeared. “Correct.”
Lowering my hand, I remembered the other part of what he’d said. “What were you saying about him walking a fine line?”
“He shouldn’t have brought you here,” Vikter explained. “The Arae are really big on—”
“Balance and not tipping the scales in either direction,” I finished for him, repeating the knowledge that came to me.
