At my side once more, Robyn urges me to lie back down, gives me a gentle shove. I obey but catch her wrist. “Tell me what they’re talking about. Please?”
She smiles. “Shhh. You must rest now. The journey to Lisel Island will not be easy. The Illusoden is doing its job on your pain, but you are far from well.”
I shake my head. My brain whooshes, Jell-O in my skull. “No. I need to know what’s going on.”
She tilts her chin. “How much have you been told?”
Finally. “This is a Reflection. There are seven in all. My birthmark is significant, but I have no clue why. A guy named Jasyn Crowe wants . . .” What does he want? It was never made clear. “. . . something from me.” We’re running out of time.
Robyn retreats, then returns with two steaming teacups. She passes one to me, then pulls over a stool. Its legs vibrate against the wood. She sits and cradles her teacup in her hand, breathing slowly as if preparing to perform a monologue. “I can only tell you what I know. The histories my parents shared with me as a child.”
This is it. I sip my tea, suck in my cheeks. Bitter but warm. Comforting. I swallow, the tea coating my throat, and stare at the grainy, dark-spotted log ceiling. The hammock swings slightly.
Tracing her teacup’s rim with one fingertip, Robyn begins, “Jasyn Crowe refers to himself as Sovereign, but he is a servant of the Void—the quintessence of all darkness and deception. With every year that passes under his rule, a little more of this Reflection becomes shadowed. If Jasyn remains on the throne, swaying more followers toward wickedness, the Second will cease to exist as we know it. Those of us who serve the Verity—the purest form of light imaginable—will not be able to stop it. We will be forced to abandon our homes or live out our days in darkness. Then this realm will no longer be a Reflection, but a Shadow World.” Robyn pauses, lifts her teacup, and sips.
Chills spider-walk down my spine. Void and Verity? Darkness and light? This is crazy.
Yet I believe every word. I come from the Third Reflection. Where children are abandoned and trafficked and abused. Where those with power cheat and manipulate for their own gain. Where words such as terrorism and shootings have become commonplace on the evening news. That place becomes darker every minute. It’s practically a Shadow World already.
“Why not leave?” I hold my breath as I sip the tea again. Makes the bitterness not so pungent. “If things are so bad here, what reason do you have to stay?”
“Because . . .” Robyn lowers her cup, the worry around her eyes softening. “This is our home. Running would serve no purpose. Jasyn Crowe won’t stop until the Void’s power reaches the ends of the Reflections.” She leans forward, her top’s drawstring caught in a swirl of steam. “But we are not without hope. Because before Jasyn seized the throne, there was another king, the last-known vessel of the Verity. King Aidan Henry.”
Emotion corkscrews. Joshua. He mentioned King Aidan—right before he died. I swallow back the shards of my heart threatening to lodge in my throat. “What happened to him?”
“He and the queen had one desire—to have a child of their own. Papa remembers when the king and queen would walk along the streets, playing and laughing with the people.”
“They had such a light in their eyes when they’d join the children in their games.” Wade speaks.
I jolt. I’d forgotten he was still in the cabin.
He strides over and squeezes Robyn’s shoulder.
Robyn beams at her father, and suddenly I’m an intruder. I taste bile but gulp it quickly. It’s not her fault I never knew my dad.
Another second. She faces me again. “But the king and his queen remained childless. They grew old and the time was fast approaching when Aidan would pass and the Verity would inhabit a new vessel, someone good and worthy of the crown who served the Verity as he did. With this charge would come great power. Most assumed King Aidan’s closest confidant would be chosen.”
The fog lifts a hair. “Jasyn?”
Wade nods.
Robyn gazes into her teacup. Tap, tap, taps the porcelain with her fingernails. “He was forty-seven at the time. As Commander of the Guardians and the king’s dearest friend, he did everything right. He seemed like the perfect candidate. He was noble. Kind. He had everyone fooled.”
A frown draws Wade’s entire face south. “None of us were prepared for what came to pass.”
Neither of them speaks. Wade squeezes his daughter’s shoulder again and then walks to the stove.
Robyn offers me a weak smile, communicating something private in her bright eyes. Wade loved King Aidan. No question about it.
I finish my tea in three long gulps, treating it like cough syrup instead of a beverage. “What happened?”
She retrieves my cup, rests it between her thighs, and exhales. “On the king’s seventy-fifth birthday, the king and queen vanished.” Silence. Another sip of tea.
Back turned toward us, Wade sniffs, fiddles with a pot on the stove. Robyn may be relaying these events, but Wade lived them. My heart aches for this man I hardly know. For the pain I so relate to.
This story is getting good. Or bad. I glance at what looks like vegetable stew. No beef chunks. It’d be perfect if I had an appetite. Instead the scent of veggie broth welcomes back the constant nausea I had after Mom disappeared. How can I eat when I’m already full of something else? Sorrow. Grief. Agony. Take your pick.
A tear slips. Then another. I’ll never see Joshua again.
Robyn pats my hand, probably assuming my tears are story related and nothing more.
“Naturally, the king’s second-in-command took charge. He sent out search parties, combed the Reflection for the rulers. When they weren’t found, Jasyn declared a time of mourning across the provinces.” A loose hair falls into Robyn’s face and she tucks it away. Pulls her lips inward, then blows out a puff of air. “The few who encountered Jasyn Crowe during that period said he seemed . . . different. Despondent but crazed. He holed himself up, hardly left his chambers.”
“It was nearly a year before he summoned anyone to court again.” Wade returns, wooden bowl in hand. Steam rises from its heart. “I remember it so clearly. My wife, Lark, had stayed home with Wren, just an infant at the time. I stood in the throne room, fully expecting Jasyn to give the people answers. What had happened to the king and queen? Had they died? If so, what had become of the Verity?” Eyes glossed, he takes a deep breath before continuing. “But we received no such comfort. Jasyn proclaimed the Verity had vanished along with the king and queen, but not to worry, for he had access to another power—a greater power. Those were his exact words.”
Robyn trades our teacups for the bowl in Wade’s hands. Clink, rattle. “That was the day he released the Void from its prison.” She places the bowl in my lap.
Eyes closed and brow creased, Wade lowers his hands to his sides. The last bit of tea from Robyn’s cup drip, drip, drips onto the cabin floor. “I saw it even then. There was a darkness about him beyond anything I’d witnessed in my lifetime. He’d succumbed to the Void’s power.”
“The Void had been contained for hundreds of years,” she explains. “Entombed in a secret prison. Supposedly, only the Verity’s vessel knows where the prison is, for the Verity alone has the power to contain or unleash the Void.”
“Then how did Jasyn release it?” I take a sip of the peppery broth. Wrong pipe. Cough.
Robyn leans forward. “That’s the mystery, isn’t it? It’s possible Aidan told Jasyn of the prison. The king trusted the man, after all, kept him close all those years. But there is still the conundrum of how, even if Jasyn knew the Void’s location, he was able to unleash it.” She rubs little circles on my back. “Some speculate Jasyn is actually a Mirror.”