I realize then that I’m watching grief like mine come crashing down on Sel, all at once. The sudden, sharp, all-consuming pain of loss is tearing into him right in front of me. I remember how that felt. I remember how much it hurts. The pages fall from my hand.
I don’t remember standing up. I don’t remember walking to him. I just know that my arm is around his middle. His entire body turns to stone as soon as I touch him, and his smoke-and-whiskey scent swirls around us, heavy and burning, but I don’t let go. “I’m sorry,” I whisper into his spine. He doesn’t answer, but his muscles release the tiniest fraction. I wonder how long it’s been since someone touched him. We stay like that until his breathing slows.
When he finally speaks, his voice is pitched low. “You called me a monster once.”
My arm drops and I pull away, my voice colored with despair. “I was angry. I—I didn’t mean that.”
He turns, and his red-rimmed eyes sweep across my features. After a moment, a shadow crosses his face, and his mouth folds into a small, rueful smile, like he wants to admonish me and call me a liar. I look for tears, but he hasn’t shed them. His eyes take on a faraway, haunted expression. “Maybe you were right. It looks like I came from one.”
I’ve never heard Sel speak this way. So dazed, like he’s not really here in the room with me at all. I want to comfort him, but it feels like it’s not my place to offer comfort in the face of his family history. And yet I’m the reason he knows that history in the first place. I’m the reason he’s standing there, hollow and fractured.
The guilt is enough to choke me.
“ ‘So that she may bear an heir…,’ ” he whispers, his eyes turned inward. I flinch at the cold language. The hope and expectation that his mother would produce a child—a weapon—for the Order fills me with nauseous horror.
He shudders, and his eyelashes flutter, as if he’s just remembered that I’m standing in front of him. He inhales deeply through his nose and looks over my shoulder at the pile of paperwork behind me. When he exhales, the cold, calculating, distant Sel is back, his analysis curt. “It appears I was lied to, likely for my protection. Which means there was no uchel, no mission. They released her for a time and took her away when she relapsed. I suppose I was too young to see that she was losing herself, or too admiring of her abilities…”
Watching him Holmes his way through his own devastation is almost more than I can take. I open my mouth, but he cuts me off.
“At any rate, she’s alive.” His voice breaks on the revelation. Then he sucks in another breath. “But locked away, has been for years, so she’s not our culprit. And, it seems, I inherited her penchant for paranoia, so perhaps there is no mole at all and never was. As for your quest, your mother may be one of the witnesses.”
I’d already thought of that, of course, but… “Sel—”
He brushes past me. “We should find out what happened to your mother,” he says flatly. He crouches down and pushes the affidavit aside, flipping through the file’s other papers.
I kneel beside him and place a hand on his forearm, ignoring the small sizzle between our skin. He freezes without looking at me, muscles hard beneath my fingers. “Sel.”
His voice drops into a register meant to scare and intimidate. “Don’t.” But I hear the restrained desperation in his voice. A pause. Then, quietly: “Please.”
I recognize that sound. It’s the sound of holding on to a cliff by the edge of your nails. The sound of barely containing a pain so immense that to look at it, to raise your own flesh and examine what’s beneath, is to risk falling into a darkness you know you’ll never escape.
It hits me then, that I’d come all this way for my mother and for the truth, but the pain of existing without her, the deep searing wound in my own chest, hasn’t gotten any better. It has only changed shape.
Wordlessly, I slip my hand from his arm. His shoulders sag, as if he’s just released a heavy weight, and he reaches for the papers again.
“Here.” He taps a stack of papers clipped together. “These are the witnesses who were mesmered. All students. Looks like alphabetical order.”
The first few witnesses in my pile are all white. Psychology student. Football player. Theater kid. Then I flip the page and everything stops when I see her face.
Sel notices my shaking hands. “Did you find her?”
The words don’t come because there are no words.
Her student picture must have been taken when she’d just arrived to campus as an undergraduate, because her features are relaxed and bright with the promise of adventure. The creases at her cheeks and the edges of her eyes, the ones from laughter and time, have yet to form. Her sharp brown eyes stare at the camera as if challenging it in a contest she knew she’d win. Hair permed straight and curled at the ends. Nothing like the short, cropped coils she’d adopted when I was ten.
“I’d almost forgotten what she looked like,” I whisper.
Sel’s voice is gentle. “What does the file say?”
I release a wavering breath and flip to the one-page summary. “ ‘Witness Eleven. Faye Ayeola Carter, age nineteen. Sophomore. Biology major, chemistry minor.’ ”
Sel lets out a low whistle. “Bio major, chem minor? That sounds painful.”
I hear the quiet pride in my own voice. “That’s a scientist.”
“What else does it say?”
I keep reading. “ ‘The Scion of Owain and Squire Harris found Ms. Carter and two other Onceborns (see file names Mitchell and Howard) near the ogof y… ddraig’? What is that?”
“Ogov uh thrah-eeg,” he corrects my pronunciation. “The Welsh ‘dd’ is the soft ‘th’ in ‘leather.’ It means ‘cave of the dragon.’ The cave is at the center of the tunnel network. Keep reading.”
“ ‘… near the ogof y ddraig, cornered by a hound. Once the creature was killed, the three Onceborns were taken into custody—’ ”
Sel sighs in frustration. “I’m sure they came willingly, too, after the shock of seeing a full-corp hellhound. Probably had to knock them out first.” I glare at him, and he shrugs. “It’s protocol.”
I release a steadying breath. “ ‘… taken into custody and brought back to the Lodge. Once their memories were altered, Ms. Carter and the others were monitored in chapter custody for one day to assure the mesmer had taken, and released. As with the other witnesses, Ms. Carter will be monitored during her time on campus by Order members and assigned a field Merlin when she graduates.’ ”
“What’s the rest?” Sel points to a table under the written summary.
I realize what the table is almost immediately. “Check-ins. They’re all dated like a log, with columns for date, time, location, and a short section for notes.” I point to one of the early rows. “ ‘May 1, 1995. 10:31 a.m. Undergraduate library, UNC-CH. Working with Ms. Carter on a group project final for our LING 207 class. Have spent several hours with her this week. Even with some gentle probing about campus events, she does not mention or recall last month’s attack.’ ”
Sel hums. “They didn’t just watch her, they tested her. How many entries are there?”