JADE
“Logan,”I say, his name coming out strangled when I speak it. “What does he mean bythe dead one?”
Logan just keeps his gaze locked on the Seer’s with the same measured calm he shows before stepping into the Scorched Circles, not turning to look at me at all as the Seer begins to speak.
“The Ashford bloodline. Old magic. Proud magic.” The Seer’s massive head tilts, studying him. “You were gifted with fire that burned strong and bright. You had a promising future mapped out before you.”
Tension coils in Logan’s shoulders, and his hands hang loose at his sides, deliberately relaxed.
“Then one night, that future was stolen.” The Seer’s ember eyes flare brighter. “You had just returned home from dinner with your parents. You went to your room, and forty-three seconds later, you heard a crash. Eight seconds after that, you were downstairs, staring at an assassin standing over their bodies.”
My nails dig into my palms hard enough to break skin.
“In your despair, you reached back and traveled through time itself,” the Seer says, his awe unmistakable. “You used magic born from a moment of grief so absolute that reality bent rather than let you break. But the gift was cruel in its infancy. Thirteen seconds was all you could grasp.”
Kieran inhales sharply from across the deck.
“Those thirteen seconds were enough for vengeance.” The Seer’s ember eyes dim, as though what he’s seeing disturbs even him. “You used them to kill the man who destroyed your world twenty-seven times.”
The silence that follows is absolute.
Then Kieran steps forward, his body coiled with barely restrained violence. “This entire time, you’ve known what was coming because you’d already lived it.”
Evie speaks before Logan can answer.
“You could have saved Oliver. You could have gone back and stopped it from happening.”
“I tried,” Logan says, and it comes out broken. “But it didn’t work. Some deaths can’t be changed.”
“Youtried?”The air around Evie shimmers with heat. “You tried and you couldn’t save my brother, but you could saveher?”She points at me, and the hatred in the gesture makes me flinch. “Because that’s how you saved her life during the Hydra trial, isn’t it? You traveled back in time. So why could you go back for Jade, but not for Oliver?”
Logan says nothing.
It’s Callie who explodes.
“You didn’t tell me.” She’s shaking, her hands balled into fists at her sides. “We were together forthree years,and you never told me you couldtravel through time?”
She can barely get out the last three words.
I can’t really blame her for that. The entire concept is hard to wrap my mind around, even after jumping back with him more times than I can count.
The Seer of Essence glides forward, and those burning red eyes fix on Logan with an intensity that makes my skin crawl.
“Now we will see what you truly are.”
Logan goes rigid.
“Your body stands before us,” the Seer says, colder now. “But life does not flow through it as it should.”
What?
“You carry dual magic. Fire from your mortal life, burned into your essence. It is strong and pure—the magic of a witch who trained himself to perfection.”
That part I understand. Logan’s fire has always been more controlled than anyone else’s at the academy. Not to mention that he can use it totravel back in time.
“Alongside the fire magic, there is air magic.” The Seer’s red eyes burn brighter. “Hidden beneath layers of careful control, it is the power that came when you sold your soul to the resurrected one.”
The words don’t make sense.