The Next Steps

Following Leonora Riordan into the house I hadn’t been in since Phoebe called it home wasn’t something I ever expected to do, especially not with Julian one side and Dante the other, Celeste slightly behind us. Anne being at the Gardens was a relief. If she’d seen me… things were complicated enough without her knowing I’d turned to the Riordans for help. With Julian and Dante also involved… I raked a hand through my hair. I’d made the best choice I could, logically. Emotionally, however, Anne would definitely not see it that way, considering her reaction to Dante’s very existence.

We went down into the basement, which had changed a lot. Fortunately none of the other Riordans noticed. My biggest worry was Samuel. I didn’t trust him for a number of reasons, the main one being his insistence Alexander should be the Riordan heir, because no father who’d ever made that argument hadn’t then managed to push their son into making terrible mistakes. Celeste rested a hand on my shoulder.

“Alexander will never be the Riordan heir.”

Blinking, I turned to look at her. “Can you read thoughts, Celeste?”

“No, but I can read souls, Titus, and when you remember something particularly painful it’s noticeable. At least to me. Considering where we are that made the most sense. You’re worried about Father, because it’s not the first time there’s been a Riordan son, but Alex isn’t like the others. He has our support to make the choices he wants to make when it comes to his own life.”

Slowly, I nodded, trying to wrap my mind around what Celeste was capable of. I looked at Julian, who shrugged. “What I could do then and what I’m capable of now are very different things, Titus.” He raked a hand through his hair. “Celeste was born with those skills. I saw bonds. Given time I might have been able to see what she can, but I had months to learn, Titus, while Celeste has had years.”

My fault. I sighed, running my tongue over my bottom lip. “Jules, I am sorry.”

“Titus, you were sorry the moment you did it.” Julian’s eyes met with mine. “I understand why you made the choice you did, and I think, had I been in your position, I’d have done the same thing.” He shrugged. “Like I said it would be the bond was stronger than you, which… I forgave you a long time ago, because you’re not the same person you were then.”

“Even though I’m not I know what I’m capable of, Jules, and that…” I closed my eyes. “Being here, with you, is something I did for a reason. There were other possibilities, but I don’t want to make the same choices I did before.”

“You didn’t harm Elias.”

“Didn’t I?” Jules rolled his eyes. “If I’d stepped in sooner…”

“We both know it’s far more complicated than that, Titus.” His eyes locked on mine. “Tell me why you didn’t.”

Painful emotions swirled around us, and I knew everyone else was looking, Dante showing signs he knew something about Elias. “Anne needed to be free to make her own choice.” I bit down hard on my bottom lip, because I wasn’t going to cry in front of Dante or Leonora. “Only then…” Swallowing around the lump of emotion in my throat, I breathed slowly, trying to calm them. “What he attempted wasn’t a Certainty.” From the way Jules stared at me I knew he didn’t entirely believe me. “Honestly, Jules, it wasn’t. He might have made a different decision, and had he done…”

“Anne would have left Marren Vale.”

“For a time, yes, and she’d have had a chance to live.”

“Only for her to then end up losing her children, Titus. There’s a reason you made the choices you did.”

“I know.” Getting angry wasn’t going to change anything. “Nothing about the decisions I had to make during that time was easy. Anne, I believed, was falling in love with Elias. Had I stepped in I’d have caused more problems than I solved. She knows I didn’t shred his soul.”

“There was an Anne who made other choices.”

Of course Papa showed Jules that. “Yes, but that’s not my Anne. She knows me.”

“Fortunately, yes, she does. The bigger problem is the fact she’s in love with you.”

Both Leonora and Celeste looked between us, not seeming as disgusted as I expected. “Souls are complicated.” Leonora, of all people, stepped closer to me, eyes on mine. “Do you love her?”

Honesty was the right choice. “I’ve always loved her, since the beginning.” Eyes on the floor, it was easier than looking at Leonora, I ran my tongue over my bottom lip. “Papa didn’t want me to be Anne’s lover, because he could only see us as siblings.”

“Did you ever stop to think about what you wanted?” Leonora’s eyes met with mine when I looked at her. “Clearly not. It was always Anne.”

“Yes, it was always Anne.” There was an annoyance in my voice which made her smile. “No one else could have done what I did.”

Unexpectedly the smile grew. “Maybe not, Titus, but that doesn’t mean I’m not right. You don’t know what you want, do you? There was a plan.” She glanced at Dante. “You keep Anne alive with the soulbond until the day comes when her soulmate steps into Marren Vale, because it’s what Thaddeus wanted. It was simple, only we both know it wasn’t, because you’re here now, wanting to talk to Celeste, and there’s a reason for that.”

“She deserves the truth.” I stared at nothing. “Due to the vow I can’t give her that, unless someone like Celeste is there, because I know what will happen. Papa was strong, so if I break the vow my soul will be shredded. There’d a chance Celeste won’t even be able to help, but I want Anne to finally be able to make an informed choice. Anne technically loves a man who doesn’t exist.”

“Fool.” I didn’t look at Jules. “She absolutely loves a man who exists.” He stepped in front of me so I had no choice. “Titus, I wouldn’t be here if that man didn’t.”

“Julian…”

“No, we aren’t going to have this argument. You have made mistakes. I’m not going to pretend otherwise. That doesn’t mean Anne loves a man who isn’t in there.” He tapped my chest, the temptation to do something I couldn’t undo stronger than it had been, but I was somewhere I couldn’t let that out. “Being unwilling to admit it, because you’ve made some very dark choices in order to get us to this point, doesn’t change anything, especially when you look at me like that. Do you really think I don’t know what it means?”

“How do I tell her what I did to you?”

“Anne knows.” I shook my head. “Well, at the very least she suspects, Titus, because you can’t lie to her without her being able to tell. She chose not to push, for a reason. There’s always been more. From the very first life you lived there was so much you couldn’t tell her, and she chose not to this time too, out of love.”

“Love is not going to magically fix everything.” I looked at Dante. “Seeing her reaction to you… I thought she’d fall in love with you the moment she saw you, only she didn’t, and I know that’s my fault.”

“Who created the soulbond?”

“Technically that was my father.” Jules answered for me, hand on my shoulder. “It was Thaddeus’s idea, because there was no other way to protect Anne, and he wanted it to be Titus, until he realised Titus fell in love with Anne. As far as Thaddeus was concerned you were the final solution.”

“Only I’m not. If Anne doesn’t want me…”

“Even then it’s more complicated than that.” Jules sighed. “The soulbond, as I said it would be, is far stronger than the soulmate bond. Whoever had it would be in this position.”

“Yes, and then there’s the fact there’s another bond.” I turned to look at Celeste. “The soulbond, which was created; the soulmate bond, the natural solution Thaddeus believed would be how Anne was finally protected, even though that was foolish to begin with; and then there’s a third natural bond, between you and Anne, Titus. When you said about there being a break in time…” She ran her tongue over her bottom lip. “From what I can tell it’s the oldest of the three bonds.”

Blinking, I glanced at Jules, who nodded. “Celeste is right, Titus. There is a third bond. I saw it before, but I thought it existed due to the relationship you already had with Anne. Even though you weren’t siblings you had been brought up together. Over time it’s changed in such a way there has to be another reason for it.”

Unable to think about what that meant, not right then, I remembered what I needed to do for Dante. I stepped over to him. “How about we stop talking about me for a short time, and I learn a little more about who you are?” From the way he bit down on his bottom lip I knew he wasn’t certain of the choice he was about to make. “You have my word I won’t do anything to harm you.” Magic swirled around us again, his eyes meeting with mine. “Learning about ourselves is the first step when it comes to understanding our magics.”

Slowly, he nodded. “What happens if I am related to Jacob?”

“Well, it means you’re meant to be on the Council, because both Jacob and Gabriel were. Gabriel was, until Anne helped him through the wards.” Dante’s eyebrow lifted. “After Elias I let Anne do what she felt was best, within reason. Losing Gabriel from the ritual changed very little, but it made her happy, so it was worth it.”

There was a flicker of something in Dante’s eyes, Anne would have read his emotions better than I could, and I put a hand on his shoulder. “Gabriel was in love with Anne. It’s hard. For lifetimes I’ve watched as different mages fell in love with her, never believing for a moment she actually had feelings for me. Being here now isn’t any easier for you. Unfortunately there’s nothing I can do to change what is, but maybe you can still find a place in Marren Vale.”

Dante shook his head. “I came here for Anne, believing I needed to save her.”

For a second, those words meaning more than Dante realised, I looked back at Jules, who shrugged. “Let me look, and then we’ll talk about what I think it means that you feel that way.”

Also shrugging, Dante’s eyes met with mine. “You’ll just look?”

“I’m not him. At least I don’t think I am. There were others.” I closed my eyes, back in the birthplace once more, surrounded by hundreds of possibilities. “Every one of us went through different experiences, Dante. Anne… she was my reason to keep going. However she was also the reason for so many others, and it wasn’t just me.” Glancing back at Jules again, he nodded. “Jules had hundreds of futures, some where he’d be a far more dangerous problem, and I’m not going to pretend we don’t still have our issues, but I don’t think he’s going to try to steal my body.”

Jules blinked. “I did that?”

“Somewhere else, yes, Jules, you did.” I smiled. “Dante?”

He nodded, and I gently touched his arm, letting myself connect with him. Most Seers couldn’t do what I did in that moment, following a bloodline to understand more about the person in front of them. I ran my tongue over my bottom lip. A Redfern Diaz. Studying Dante more closely than before I saw hints of Jacob. There was a preference for the Diazes, especially in the eyes, but the cheekbones made me think Jacob. Both loved Anne. Jacob being alive… I didn’t understand why he hadn’t returned to Marren Vale, because it made sense for him to blame me for what happened.

“No wonder you dreamed of Anne, Dante. You are related to two different Seers.”

“Jacob Redfern, and Mateo Diaz.” As Jules stepped closer, fascination filled his voice. “We always knew the soulmate would be magically strong, but for Jacob to have survived…” He glanced at me. “You travelled to before Marren Vale was flooded with magic.”

Even though it wasn’t a question I nodded. “For Jacob to learn the most. He believed it was the best option, and I couldn’t say no, because if I did he’d try to make the journey alone, which… Anne would never have forgiven me if I wasn’t there. Getting through Jacob’s loss… had she not been able to tell whether or not I was lying it might have broken us. Luckily she knew I wasn’t the reason for what happened, but not being able to find him… that nearly did.”

“Why did you try?”

“Anne needed me to.” My eyes met with Dante’s. “She hated the thought of Jacob being lost at a time we struggled to survive through.”

“Now, though, it means Jacob is immortal.” Jules said the very words I didn’t want to, because there was more than that. “Along with incredibly powerful. If he wanted to take over the Council he could, easily.”

“The question becomes why he hasn’t. He loved Anne.” I raked a hand through my hair. “Unless he was more changed by the magic than I thought he could be. Going back… I warned him it could kill him, if he was still in Marren Vale when the flood happened, and he told me he was strong enough to deal with it.”

“Seers can’t See other Seers, but they can See themselves.”

“Technically, yes, but it’s much more complicated than that.”

Celeste stepped closer then, her hand on my shoulder, and it was warmer than I expected. “We can go around in these circles all day, but you came here for a reason, Titus, so I think it might be best to focus on that for a time. You want me to talk to Anne.”

“Honestly, I’m not sure I’d say want, Celeste.” I turned to look at her, eyes meeting. “It’s necessary, but she’s in a complicated place emotionally, mostly because of me…”

“Mostly because of Thaddeus.” I looked at Jules. “Yes, she knows. Anne is not a fool. She’s furious with him for what he did to you.”

“I made the decision to become soulbonded to her.”

“Doesn’t change anything.” He turned to Celeste too. “Anne will forgive Titus anything, and that’s not just due to the soulbond. She understands better than he realises the choices he made in order to be by her side throughout this. He gave up his future to try to get to this point, believing Anne was going to choose her soulmate, because it was what Thaddeus desperately needed to be the final solution. Not Titus.”

“Only Titus is the final solution.” Celeste saying those words sent a shiver down my spine, and I shook my head, which just made her look at me in amusement. “Anne’s the Heart, without her there is no magic. The ritual is slowly destroying both your souls. Clearly there has to be another solution, one Thaddeus didn’t See, due to his own biases.”

“Possibly, yes.”

“None of the bonds can survive without the ritual.” She studied me. “Even the soulmate bond. What did Thaddeus believe the next step was?”

“By that point his journal had descended into scribbles.” I ran my tongue over my dry lips again. “The more time he spent searching for a solution the more damage he did to his soul, Celeste, and I don’t know if he ever accepted he’d not found the final solution. By that point we weren’t really talking. Sometimes Anne would sit with him, she saw more than he wanted her to, doing her best to help him deal with his emotions. None of us said that was what she did. He’d have reacted badly.”

“He barely left the house after the soulbond was created.” Jules’s voice was distant, like he was back there, seeing Thaddeus as he was. “I was welcome to visit whenever, so I did, and that… he’d broken himself entirely to try to find the final solution. When I spoke to him I barely got any sense.” Glancing at me, our eyes meeting, I nodded. “Both of us knew it was what Anne would become without the soulbond.”

For a moment I looked down, wondering if I brought up my hypothesis. It made sense, but… neither of us knew what came before, so I might be wrong. Only then Jules was studying me. He knew me better than anyone.

“Share what you’re thinking, Titus.”

“I know, for certain, there’s a break in time, and Anne is the Heart. She’s the Heart in every Possibility I have ever Seen. Even in the birthplace of magic, where I could See so much more, it was Anne, unless she died, which… it hasn’t happened. Here I don’t think it ever will. Knowing her soul is too weak to hold all the power of the Heart… I might be entirely wrong, but I think she split, to make certain there was a Heart in every Marren Vale. Whatever happened she was the one who mitigated the damage. I don’t believe it could be undone, so this is where we are.”

Unsurprisingly, silence followed my words. Jules slowly nodded, he was there at the beginning and shared what Thaddeus Saw, so if anyone was likely to believe me it was him. I looked at Celeste. She was the one I cared more about, because she was Anne’s friend. Being there… it was weird. There was no other word for it. At the same time it felt like it was the right choice, for everyone. With my focus on Celeste I didn’t notice Leonora, who stepped closer to me, putting a hand on my shoulder.

“What happens if Anne dies, Titus? Now, if we don’t find a way.”

“Magic fades from the world. I don’t think she would die. The more likely possibility is she becomes like Thaddeus, and that… I will never let it happen. Whatever it takes I will save her.”

“You aren’t alone.” Emotions more conflicted than before, Leonora saying those words was something I could never have imagined possible, I looked at her. “Titus, we will find a way. For both of you.” She rested her forehead on mine. “I am sorry.”

“Leonora…”

“No, you deserve this. How I acted… I assumed, and that wasn’t fair.” Her arms wrapped around me. “You are not alone now.”

Crying in front of Leonora was another of those things I’d never imagined, but I did then, resting my head on her shoulder. “It’s been a long time.”

“Do you know enough to talk to Anne?”

“Yes, enough, although I won’t be able to answer all her questions, and that, I think, is for the best. Then she has a reason to ask Titus, or Julian, because Titus risks his soul.”

“For her I’d do it.”

“That doesn’t mean you should, Titus.” Celeste shook her head. “You are her other half, because she chose you. I think that bond… it was a choice, although I don’t think she knew she was making it. Everyone here is linked to her in some way, even Mama, and that… it’s partly due to her being the Heart, but there’s more to this story I don’t think we’re ever going to learn.”

“Unless…” Jules’s eyes met with mine. “You might find the answer if you go with Anne to the birthplace of magic.”