“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I snicker.
“Not even a little bit,” he says, taking a deep breath and stepping forward. He rests his hands along the sides of my arms and I look down, suddenly acutely aware that everything we see here isn’t even real. Our actual bodies are somewhere else—and they’re fading. Dominic clears his throat and continues, “You have powers no necromancer has ever had because you’ve been to the other side and returned.”
“And you had to bring me here to tell me that?” I say, incredulous. “I learned that a year and a half ago. This is ridiculous.”
“No, it’s not,” he says, dead serious. “You’re not just a necromancer, Autumn. You’ve evolved, and you have to figure out how to embrace it so you can break your family’s curse. That’s what this place is telling me. It’s what everything has been pointing toward—I just couldn’t make sense of it.”
“Evolved?” I mutter, clenching my jaw. “Into what, Dominic?”
He inhales, pinching the bridge of his nose. When he looks up, his eyes plead with me as he says, “A sin-eater.”
I can’t help it, I actually snort at him. “A what?”
“I didn’t make up the name, for crying out loud,” he says, defensively. “Look, I don’t know what being a sin-eater entails, I just know you are one. And it’s how you’re going to break the curse. That is what you still want, right?”
“Of course it is,” I snap.
“Then you need to learn to harness it. Whatever you did to evolve, it happened when you were a kid. Maybe that’s the problem. You won’t listen to me…but maybe you’ll take her more seriously,” Dominic says, tipping his chin upward.
I look over my shoulder, confused. Behind me, a little girl with red hair and hazel eyes stares expectantly back at me. The girl is me—or at least, seven year old me.
I turn back to Dominic with wide eyes and a creepy sense of déjà vu taking over me.
“When I first saw you back at Windhaven Academy, I couldn’t get the words veritas vos liberabit out of my head. You know this,” Dominic says, raising a hand to the ceiling. “But here’s the thing… I didn’t know why. I just knew that you needed the message. Of course, I knew instantly who you were. I knew there were things you didn’t know and needed to uncover. But that wasn’t what it was all about. Not really.”
“What do you mean?”
“Now I understand why. It’s a helluva lot deeper than your family history. It was about you specifically. About who you really are—what you really are and what you’re capable of doing,” he says quietly.
“And this revelation only came to you because you ‘leveled up?’” I say, shooting a sideways glance toward the little girl behind me. She’s still there, waiting patiently.
“Yes,” he says, point-blank. “Now, go. Get some answers. I’ll be ready to go back when you are.”
“But what about—?” I begin.
Dominic shrugs. “Them’s the rules. You gotta get your answers before we can go back.”
I groan, unable to make sense of anything he’s saying. However, there’s a fierce sense of curiosity and truth vibrating in the energy of the space.
“Fine,” I say. Gritting my teeth, I turn back to the little girl—the younger me.
Wordlessly, she raises her right arm, extending her hand to me. With a final glance at Dominic, I take her hand.
Instantly, the world around me shifts, falling away like a virtual reality that’s been completely altered. At first, I can’t see anything. It’s like the entire space has been erased and I’m surrounded by nothing but a beautiful, white light that emanates a sense of peace beyond anything I can comprehend. Yet, I’m not alone. I can still feel the warmth of a small hand in mine.
As the white light pulls back, I’m suddenly in a small, dank cavern. Water fills much of the space and it drips from the ceiling, walls, and pools across the bottom of the enclosure. I don’t know how I can see, since there’s no light source anywhere. Yet somehow I can, but I wish I couldn’t. Along the far side of the space is a stack of bodies—all children. All are in various states of decomposition. My body included.
Memories flood back to me and I’m acutely aware of the fact that this is the place where I died.
I remember the Vodník—the way his demeanor had changed after he got me away from the manor and the safety of my parents. He’d been so nice, telling me he’d show me a place where the mermaids lived. I’d believed him because I was trusting—too trusting.
The feeling of my soul when he had ripped it from my body, burns through my insides. He had wanted to collect it, stealing it away in his jar as a prize, just as he’d done to countless others.
I hadn’t let that happen, though. Something inside me had shifted and grown more powerful by not being bound to my body. It wasn’t my time yet and somehow, I knew that. I had tapped into something primal and expanded—breaking the rules. I refused to go into his container to be a part of his collection.
In that moment of clarity, a man was at my side, entering the cavern by way of his dark, smokey portal. His silver eyes held me like a warm embrace as he took my hand, guiding my soul away from the catastrophe the Vodník had created.
Wade’s father had been there—he’d been with me the day I died. He’d guided me to the other side, just as he was meant to. Only, when I got there, I couldn’t let go of the intense feeling I couldn’t stay. I had to return because I still had work to do.
It wasn’t meant to be this way…
We had sat on the edge of the pond, dangling our feet over the edge of the dock. For
