Immortal Reign(19)

His eyes, though, betrayed his true age. They were ancient.

“Welcome, Jonas,” Timotheus said.

Jonas glanced around, seeing nothing but the grassy field stretched out in all directions. “I figured you were done with me.”

“Not yet.”

Jonas turned to meet Timotheus’s gaze fully, refusing to be intimidated by this immortal. “I defied your prophecy. Lucia is still alive.”

“Yes, she is. And she had a child—a daughter named Lyssa, whose eyes glow with violet light on occasion.” Timotheus nodded at Jonas’s shocked look. “I have ways of knowing many things, so let’s not waste time retreading what has already occurred. The child is of great interest to me, but she’s not why I need to speak with you now.”

Fresh resentment coursed through Jonas. These otherworldly immortals spent centuries watching mortals through the eyes of hawks but provided little in the way of actual help. He preferred it when Watchers were only myth and legend he could ignore at will, not an annoying reality.

Jonas paced nervously back and forth. This didn’t feel like a dream. In a dream, everything seemed hazy, and hard to grasp on to.

Here, he could feel the mossy ground beneath his feet, the warm sunlight on his face. He could smell the flowers that surrounded them as fragrant as those in his sister Felicia’s small garden.

Roses, he thought. But sweeter somehow. More like the sugar crisps he’d enjoyed as a rare treat as a young boy, made by a kind woman in his village.

He shook his head to clear it of the distracting sensations all around him.

“Then you know the Kindred are free,” he said. “Two of them, anyway. And Cleo and Taran . . . they’re in trouble. Great trouble.” He paused to rub his forehead hard. “Why did you let that happen?”

Timotheus turned his face away from Jonas’s accusatory glare. There was nothing in the distance for him to focus on; the lush green field seemed to go on and on forever in all directions. “Does Lucia have possession of all four crystal orbs?”

“Why should I tell you anything when you seem to know it all?”

“Tell me,” Timotheus said as harshly as he’d ever said anything before.

Something lurched in Jonas’s chest, something strange and unpleasant that reminded him of Lucia’s ability to draw the truth out of him whether he wished to speak it or not.

“She has three,” he bit out. “Amber, moonstone, and obsidian. The obsidian orb had a crack in it, I’m told. But it doesn’t anymore.”

“It healed itself,” Timotheus said.

“I don’t know. I would guess it did.”

Timotheus’s brows drew together. “What about the aquamarine orb?”

Again, Jonas felt a strange compulsion to reply with the truth. “Cleo has that one.”

“She can touch it without great difficulty?”

“No, she . . . carries it with her in a pouch,” Jonas replied.

Timotheus nodded, his expression contemplative. “Very well.”

The strange, magical grip on Jonas’s throat eased. “Do you have any idea how irritating it is to be lied to and manipulated?”

“Yes. Actually, I do.” Timotheus, his arms crossed over his chest, began to walk a slow circle around Jonas, peering at the rebel with narrowed eyes.

“If you know everything,” Jonas said, “you’ll know Lucia’s in mourning for her brother. If you want her to help you stop Kyan, you could tell us where Magnus is—and whether there’s any chance he’s still alive.”

“You care about someone you wanted dead not so long ago?”

That was a trickier question than he’d like it to be. “I care that Lucia is in pain. And Magnus . . . for all his faults . . . he could be useful in the coming war.”

“The war against the Kindred.”

He nodded. “Against the Kindred. Against the empress. Against anything that comes our way in the future.”

“I’m not here for that.”

Jonas hissed out a breath of frustration. “Then what are you here for?”

Timotheus didn’t speak for a moment. Jonas realized that despite the immortal’s eternal youth, he looked tired and drawn, as if he hadn’t slept in weeks.

Do immortals even need sleep? he wondered.

“This is almost over,” Timotheus finally said, and Jonas could have sworn he heard pain edging his words.

“What is almost over?”

“My watch.” Timotheus sighed, and with his hands clasped behind his back, he began moving again through the long grass. He looked up at the sunless but bright blue sky. “I was created to watch over the Kindred, watch over mortals, watch over those of my own kind . . . I have failed in all regards. I inherited Eva’s visions, and they’ve been no use to me other than to see a thousand versions of what might be. And now it has come to this.”

“To what?” Jonas prompted.

“A small handful of allies that I’ve enlisted to foolishly fight against fate itself. I saw you in my visions, Jonas, years ago. I saw that you would be useful to me. And I’ve come to realize that that you are one of the few mortals I can trust.”

“Why me?” Jonas asked, stunned. “I . . . I’m nobody. I’m the son of a Paelsian wine seller. I stupidly joined a war against a good king and helped put Mytica into the hands of the King of Blood. I’ve led friends to their deaths because of my idiotic choices to rebel against that king. I’ve lost everything I’ve ever cared about. And now I have this strange magic inside me . . .” He rubbed his chest where the spiral mark had appeared only a month ago. “And it’s useless to me. I can’t properly channel it at will to help anyone or anything—not even myself!”