Sethios considered the evidence, recalling every word his father had said. Osiris thrived on strategy, his decisions and words always uttered with his own best interest in mind.
It was possible that he’d meant to send them on a fool’s errand while he crafted a trap to take them all. Yet he hadn’t provided enough information to truly give them anything.
“Who else would have been looking for her?” Sethios wondered out loud, thinking through Gabriel’s comment suggesting someone had already saved her from the ocean floor.
“That’s not what worries me,” the Seraphim replied. “It’s who had the ability to find her that is a greater concern.”
Sethios stared at him as a conversation from the past filtered through his mind. One that had occurred shortly after Astasiya’s birth. Caro’s bloodline made her untraceable. He frowned. “She said you could track her.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “I should be able to. Yet, I’ve not been able to feel her since shortly after Osiris disposed of her in the ocean. I thought it was because she’s underground. Now I’m wondering if something else has been interfering with my ability to track her this entire time.”
“Are you suggesting that she hasn’t been drowning these last eighteen years? That she’s been somewhere else entirely?” Even as the questions left his lips, the possibility of them being correct filtered through his thoughts. “Is that why I can’t feel her?”
Osiris’s compulsion not to move his legs was all that kept Sethios standing.
Fuck. Me.
“But you and Astasiya dream of her,” he said, speaking his thoughts out loud. “She’s sending you visions.”
“Is she?” Gabriel asked, his expression showing the first signs of emotion. “Or is it a loop meant to distract us?”
“A loop?”
“A memory feed,” he elaborated. “We need to evaluate the visions. We need to evaluate everything.” He looked at his watch, then back at Sethios. “There’s only one other being who has the ability to find my mother.”
“Caro’s mother,” Sethios said, recalling the other individual from that discussion twenty-five years ago. “But I thought Leela was monitoring the council.” That’d been her job and the reason she’d refused to pledge fealty to Astasiya. “She was supposed to tell us if they decided to wake Caro’s mother from her angelic coma.”
“Correct, she’s our eyes and ears inside,” Gabriel said softly, frowning down at his watch again. “Just as she’s supposed to be monitoring my alerts.”
Sethios’s legs twitched, the persuasion holding him in place snapping with a jolt of residual energy. His father had completely released him and Gabriel, allowing them to move their legs again.
Gabriel misted as though to test his wings, then he reappeared in his corporeal state. “We should check on Skye. Then we need to have a discussion with Leela. And after that, we’ll evaluate all the dreams. Because if Osiris is right about today’s vision being a memory, then I suspect the others are as well.”
Sethios swallowed, his heart in his throat.
All week, he’d sensed that something was seriously wrong. He should be able to at least feel Caro, yet the only tangible thread between them was the barbed wire shredding holes in his heart.
He’d worried it was because she’d blocked him out because of the pain.
But what if that wasn’t it at all? What if someone, or something, had severed their bond?
Oh, angel… His heart broke all over again. Where the fuck are you?
Caro felt nothing. Not the cold metal chair beneath her. Not the stale air of the room. Not the heat of the sun warming the window.
She merely existed in a fog.
Forgotten.
No, that wasn’t right. She hadn’t been forgotten at all. But she needed her mind to remain clear. Open. Vacant. It was the only way to operate here.
They were all inside her, their powers rehabilitating her Seraphim soul, trying to re-create the being she should be. She allowed it. Accepted it. Encouraged it.
Because deep within, she’d found a small fracture in the programming, and she didn’t want them to locate her current whereabouts.
Deep within her psyche.
Exploring.
Tugging.
Gently prodding the memory loop that’d been inserted into the link. It took all of her mental strength not to flinch at her own agony, the visual one that left her breathless and terrified.
Seraphim do not feel.
Seraphim do not love.
Seraphim do not react.
She whispered the words through her mind, feigning a pretense of giving in to the reprogramming of her soul while reminding herself of the battle existing within her.
So much power. So much authority. So much weight.
Caro strove for focus, finding the thread she desired, the one that would connect her to the forbidden place.
Quiet.
Slow.
Easy.
She couldn’t afford to give anything away, and there were so many of them around her, all reprimanding in nature. They wanted her to conform. To change. To be the Seraphim of her past.
Caro was no one.
She ceased to be.
A vessel of magic. A being to be owned.
Those thoughts rolled through the front of her mind, an intoxicating presence of reformation. She didn’t fight. Not obviously, anyway. Instead, she quietly retreated to that place she craved, the one she shouldn’t touch. Every time she altered a contrived memory, the message changed. She couldn’t risk it being too much, or one of them would notice. But the feed was on a loop.
Caro drowning.
Caro crying.
Caro screaming in agony.
It all felt centuries old to her. She couldn’t even feel the water now or remember how it’d suffocated her. Yet the pain remained as a visceral scar against her heart.
She crept forward, wishing to leave another footprint, hoping to be able to alter a sentence or a phrase.
How many times had she died and regenerated?
The loop only showed a handful of memories, causing her to wonder how long she’d actually been at the bottom of the ocean. Minutes? Hours? Days? Months?
Did it truly matter?
No. Not really. She had a mission in mind, a memory to tweak, a way to—
A spike of presence had Caro blanking her mind once more.
One of them was checking on her increased mental activity.
Seraphim do not feel.
Seraphim do not love.
Seraphim do not react.
She took a shallow breath, falling back into line, far away from that precious place. There would be no altering today. Not with him in her mind, poking around to search for any faults in her rehabilitation.
Silence overcame her.
Calmness.
Nothingness.
Caro no longer existed.
No bonds.
No family.
No love.
Just a Seraphim soul, floating… floating away.
Time no longer held meaning.
Caro was reborn. Died. Reborn again.
Drowning without water.
Flushed from her body and reattached once more.
Did it hurt? Maybe. She couldn’t sense anything, her mind existing in a stratosphere removed from her spirit.
Not true. They were connected in a way. Blinking. Swaying. Dying again.