Page 110 of Divine Oaths

“That is your way. Not ours,” Angelica said. “If you won’t help, then stay out of our way.”

Wind whipped in the air, and the sky roared as clouds began to form.

“Wraiths can control the weather?” I screamed, struggling to stand.

“They can control spaces in the environment in which they passed. For Luke, that’s here. See how only this area is touched by his rage?”

Just as she’d said, farther in the swamp, the trees and the earth and everything else were calm while here in the clearing, a near monsoon was beginning to form.

The wind howled and the clouds churned in violent tremors as rain drenched the clearing, pounding against our bodies like we were more earth than flesh. It’d been like this in the swamp waters, when Kasem had become his wraith form. His powers had manifested through sorrow. But Luke was rage, all-consuming, broken and vengeful.

I crawled to the closest tree for safety while Kasem searched for Luke’s relic, tearing through weeds and digging through the ground, the rain soaking every inch of him too. I closed my eyes, channeling my powers through the tree, searching in time for an answer.

The vision came in flashes, like strobe lights steeped in images. Luke running through the swamp like the others, and then two crows tackling him, laughing and shrieking as they stripped him of his silver shirt and jeans. They left him in his boxers and tied Sigma’s silver rope around his wrists and ankles.

Something fell to the ground with a soft thud, and then one of the crows pushed Luke. Just before Luke’s piercing screams cut through the swamp, there was a sharp crack. His glasses. When the crow had pushed Luke he’d fallen, and the glasses broke against Luke’s skin, slicing his flesh like an omen of what was to come.

In the present, something sharp and thin pierced my palm. I pulled myself back from my vision and I picked it up: one of the shattered lenses of his glasses.

“I found it!” I screamed. Or at least a piece of his relic.

But the frames were shattered, utterly destroyed. Unrepairable.

“Use your powers,” Angelica urged, fighting to reach Luke, struggling against the onslaught of the wind and the storm and the leaves and the branches.

My nerves were on fire. I trembled as I gathered the muddy shards of Luke’s broken lenses. Vivian was trying to speak to Luke and calm him.

“Don’t forget who you are, Luke. Don’t let your pain and your grief strip you of your humanity.”

But he raged and raged in a violent fury.

Beside me, Kasem watched everything unfold with an empty gaze, his fist clenched, lost in his mind, in the horrors of his own thoughts.

“Help me,” I said to him. “Kasem, I need to rewind time so the lenses are restored.”

He blinked back to reality and relief washed over me.

“What do you need me to do?”

“If I can repair the lenses—”

“Which you can,” he said, the words both a question and a tentative show of encouragement. I appreciated his belief in me, as uncertain as it was. That was more belief than I had that I could fix this.

“It’s going to take a lot of energy for me to do it,” I continued. “Someone will need to reunite the lenses with Luke’s remains.” This wasn’t just rewinding time like I had with Kasem’s wound. This meant unraveling the threads of it so that each shard of the lens found its match and soldered together.

Honey grabbed Angelica, helping her stand as the two approached Luke, getting closer to retrieving his finger. But Kasem was the closest between the two of us.

“Get on my back.”

“What?”

“There are alligators here,” he said. “If you pass out after channeling, I won’t leave you.”

I won’t leave you. As in, it wasn’t a question for him. It was a decision. He wouldn’t try to reunite the relic with Luke’s remains if it meant I would be left exposed and in danger.

I spotted yellow eyes circling us, emerging from the swamp. Silver scales glistened, and I recognized the creature as the same one that had killed Luke. But, seeing it now in the light, it was apparent that the rays of sunlight reflected off its skin, not like a human or a ghost. A wraith, just like Honey had said.

“He guards the swamp and kills trespassers.”