“Maybe she was?” Sophia shrugged. “For a little while, anyway. I mean, it makes sense to pretend to be your friend while they haze you, in a sadistic sort of way. But when you gained some popularity on the show, maybe she tried to switch things up to get some screen time with you. Until she thought you were bonded to her crush, that is. Then I supposed she had to weigh up whether the screen time was worth it.”
“You know the game pretty well for someone who isn’t even playing it.”
“Girl.” She laughed. “Everyone knows how this game works. At Ironside, you’re predator or you’re prey. There’s no in between. And the prey? Well … they never make it very far, do they? I’m surprised you’re still kicking.”
“I’m not prey.”
Sophia poured hot water into the mugs, setting one on the far edge of the counter before carrying the others to the small, circular dining table. Luis ducked out from the hallway, grabbing the third mug and hovering by the counter indecisively.
“Those Alphas are definitely trying to push you into the predator category, especially with all that ‘initiation’ crap Sato started a little while ago,” Sophia allowed, pulling out a chair and plopping into it, folding her legs as she blew on her tea. “It’s pretty obvious what he was trying to do. But you aren’t there yet. Maybe the Vermont attack was just the push you needed.”
Isobel sat, pulling her mug closer, fiddling with the tag from the teabag as Luis approached his sister’s side, eyes fixed on Isobel as he nervously fiddled with his overlong sleeves.
“Anyway”—Sophia waved a hand as though to disperse the topic—“you said you didn’t have long. What is it you wanted to ask?”
“These soul artefacts.” Isobel touched the links through her shirt. “What do they do?”
Sophia grinned like she approved of the question. “Literally anything. It entirely depends on the god who gifted it to you. If you believe that kind of thing.”
“Which we do,” Luis squeaked. “It’s really real.”
“I thought the Guardian said it was from the woman in the picture?” Isobel asked, switching her gaze between them.
“Aphelina?” Sophia clicked her tongue. “I find that hard to believe. You were gifted the chain before you even knew who your mate was. Her gifts are usually preoccupied with love and desire, so if you were gifted the chain when you were alone, then there’s no reason for it to be from her.”
Well, that answered that question. If it was all real, then Aphelina had been trying to matchmake her and Sato. Which could only mean one thing.
The Gifted goddess of love was a terrible matchmaker.
“And now?” Isobel dropped her hand. “What does it mean that it’s doing this?”
“May I?” Sophia brushed her hand through her brother’s inky mop of hair before she stood, rifling through the kitchen drawers to pull out a magnifying glass.
Isobel hesitated.
“It’s okay,” Luis said shyly, slipping into a third chair. “Sophie—” He pronounced it like Sof-ee. “—is really good at this. Even better than Mama.”
“I’m just a Soul Keeper,” Sophia quickly inserted, shaking her head at Luis. “I’ve got a long way to go to be a Guardian.”
She hovered until Isobel finally sighed and nodded, turning in her chair, and pulling the neckline of her shirt down. Sophia hovered the magnifying glass over the chain, making thoughtful sounds every now and then as she examined it. She was more thorough than Isobel expected.
“It doesn’t like me,” she noted with a laugh, pulling her hand back quickly like the metal had given her a little zap. She fell back into her chair, placing the magnifying glass on the table and folding her arms over her chest to stare narrowly at a spot just below Isobel’s collarbone, apparently deep in thought.
Luis watched her, waiting expectantly, some of his shyness melting away to be replaced by a bashful eagerness. Isobel wasn’t sure how to feel about all of this. Her father was scathing when he spoke about the Gifted religion and the “stupid fanatics” who still followed it. But on the other hand, a lot had been happening recently that she couldn’t explain. She was seeing ghosts. She had ten mates.
And now her body was producing light and gold … which seemed to have a mind of its own.
It was all a bit too much.
“I don’t know.” Sophia sighed, but the look on her face told a different story.
“You have an idea,” Isobel prompted.
Sophia winced. “It’s not any of the nice gods, let’s put it that way.”
“The only god I know is … Artos? Artus?”
“Arterus,” she corrected easily. “The King of Gods. It could be from him, but there’s no historical record of him giving gifts to mortals, so I doubt it. And it wouldn’t make sense for him to give a gift so strongly associated with Aphelina, like the chain.”
“Historical record?” Isobel asked doubtfully.
Sophia smirked, surveying her metallic blue nails. Some of the blue beads on her bracelets were the exact same shade. “They can’t ban books or art from any of the Guardians’ collections. They’re classified as religious artefacts. You know, because it’s a dead religion and all that.”
Something sparked inside Isobel, a feverish need to get her hands on some of those artefacts, but she didn’t trust Sophia enough to ask. Especially since Isobel’s main research interests were focussed on Alphas going feral and Sigmas seeing dead people.
“Stygian!” Luis suddenly exclaimed, slapping his hands onto the table with an excited gasp. “It’s Stygian, isn’t it?”
Sophia winced again. “Yeah, I think it is.”
“Which god is that?” Isobel asked nervously.
Sophia pulled up from her chair, disappearing into the other room for a moment and returning with a huge tome. It had a thick spine and faded gold edges, but it was clearly very well used. She found the page she was looking for and set it onto the table in front of Isobel, tapping the image of an hourglass on the first page. It was half filled with twinkling, airy light and half filled with twisting, menacing shadow, the two mixing at the waist of the hourglass like coloured smoke.
“Stygian,” Sophia announced. “The Duskfall Warden. He maintains the balance between dark and light. He’s very powerful, and … terrifying. People who don’t understand how the Gifted religion works sometimes call him the God of Mysteries.”
Isobel scanned the paragraphs detailing Stygian’s power, skipping over to the next page, where it showed an illustration of a man with eyes like stars—a bright galaxy of light twinkling through his stare, though it wasn’t a peaceful expression. It was hard and fierce, most of his delicate face cast into heavy shadow, his skin a meld of deep ebony and shadowed dusk. He wore strings of stars around his neck and held an apple in each hand. One was rotten, with worms crawling through the brown flesh. The other sparkled with vibrant colour, its skin flawless, a fuzzy green leaf unfurling from its stem.
“Why would a god of mystery make my chain turn into some sort of … piercing?” Isobel sat back from the page, her stomach churning, her head feeling heavy.