Page 101 of Xantera
“What people?” Claudia asks with a darker tone to her voice.
Standing, I fluff out the skirt of my dress. No one moves as I step toward the door.
“Well, are you coming?” I ask, turning around.
Tristan scrambles to his feet.
“Not you. Claudia.”
Claudia takes a moment, her eyebrows creasing deeper. “Where?”
“To prove myself.”
Maybe she doesn’t want to know the truth, Lucan offers, which makes me pause.
“Only if you want,” I add sincerely.
Geo shrugs. Andreas bounces his eyes between everyone. Victor isn’t paying attention. And Tristan pouts.
Patiently, I wait—the room seems to freeze in place, everyone held in a moment of uneasiness—until, finally, Claudia rises slowly without a word and follows me out the room.
My steps are quick, purposeful. I know exactly which path to take, down the identical hallways, up the thousandth staircase.
Claudia, half-intrigued, half-skeptical, stays right on my heels with her anticipation palpable against my back.
I don’t even bother trying to step lightly when we come to the last set of stairs. I’d tell Arad to his face that I discovered the effectsof his venom, and I’d know he’d laugh inmyface and ask me what it feels like to see into my future.
Knocking lightly on Sylvia’s door, I try to prepare Claudia before I open it.
“Her name is Sylvia. She can barely move, and she’s hard of hearing, so try to enunciate so she can read your lips.”
Claudia’s face tightens with a hint of fear, like whoever we’re about to encounter could rip her head off.
In a moment of panic, I question whether this is the right thing to do. If you could see the future, would you actually choose to know when and how you were going to die? Or would you just live every day to the fullest?
The problem is, though, I’m not sure this is living. And Claudia could have easily discovered this herself if she’d just cared about her fellow Chosen Ones. Their suffering has always been only ten floors above her head. All she’s had to do is look up and see.
Clenching my jaw, I push open the door.
The light from the tiny window cuts a sunbeam across the room, the dust illuminated as it hangs in the air.
And the tiny bed in the middle of the room is…
Empty.
Nothing but a bare mattress—no trace of Sylvia except the outline of her body pressed into it like a stone stamp.
My gasp claws out of my throat, my voice ragged and stilted. “No.”
“Where is she?” Claudia whispers over my shoulder, surveying the room like someone still might pop out of the blank walls.
“No,”I sob out again, rushing over to the side of the bed. “She’s… gone.”
I can’t bring myself to say it—dead—but I know in my bones that her fossilization must have reached its last phase. In a way, she died on my watch—just like her father.
As I fall to the mattress, Claudia watches me intensely, chewing on the inside of her cheek in shock. Unsure of what to say, what to do.
I’m sorry, Saskia, Lucan murmurs.I’m so sorry. She knew, though, in the end that you would continue what she started. That it wasn’t for nothing.
