And now Lina’s gone too.

I press my lips together and look at him, wondering how he’s handling that, if it’s why he’s spending so much time in Summerland, or if that’s more due to me—his attempt to get over the choice that I made.

His gaze meets mine, holding for only a moment, but still long enough for me to wish I could love him. He deserves to be loved. But my heart belongs to Damen. Despite our current conflict, I’ve no doubt he and I are meant for each other. This is just a minor rough patch we’ll get through in no time.

“They also make for a pretty popular tattoo,” Jude continues. “People who’ve overcome hard times, struggled their way out of the muck so to speak, like to use them as a sort of marker of having survived the journey and come out the other side.”

“Do you have a tattoo?” Rayne asks, eyes widening as she leans toward him, practically falling out of her seat with excitement.

“One or two.” He nods, face bearing the slightest hint of a smile.

She gapes, hardly able to believe he plans to leave it at that, causing her to ask, “So, what are they?”

“One’s an Ouroboros. It’s on the small of my back.”

And even though I can feel his gaze flit my way, I deflect the look entirely. I’ve seen the Ouroboros. Oh, yeah, that one did not go unnoticed.

“An Ouroboros?” She squints, glancing at her identical sister, who mirrors her in every way except for the clothing. Romy favors pink, Rayne prefers black, and sometimes, when they’re not around, I refer to them as Good & Plenty because it makes Damen laugh. “I thought that was evil,” she adds.

“It’s not evil,” Damen says, deciding to contribute since he has virtually no choice but to be here ’til it’s over. “It’s an ancient alchemical symbol of life, death, rebirth—immortality.” He lifts his shoulders, gazing around the room but settling on no one in particular. “A whole slew of theologies have adopted it again and again throughout history, all of them attributing their own meanings to it, but it’s not evil.

Although Roman and his rogues adopted it and made it seem that way, on its own, it bears no ill will.” He nods, meets the wall again, his speech halted, or at least for now anyway.

“O- kay…” Rayne smirks. “If I ever have to write a term paper on it, I’ll go straight to you, but for now, back to the tattoos.” She shakes her head, falling just shy of rolling her eyes. Her complete and total adoration of Damen is the only thing that spares him from that.

“What’s the other one?” she asks, turning back to Jude.

“The other is the Japanese symbol for the lotus blossom. I thought an actual flower seemed… wel… a little girly.”

She peers at him, brow arched high.

“I was younger, less evolved, what can I say?” He lifts his shoulders and swipes a hand over his hair.

“And—so—where’s that one?” she ventures, but Jude just flashes his palm and shakes his head, terminating that particular topic right then and there.

Rayne turns to Ava, shooting her a dark, angry glare, her eyes narrowing even further when Ava just laughs in reply. And from what I can hear of the thoughts swirling between them, Rayne’s been begging for a tattoo for the past several weeks, and can’t understand why she’s forced to wait another five years until she’s eighteen. Having been around for three centuries already, the majority of which was spent in Summerland living as a refugee from the Salem Witch Trials, she doesn’t see why her time served there can’t be recognized here.

But it’s hardly my argument, so I tune out just as quickly as I tuned in, more than a little eager to get back on track.

“So anyway, what about the song?” Miles asks. “How did it go again? Something about rising from the mud toward the sky, or the dreamy sky, or… or something?”

“From the mud it shall rise, lifting upward toward vast dreamy skies, just as you—you—you shall rise too,” I sing, my voice echoing the same tune Lotus used.

“So obviously she thinks you’re like the lotus flower,” Romy adds, while her twin, still miffed about the tattoo, and never having been a fan of mine despite the recent bear hug she gave me in Summerland after seeing I’d survived Haven’s attack, slumps down in her seat and levels her steely gaze right on me. Clearly doubting the truth of such a thing, and choosing then and there to side with Damen, thinking for sure the old lady has got to be crazy to see that kind of promise in me.

“And the rest, how did it go?” Miles prompts.

“From the deep and dark depths it struggles toward the light…”

“Again, lotus flower.” Romy nods, tapping the page of the book with her pink painted nail, seemingly pleased with herself.

“Desiring only one thing—the truth! The truth of its being.”

“Your destiny.” Ava nods. Dashing any hope that she just might know what that is when she adds, “Whatever that may turn out to be.”

“Okay, and…” Miles’s head bobs as his pen races across the page, writing it all down.

“ Um, okay…” I stall, trying to remember where I left off, where it goes from there. “Oh yeah, then it goes: But will you let it? Will you let it rise and blossom and grow? Or will you damn it to the depths? Will you banish its worn and weary soul?”

“So basically you’re the lotus blossom, or, at least the keeper of the lotus blossoms, and you’re either gonna let them fulfill their destiny and bloom, or, more likely, you’re gonna screw it all up and damn them to the depths.”