Bound by Blood (Bound by Desire #3)

Chapter 76: Riddles and Complications

"But wasn't Amber's sister Kalli's mom?" I hear Keri ask with a confused expression. "Meaning, therefore, she's dead and not wanting to be brought back by the woman who killed her?" Keri sounds confused before something about Livy's silence stops her, making her think. "Unless you don't mean blood relation. Just the reincarnation of Aswang who's supposedly buried under wherever the thirty-four, twenty-one coordinate is?"

"I think so," Livy replies, her tone sombre, "Get ready, we'll leave in two hours. Meet back here then and we'll discuss how and where." She says and the room falls silent, people nodding before they set off to gather up their meagre possessions and say what could be final goodbyes to loved ones before we set out on our journey. One that not all of us may come out of alive.

Hours Later - Nightfall

The remaining hours between when Lunae left and we had to leave seemed to pass quicker than the rest of the day. Almost as if they slipped between our fingers the more we tried to grasp what to do with them besides looking up more about what we have to do and spending time with those we loved. That fear of losing one another still hanging over our heads like a dark cloud.

"You ready yet?" Livy's soft voice over my shoulder surprises me but I don't show her that, instead just sigh and look back to where Kalli still hadn't moved. "Still no change huh? She'll be ok, she just needed time as Lunae said." Livy tries to go for optimism but some of the group's optimism had disappeared since Lunae's revelation about demonic sisters and a magical moonstone cancer that would destroy me, Kalli, Dana and Braeden to create a rupture in time were explained. About how we could potentially destroy the whole world and reset civilization. And kill each other with the magic inside us that seems intent on tearing us apart if we don't use it before it uses us. The thoughts aren't optimistic but we have to work with what we have, or else we're admitting that Amber can win and we're giving up the whole endeavour.

"I know she'll be ok recovering from this Liv, it's the rest of it that I worry about. Especially since the two of them haven't heard it as we did. They don't know and I hate to think that we have to be the ones to tell them that we could potentially end the whole world if this power doesn't kill us first. She doesn't deserve that burden. Neither does Dana." I know Braeden agrees with me since I can see the same determination in his eyes as I can hear in my tone.

As can Livy, though her answer takes me by surprise. "And you think you do, why?" She looks between us where we both hold the other two gently to us as if they'd break if too much pressure was applied. "Why do you both think you deserve it?"

I'm about to respond when Braeden looks at me with an unspoken question in his eyes. As if he's asking me for permission to answer her. I frown but nod once, theorising that he just wanted to know that I was ok with whatever he had to say. Something I am more than happy to do since I can't think of an answer to Livy's question at the moment. But he can. "It's not about us thinking we deserve it, Livy, it's because if we do it - feel like that - it protects them from having to feel like we do. Know what we do, for as long as possible."

"Love then," She responds in a soft tone. "Love, honour, loyalty and family. The rules our side lives by when Amber's has none." She sounds as if she's fondly remembering something but that tone is tempered with the bitterness of loss. The sting of grief undercuts her words like a current. "Careful how rigidly we stick to those rules and morals Brae before it gets us killed." She sounds like she's more afraid than before and I don't blame her since the stakes had only gotten higher the deeper into this game we were pulled, the longer it continued. "But for now we need to keep moving and, despite what you may think, I have a feeling that staying as one big group is a bad idea,"

"How?" Keri asks at the same time I hear both me and Braeden mutter "I agree," Both of us are convinced that what Livy was saying was right as she was speaking from a bad feeling, not an emotion. A premonition of sorts.