time, thinking about this. That simple future sounded lovely when Shinobu offered it. He had set the athame on his chest, with his left hand over it, protectively. Quin put her own hand on it as well, feeling the cool stone and the warmth of his hand. Why couldn’t they go off somewhere and just live—live as ordinary people? Their life as Seekers would never be the life they’d expected as children; that future had been a lie. So why not become something else?
But she knew the answer already.
“The Young Dread gave this athame into my keeping—for a while at least,” she told him. “She wanted me to have it.”
“That doesn’t mean we have to use it,” he responded gently.
“I think maybe it does.”
He regarded her for a long moment, then asked, “What is it you want to do, Quin?”
Shinobu looked tired, but his eyes held that intensity that was particular to him. Quin understood that whatever she told him, he would give her his unwavering loyalty, just as he’d always done.
She whispered, “I was raised to be a Seeker. A real Seeker. One who finds the hidden ways between, finds the proper path, and makes things right.”
“Tyrants and evildoers beware…” Shinobu murmured. That had once been the motto of Seekers, and it had been a mantra for Quin and Shinobu when they were apprentices. “I wanted that to be true,” he said.
Quin flipped to the final page of the journal, where Catherine had printed the three laws of Seekers:
A Seeker is forbidden to take another family’s athame.
A Seeker is forbidden to kill another Seeker save in self-defense.
A Seeker is forbidden to harm humankind.
They were laws her father hadn’t even bothered to teach her; she had learned them only later, from the Young Dread. Yet this was the original code of Seekers. Breaking them had been punishable by death.
“We were true once,” she whispered, her fingers tracing the words. She thought of an afternoon by a fire, when the Young Dread—Maud—had spoken to her about history. “There have been many, many good Seekers. Now my father kills who he wants—does it for money. John thinks he’s fighting for his family’s honor, but he’s willing to be a killer like Briac.”
“Yes,” Shinobu agreed.
“So, when did Seekers become like Briac? And if there were more of us, where have they gone?”
She flipped to the journal’s first pages. There the handwriting was ancient, so cramped and full of ink blots that Quin could make out very little—except for the word “Dread,” which occurred frequently. These early pages were apparently letters and notes written by others in the distant past, and then pasted into this book by Catherine.
“The first half looks like it’s about the Dreads. Closer to the beginning of Seekers. And then there are Catherine’s own entries, searching for other Seeker houses, tracing where they might have gone.”
“You think the journal will point you to when we went wrong,” he said, guessing her thoughts exactly.
“I want to discover where these dishonorable Seekers began.”
Shinobu slid a finger down the side of the stone dagger as though measuring it or perhaps contemplating all it stood for. Then he whispered, “So you can make things right?”
“Yes,” she said. “If they can be made right.”
She could feel Shinobu nod, his head moving against her own, but she sensed that his burst of energy was fading.
“I want that too,” he told her.
She closed the journal and laid it on his chest. His hand covered hers where it lay atop the book, his skin almost feverish. Their long conversation was straining him.
“Do you remember where we first began?” he murmured close to her ear.
“Yes,” she said softly. “It was in the meadow on the estate. You kissed me there when we were nine.”
His eyes were half closed, but his face formed itself into a smile, and she felt his sleepy gaze upon her. “I didn’t think you remembered that.”
“I thought kissing was disgusting then.”
“And what do you think now?”
She felt a smile pulling at her own lips. “I could give it another chance.”
Shinobu slid his arm beneath her and pulled her to him. Quin’s lips met his, and she discovered that she’d been waiting two weeks for this. He turned his body to put his other arm around her, and as he did, he let out a pained cry.
“Shinobu?”
His arms fell limp, and his head rolled back onto the pillow. It took Quin a moment to understand that the reservoir of painkiller in his gut had released a