"Woah."

Dee's comment wasn't enough to drag Monty from his thoughts. The two of them were sitting in a new, trendy underground sports bar in Capital City that had way too many people in it already. The upscale bar was cosmopolitan with just a touch of grit, and seemed to utilize every piece of space to be as economical as possible.

It just made Monty claustrophobic.

To block out the other patrons, screens rotated around their table, titled as 'experiences', and clicking on any one of them would immerse their table in a chosen scenery, like a forest, or the sky. All the senses were affected by it, and you could smell the raindrops as you ate lunch on a cloud while watching a game, either on a small tabletop screen or on the bigger screen high up on the bar.

Dee was fascinated by the entire thing. The swirling holograms were giving Monty a headache, but this was where Dee wanted to spend her one day off in six months, and so here they were. While she decided on which experience she wanted, he let his thoughts return to one of the various things bothering him.

Monty had been annoying Silas for weeks now, following him around, purposefully bumping into him in town, showing up at his house, and spending hours in his office talking about nothing. He'd been trying to sense whatever it was that made Vacek suspicious, but everything so far was normal. Apart from his general annoyance about Monty's interference and stress from his job, Silas didn't exude anything out of the ordinary, no matter how deeply he probed.

So, was Vacek wrong?

There was a first time for everything after all. Was it just the older man's paranoia speaking, or was Monty missing something?

If only Vacek would give me a lead, tell me what I'm supposed to be looking for. Does he want me to try to read his mind? If so, why didn't he just say so? Because he thinks I might be too rusty at it? Or because he knows I don't want to, and he doesn't want to force me.

"I don't know if I should show you this," Dee said, and this time, the words did pull Monty's attention back to her.

"Show me what?"

Her eyes flicked up from her tabletop tablet and she chewed her lip. "Actually, maybe I won't show you. You're obsessed enough with Sparrowfoot as is."

Right then and there, Monty dropped Silas from his mind and picked up the curious case of Aiden Sparrowfoot once more. He gripped to table and leaned in. "What about Sparrowfoot?"

Dee leaned back with a smirk. "See what I mean? You've been zoning out on me all day, but one mention of Sparrowfoot and you're all hopped up like a puppy. I don't know if I should still be jealous at this point, or just accept things the way they are."

Monty tried to school his expression into calm. "You know I still feel iffy about that guy. That's it. I'm the reason he's out in the world again and not rotting behind a cell, and if he does anything else, hurts anyone else, it's on me. That's why I'm so bothered by him."

"Yeah, I get it." She sighed and turned the pad his way. "In which case, I should show you this."

Monty took the pad from her, but couldn't make out what was happening. It seemed like a live AFC match, but no one was fighting. Instead, ushers were running in and out of the field, medics were carrying out an unconscious girl, and the audience seemed generally to have mixed reactions, with people yelling or cheering, looking confused and amazed.

"What is this?"

"It's a preliminary amateur AFC match. Since you'd zoned me out, I figured I might as well start watching something while waiting for the food. And I picked this one because it was a trending live feed and also because of who the competitor was."

"Who is it?"

"Scrub back by about five minutes."

Monty did, sliding his fingers across the pad. When he saw her, he gaped. "Is that Lexie Sparrowfoot?"

"Yup."

"She fights in the AFC?"

"Apparently. But that's not even the craziest part. Keep watching."

He did. About two minutes in, he began to understand the audience's reactions. The more he watched, the more amazed and horrified he became.

He choked on air when Lexie unleashed the final move on the other girl, which sent her writhing in pain and screaming. Even with his shock, Monty knew one thing.

He needed to tell Vacek immediately.

All the medics and ushers who'd run onto the field tried to talk to Lexie at once. It overwhelmed her as their questions peppered the air, their tone demanding answers.

Aiden didn't seem to care about any of that. He swept Lexie up and began walking with her briskly off the field. Lexie wrapped her arms around his neck and took the coward's way out, burying her face in his neck. She didn't want to see or talk to anyone right now. She wanted to disappear, to cease to exist. Her breath was rattling too fast in her chest, and she still felt that unsteadiness that her plagued her the entire week, except it was so much worse. All her emotions were on the precipice of an explosion. She felt like yelling, crying, and laughing all at once.

Madness. And the crazier part was that she still wasn't tired.

Aiden came to a sudden stop. She felt the press of bodies around them, but she still didn't look up. She heard someone call her name from afar, maybe Conrad, or Tate, or Dewie, or Doyle. Maybe all of them at once. She still didn't look up.

"You can't leave with her, sir," said a careful foreign voice.

"By what law?" Aiden asked. "I'm her father."

"Something just happened. We need…there needs to be an investigation."

"You can investigate us later. For now, I need to get my daughter somewhere safe."

"I know, sir," the second potential security guard said. "But we just need to wait for the–"

"Let us go," Aiden's voice was steely, brooking no refusal. "Or you will sorely regret it."

Lexie could feel their fear pulsing in the atmosphere. She didn't blame them. Even powerless, her father sounded deadly.

"It's fine." She heard someone say. "Let them go. I already cleared it with Douglas."

The security guards must have been in a hurry to obey because Aiden was almost instantly on the move again. He was probably headed to the bus station, but Lexie didn't want to sit on a bus. She pulled the teleportation orb out of her inventory and materialized it in her hand. Without looking, she handed it to her dad.

She felt him take it. "Of course, sweetie. Let's go home."

The portal activated and engulfed them. Next thing she knew, Lexie was smelling cinnamon and nutmeg and a variety of other herbs and spices in the air. Despite the horrible afternoon, she almost smiled. Her father must have been stress-baking again.

Her father. Crazy how natural it felt to call him that now that she was in trouble.

Lexie's father held her as he sat down. He kept holding her, not asking her to talk or explain herself or do anything that Lexie simply couldn't handle right now. Instead, he pressed a kiss on her head and told her, "It's okay, honeybee. Everything is okay. I called Naem. He'll explain everything."

Lexie nodded, though she wondered what Naem had to do with it. She didn't ask. She just silently took all the comfort she could afford.

Hours later, after Lexie had calmed down, they all sat around the dining room table, Aiden at the head of the table, Lexie on one side, and Naem across from her. Everyone was silent for the first few minutes, as though they were individually reeling from everything that just happened.

"No cookies?" Naem said to break the silence. Aiden shot him a look, and he shrugged.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

"I assumed there would be some. I'm told that difficult conversations in the human realm typically warrant cookies and beverages."

Aiden ignored him, reaching out to run his hand over her hair. Lexie leaned into his touch.

"Is this silence serving another purpose, or are we waiting to enhance dramatic tension?"

Aiden ignored Naem again and laced his fingers on the table. Lexie stared at his laced hands while dealing with the turmoil inside her. Her brain kept calling back the moment her skill hit Diana, the skill formed from her twisted mind. How did she do that? What even happened? She didn't know. No matter how many times she went over it, she couldn't really identify how she'd made that happen. With undifferentiated cards too. It had gone from intent to card to skill in seconds.

How?

"Lexie."

She glanced up at the sound of her name, only to find that the two of them were staring at her intently.

"I don't think she was paying attention," Naem said. "You'll have to start the story from the beginning again."

Aiden sighed. "Do you want to talk about it later?

"No," Lexie said. She needed to understand everything, to know how she'd screwed up so badly. Naem was apparently the key to that.

"I'm listening," she told him. Aiden nodded.

"I remember the day you were born," he began, and a wistful look crossed his face. "You were so tiny, so fragile. The doctor said that there was a chance you wouldn't make it that night. I remember holding your mother as she cried because she didn't think she could have any more children, and she already loved you so much. We called a healer, but they said there was probably nothing they could do. The problem was with your soul, and you would live or die by your own strength. We prayed for a miracle, and your mother had hope, but I prepared myself for a funeral in the morning." His smile trembled, a sheen in his eyes. "But somehow, you lived."

Lexie's heart ached, emotion making her hands squeeze into fists. Naem continued to stare at her wordlessly.

"Taking you home that week was the happiest day of my life." Sentiment whispered through his voice. "It felt like fate smiling down at us. You were still so weak, but we knew we would take good care of you no matter the cost. Part of the reason why I worked so hard, at least in the beginning, was so we could afford special vitality potions and pay healers exorbitant amounts to keep us on their shortlists. We kept you away from harm and made sure you were with one of us at all times. We did everything, Lexie, everything to keep you safe." His face darkened. "But one day, you fell ill. Very ill. And all the healers again said it was a hopeless case. Another soul injury. They tend to recur. I called everyone: necromancers, healers, and a Fae friend of mine. They all said there was nothing they could do. You would die within a few weeks." His voice broke, and Lexie's heart ached for him. "Your mother couldn't take it. I couldn't take it. She had a friend, Cecilia Horan, who worked at the ISTS. She had previously told Lara about a special program they had where a few chosen souls from other dimensions were kept for reasons she couldn't articulate. Naem always told me that a compatible soul could be used to stabilize a weaker soul, and Cecilia didn't think anyone would miss the soul as long as it wasn't registered in their database already. After all, some of those souls go to waste. So Cecilia, Lara, and I checked if any of those unregistered chosen were a compatible soul. It was our last shot in the dark, a one-in-a-million chance, but we found one that had a near-hundred percent compatibility. Another miracle. Cecilia and I could sneak it out of the chosen program, and we could use it to heal our daughter. Naem could work with that."

"Wait…" Lexie shook her head, confused. "I thought you only called Naem for me when I had the soul injury last year."

"That was a lie," he said with a watery smile. "Last year…that wasn't your first soul injury. It wasn't even your second."

The words landed on Lexie like a bomb. She didn't know what she'd been expecting, but it wasn't that.

Holy shit. No wonder.

No wonder he hadn't acted shocked at all when she'd woken up and started babbling nonsense. He hadn't reacted with surprise when she said she wasn't his daughter. Because he'd known. He'd taken her soul and merged it with his daughters, so he knew that there was someone else inside her.

Oh God.

She didn't know if she should be horrified by that, but it was hard for her to even fathom it. She was in shock.

Guilt spread across Aiden's face, and he nodded. "I understand how it sounds. I won't ask you to forgive me, not now. But I hope one day you can."

"What happened next?" Lexie asked. "After you...took my soul."

His fingers fiddled some more. "Naem performed a ritual, one that melded the two souls together, using the second soul to stabilize the first."

"Oh God." Lexie clapped her hand over her mouth.

"Once he was done, we saw the results pretty quickly. You recovered from your illness and became much healthier than you previously were. We even met the second soul and accepted her as our daughter, and tried to explain what happened. But the problem was that the souls were unbalanced, unsteady. Every once in a while, after a serious illness or sustained trauma, you would lose your memories. You would wake up and only remember who you were as Lexie Evans from Brooklyn, New York. It was an ordeal getting you to remember who I am, who your mother was. When we finally got you to accept us again, the cycle would repeat. People back in our old neighborhood began to think you were strange. It made you upset, and it was one of the reasons why we moved to Hovelton for a fresh start, so that you wouldn't be haunted by the memories. But when you fell into the ditch, it was like a reset button had been hit all over again, and you lost your memories, forgetting everything we'd shared for years." Aiden smiled humorlessly. "I thought that was my penance for what I did. I'll have to live with this, constantly having you forget about me every few years. But I could live with it, as long as you were safe."

Lexie stared up at her father, seeing him in a whole new light. Her breath was passing through her lips even faster. She couldn't believe what he was saying, couldn't believe that he was telling her that she was... what exactly? A chimera of more than one soul? She was Lexie Evans and Lexie Sparrowfoot? She was…she was…

She was his daughter.

Aiden took her hand to soothe her panic. Nevertheless, a keening wail began in the back of her mind, drowning out her other thoughts.

"The last time you suffered a soul injury was a year ago after you fell into that ditch," Aiden said. "That one was pretty serious. Usually, you recover within a few hours to days, but this time, you weren't waking up at all. I had to call Naem. It was he who said that your soul was trying to untether itself from your body and that the melding was too unstable. He had to stabilize it."

"How did he do that?" Lexie's voice was quiet from the shock and horror.

Aiden bit the inside of his lips and shut his eyes before he answered this one. He sighed.

"It was a complicated ritual that took place in the Eldritch plane. But it involved using some of Naem's essence to seal and bond the two parts of your soul to stabilize them so that you were truly both."

Lexie's breath stuttered. "So you're saying that...I'm…or at least my soul... is part Eldritch."

Aiden didn't say anything.

She glanced at Naem when Aiden wasn't responding fast enough, expecting him to scoff or make another of his jokes.

He merely cocked his head.

Oh God. "I'm part demon? I'm a botched abomination?"

"Of course not."' Naem sounded slightly offended. "Your soul is not botched. My work is perfect. As I've told you, the Eldritch are great at recycling."

"That's not…" Aiden made a frustrated sound. "Naem assured me that he only used a little bit of Eldrith in the healing process. It was supposed to reduce as time passed and would basically be absorbed into your human essence until it was practically unnoticeable. But then…your soul did not heal as he'd expected."

"Rather than recede," Naem said. "The Eldritch essence grew."

Lexie barely heard them. Her horror was compounding with every secret they revealed. No wonder Aiden had kept this from her for so long. No wonder he'd pretended not to know. She was part demon. What the hell? What did that even mean?

"So I'm part Eldritch."

"Only a small part," Aiden said as though to comfort her.

"The thought shouldn't horrify you," Naem said. "Being Eldritch is excellent."

Aiden frowned at Naem. "You're not Eldritch, Lexie. You just have more eldritch essence in you than was expected. Naem and I didn't think it would be a problem until, as Naem put it, he saw how quickly you took to Eldritch intent." He shook his head. "It's typically not that easy for human scholars to identify intent, even Eldritch ones, but once you'd tapped into that part of you, it was like you were unstoppable."

"So the cards I made, they were made with eldritch intent, not human intent?"

"Something like that."

"It's exactly like that," Naem said.

"Is that why…" Lexie hesitated but forced herself to finish saying the words. "Is that why the cards behaved how they did today?"

Aiden sighed. "Most likely yes. That and the fact that you were tapping into a separate mana source than usual. You had somehow accessed power from Naem's essence inside you. Just as Eldritch intent is different from Fae intent, Eldritch magic is different, too. It's freer, more mutable, more powerful. It can bypass the Earth system entirely. There are fewer rules, and fewer safeguards against bad things happening."

Lexie felt sick to her stomach.

Aiden squeezed her hand and then continued. "That was why I was so bothered by the cards, Lexie. When you said you were making a card to 'Kill the Wind,' I thought it was a one-off. But the other cards you used in your fight felt too powerful to be true. And you shouldn't have been able to use them that easily, with little activation time, no matter how good your mana control is. I was scared that something was happening that I couldn't control. I was scared you would hurt yourself."

"This was also partially my fault," Naem said. "I felt you activate that Eldritch mana in you and possibly could have stopped it, but was curious to see what the result would be. I've never seen anything like this happen before. I wanted to observe."

Ah. So that was why he kept hanging around her, watching her. That was why he'd been concerned when she entered the dungeon.

Lexie breathed. She tried not to panic. She tried to just breathe.

"So what do I do now?" she asked. "How do I stop it, and stop myself from being more Eldritch?"

Aiden and Naem shared a look.

"We're not sure exactly," he said. "For now, we can have Naem try to restrict the Eldritch essence, but we don't know if that would work. It might also affect how the souls perceive each other, so it's risky."

"Alternatively," Naem said. "I could teach you how to control it."

Aiden and Lexie shook their heads. "Repeated use of the Eldritch mana might cause it to spread. You would become even more Eldritch."

"I don't want that," Lexie said instantly, freaked out beyond belief.

"Good," Aiden said. "I'll need to research more to see if there's a way to change it, but your best bet for now is to, as much as possible, avoid using those cards again."

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