Sebastian

underfoot. He smiled, but it was a sick, pained smile. "Yeah. You're just like me."
    *
    Even after a few hours' sleep, she still felt weary to the bone, but Glorianna smiled as Nadia set a plate of sweet rolls on the table and poured koffee into mugs.
    "Iced cinnamon rolls," she said, putting one on the small plate in front of her. "And I don't have to fight with Lee this time to get my share."
    "We need to talk." Nadia put the koffee pot on a woven mat and sat at the table.
    Not at her usual seat, Glorianna noted, but facing the kitchen windows and back door—as if she needed to stay watchful in case anyone tried to approach her home.
    "You said that last night." Which was why she had stayed with her mother after telling Nadia that the wall in the forbidden garden had been breached.
    The quiet chattering that came from the room that was separated from the kitchen by a screened door increased in volume. A small blue-and-white bird flew to the door, hooked his toes into the screen, and scolded them.
    "Not now, Sparky," Nadia said firmly.
    The scolding changed to chirps and cajoling whistles.
    Glorianna smiled. Nadia did not.
    That worried her.
    "There are things I must say to you, while I still can," Nadia said quietly.
    Glorianna tensed. "While you can? What does that mean?"
    "It means I can't take the chance that things that must be remembered will be lost if something should happen to me." Nadia closed her eyes. "My mother died when I was young. I was raised by my grandmother." She paused. Opening her eyes, she stared out the screened back door. "My great-aunt, actually. My real grandmother was like you, Glorianna. And like you, the wizards decided she was a danger to Ephemera and sealed her into her garden at the school, using their magic to create boundaries in the landscapes she had access to in order to isolate her in a kind of living death. They didn't know she was carrying a child when they condemned her, that the power inside her wouldn't be extinguished when she died. They never found out that she and her older sister, who was a Level Five Landscapes had discovered a place that existed in both their landscapes—a place in the woods that had a large, split stone. The dreaming place, they used to call it. Neither could cross the boundary that separated them, so they were never able to see each other or talk to each other, but they could leave messages tucked into the split stone, or a basket could be left that the other could take.
    "One day, when my great-aunt arrived with a basket of food, she found another basket at the meeting place. My mother was inside that basket. And a note that said, 'Love her. Teach her. And don't come back.'
    "My great-aunt never found another message from her sister. So she raised her sister's daughter, claiming the girl as her own, and then she raised me. And like her mother before her, she told her daughter, and then me, the family secrets about what we are… and what we came from."
    Nadia took a long swallow of cold koffee. "And now I must tell you."
    "You've told me the family secrets," Glorianna said, covering her mothers hands with hers.
    "Not this one. This one is the reason for all the other secrets that the women in our family—and the women in other families like ours, if any others have survived—have held in their hearts for generations."
    Nadia's eyes filled with tears, "I carried the secrets and the seed of our bloodline, but I was spared the burden of it. You're the one who must carry the burden."
    "What burden? I don't understand."
    Nadia turned her hands so that she could clasp her daughter's. "What you are, Glorianna, is the reason for all the family secrets."
     
    We will not be found easily in this broken piece of the world. So there is time to hide what must be hidden while we wait to discover who prevailed in the final battle for Ephemera—our enemies… or the Eater of the World. Either way, we can no longer walk in the world as we once did. So we must learn how to hide our true nature behind a human mask. And in time, if our enemies were the victors, we will seek them out and embrace them as allies—and they will never realize we are always working to destroy them.
    We have ensured our survival by fleeing to this place. We will be well established by the time the shattered pieces of the world are made whole again. By then, no one will look beyond what we pretend to be because our power will be needed to keep Ephemera clean of the human heart's