Sebastian

as the power of an incubus."
    "The seed resides in him, but he's never shown any ability for wizards' magic. If he had, I imagine the council would have taken him in and trained him."
    "But Koltak's not pure wizard."
    Nadia nodded. "Koltak and Peter didn't come from Wizard City. I suspect the human marriages in that family line are the reason Koltak never achieved the power he craved. Not if it's the Wizards' Council and their handpicked proteges who are mating with those females to keep some bloodlines of the Dark Guides pure."
    "What about Sebastian? Is there any human in him at all?"
    "A little." Nadia paused, then sighed. "He is human in his heart, Glorianna, even if he's no longer willing to acknowledge it."
    Relief shuddered through her. It would break her heart to have Sebastian as an enemy,
    "You have to leave, daughter. If the wizards manage to find you and destroy you, we have no hope of defeating the Eater of the World. You have to hide until you're ready to fight."
    "I'll go if you come with me."
    Nadia shook her head. "I can't abandon the landscapes in my care. Not now."
    "Mother—"
    Nadia rested her hand over Glorianna's. "We are not the whole world. Maybe there are other Landscapers in faraway lands, even if they're known by a different name. Ephemera didn't shatter as much in those faraway places as it did here where the battle was fought, Dark against Light. We are not the whole world. If that were not so, you and Lee would not have discovered a southern land where koffea beans grow."
    "Merchant ships have been bringing koffea beans into ports of call for many years," Glorianna said.
    "And yet those beans were unknown in many landscapes here. Our world is very large, and it is very small. We see only what our hearts can hold, whether we sail the seas to distant lands or live out the whole of our lives in the village where we were born. But the people here live on the bones of the battleground, and the Landscapes who care for this part of Ephemera may be the only ones who know this was a battleground—and they're the only ones who can see with their own eyes that this will be a battleground again."
    "So if we win, most of Ephemera will never know. And if we lose…"
    "The Eater of the World will be able to unleash the horrors It created and alter the world into a dark hunting ground." Nadia leaned back in her chair and dropped her hands to her lap. "Despair made the deserts."

    "And hope shaped the oasis. I know the saying."
    "You're our oasis, Glorianna. I'll look after myself. You look after Ephemera."
    Unbearably weary, Glorianna nodded and pushed her chair back. "I'll go."
    "May the Guardians of Light go with you, daughter."
    After Nadia unlocked the kitchen door, Glorianna wrapped her arms around her mother and held on tight.
    "I'll see you again," she whispered.
    "You're always in my heart," Nadia whispered back. "You and Lee… and Sebastian."
    Just tired , Glorianna told herself as she hurried along the familiar garden paths, blinking back tears. Just tired. And afraid. So very afraid.
    Which was why she doubled back to a particular part of Nadia's gardens and took a small statue of a sitting woman. She, Lee, and Sebastian had worked at odd jobs an entire summer in order to earn the money to buy the statue for Nadia's birthday. Her mother cherished it because of that. And because it was cherished, it was a powerful anchor to this place.
    Nadia wouldn't approve of her taking on the added burden. Most Landscapers held a handful of landscapes. She held thrice that many. And she was about to add a dozen more. Because once she altered the landscapes and shifted the borders and boundaries, she would make all the landscapes in Nadia's garden a single landscape within her own. Until Lee could establish more bridges between Nadia's landscapes and hers, it would isolate the people living in those places from the rest of Ephemera.
    But it would keep her mother safe.
     

 

     
     

Chapter Twelve

 

     
     

     
    Sebastian and Lynnea crossed over the bridge that connected Sanctuary to Nadia's home landscape and stepped into a clearing filled with sunlight.
    Sebastian threw an arm up over his eyes and blinked away the tears caused by the unexpected brightness.
    "Daylight," he muttered, lowering his arm a little so he could squint at the land around them.

    "Yes," Lynnea said, looking up at the sky. "It's a lovely day, even if it is a bit overcast."
    Overcast? This wasn't bright?
    With his face still