indifferent to the situation at hand as if she couldn’t care less. She was too calm for his brother’s kidnapper to be. It was then he remembered why he was here in the first place.
“Where is Rei?”
“Is that what his name is? Huh. I never asked.”
Lux was surprised at that. Why would she take someone she doesn’t know? To get to him perhaps? But then, what had he done to her?
“What do you want with him?”
“You don’t know anything, do you?”
Despite the phrasing of the question, there was no venom in her voice. She seemed genuinely intrigued as if he was supposed to know why his brother had been kidnapped.
“What are you talking about?”
None of this made any sense to him. If she was going after the family, why take Rei? He didn’t have access to anything of value, no family fortune that was rightfully his. So why him?
“Duodecimus puer.”
The outburst caught him so much by surprise that he didn’t even comprehend the language it was in.
“What?”
She scoffed at him, seeming almost offended.
“You need to brush up on your Latin, Lux. I said, duodecimus puer.”
He stopped for a second and thought about the words. Despite understanding them, he was confused by their meaning.
“The twelfth boy?”
“Child, actually.”
“I don’t understand.”
She seemed to become visibly agitated at this response. Lux had no idea what he was supposed to be understanding. Rei was taken because he was the twelfth-born? But that still didn’t make any sense.
“You know nothing of your own family?”
Lux understood that she wanted him to know what she was talking about, but he had no idea. There was something important about being the twelfth-born?
“Am I supposed to understand what you’re talking about?”
“The prophecy, you moron!”
Lux was taken aback by the volume at which her voice hit him.
“What are you talking about?”
She seemed to have reached her limit with Lux’s responses.
“Stop acting like you don’t understand me!”
Lux held his hands up in a form of surrender.
“Sorry to disappoint, but I’ve never heard of any prophecy.”
She screamed in frustration and paced angrily along the catwalk.
“You’re ruining this moment for me, Lux! This was supposed to be my chance to force you to do something you didn’t want to do!”
Lux stared at her in shock, unsure of how to proceed. On one hand, he was still confused, but on the other, he didn’t want to agitate her anyone more than she already was.
“Oh for God’s sake.”
With that, she turned and grabbed something from behind one of the doors. Lux saw a book that looked exactly like the ones from his mother’s study. Before he could question her, she stepped into the shadows of the doorway and vanished.
“Read this.”