Everest sat up straight. “It is imperative that you hear me when I say she will be looking for any opportunity she can get to infiltrate your mind and poison the well. And you may not know it has happened until it is too late. There are spirits who have not found peace because they realized only in death that Lilith manipulated them.”

I shuddered.

Everest nodded. “If any of you have grievances you allow to fester, even if the intention is well thought out, be sure to speak on them and find your peace. We need to ensure amends have been made on anyone slighted by The Coven, even unintentionally or unknowingly.”

“Like the people we rescued from the balefire?” Warner asked from the table while he cracked his knuckles.

“Yes, that is a perfect example. You did not know they were trapped there but that wouldn’t stop Lilith from twisting the truth, as she did to Joseph’s crew.” Everest turned to Jackson. “Your family is also a concern of mine. That is why your father and his queen are not here with you now. He is tending to your family. He knows better than anyone what future awaits us when Lilith returns.”

Everyone shuddered and cursed.

Tim looked to Constance, then back. “Connie and I can help work on that effort. We need Haven and Tegan on the battlefront.”

“Let me know where I can lend my assistance?” When he nodded, Everest turned back to Tegan. “To answer your other question, Mother had other plans for me when I was first born. Plans that I . . . don’t wish yet to speak on. Plans that I enacted as a child when I was too young to understand the depths of her evil . . .”

“That’s when you knew,” I said softly. “Whatever it is she made you do as a child . . . that’s when you decided which side of the war you were on.”

His gaze drank me in for a moment and I felt the emotion in his eyes. “Yes.”

I cringed and squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry she did that to you, that you had to suffer as much as you did to make you decide that.”

He squeezed my hand back, his gaze distant and dark. “I came to your realm, to Earth, for the first time when I was eighteen years old.”

“Don’t ask him about before that,” Bentley whispered.