Free The Space Beyond (The Book of Phoenix) by Kristie Cook

Asia asked.
    “If they’re not Broken or Lost, you keep the Lakari in check,” Uri replied. “They feed off of souls that are tainted with Darkness, especially when the physical body is dying, but that doesn’t mean they’ll get the soul in the end. We always have free will, so it’s up to the soul itself. But the Lakari try to give them more Darkness, pulling the soul their way.”
    “Like they did with you, Jeric,” Leni said. “Right before we were Forged.”
    “Yes,” Mira confirmed.
    “If the soul is Dark enough, it may deny the Light and choose to go with the Lakari, and there’s nothing you can do about that,” Uri continued. “But if the Lakari attack, or try to take souls against their will, then you can act. Then you can fight them.”
    “That’s it?” Brock asked, and I understood his disappointment. All of the buildup of our powers and everything, and all we had to do was scare off the Lakari, maybe fight once in a while?
    “That’s it for most souls, but your greatest concern is always the Broken and the Lost,” Melinda said. “That’s who you need to search for and to help. They’re definitely more difficult because you have to try to convince them that there’s a reason for their misery. If they’re on their third or more life since their Separation, they won’t take as much convincing. They’ll be desperate and pretty Dark. It may take a few weeks or months, but eventually, they’ll do whatever it takes and will agree to come here with you. And then we escort their soul to the Gate so they can meet their other half or at least find solace in the Space Between.”
    “Okay,” Leni said, a little too cheerfully for my liking, “so how do we get a mission?”
    “If we know of a Broken soul and don’t have dyads available, we’ll assign a mission to those who are here on Gate duty,” Melinda said. “But usually, you go out and discover your own mission. You, Jacquelena, are supposed to be especially adept at that.”
    “Damn it,” I muttered. Were they all in on the conspiracy against me? I’d stayed quiet through all of this, letting them clear the air, while hoping the whole time Melinda and Uri would say only more experienced Guardians went out on missions. I knew deep down that didn’t make sense, since “experienced” was a relative term here. Guardians were lucky to survive three or four missions in a life.
    “That’s what I needed to hear,” Leni said. “We think we have our first mission.”
    “This really was perfect timing,” Theo said. “We were just telling Melinda and Uri that it was time for you to leave the manor and seek out your first one.”
    “We’re not ready, though,” I growled, no longer able to hold it back. If I had my way, we’d never be ready. Because missions meant danger and danger meant Leni’s life would be at risk and just the thought of that killed me. I relived Jacey’s death every night in my dreams. I would not watch her die again.
    “You are,” Theo insisted. “But you will only believe it once you are out there, living the life of a Guardian. You won’t have a choice but to be ready to fight—or to die.”
    “Exactly,” I muttered. “So we’re supposed to go out there and find a soul when we don’t even know where or who it is?”
    “It’s not too difficult to find the single souls on the verge of Darkness, especially in this day and age,” Mira said.
    She meant those souls who had repeatedly refused to acknowledge their soul mate or their soul mate had refused to acknowledge them. Or they’ve gone to different worlds, and may never be on the same one at the same time. After several life cycles of never finding the soul created especially for theirs, despair and depression set in, worsening with each life, until the soul becomes completely hopeless. That’s when they’re at risk of choosing to go Dark permanently, which was when the Lakari could conquer and take the soul to Enyxa. See—I’d learned a lot.