34. Chapter 34
Darkness overtakes me. It consumes me. It drags me across a sea of sweeping stars where the air is limned in fractals of light. Then it drops me into a world that was long ago lost to time.
I’m standing in a field of rustic daisies and yellow daffodils on a hill overlooking a little creek that winds around a single lonely cottage, puffing with chimney steam.
My sister is sitting at the bottom of the hill, dressed in a pink tulle princess gown that looks stolen straight from a fairytale.
She seems to be plucking cattails from their roots and making a bouquet with them.
She doesn’t notice me coming. At least, not at first. She’s too busy tying bows around the plant stems and then tucking them into painted glass jars for safekeeping.
“Solara?” I whisper, unsure whether this is a dream or reality.
Everything here feels real, like the sun warming my back and the breeze drifting through my hair.
But in real life, Solara is a ghostly specter made of stars, not a beautiful woman lounging by the creek who is radiating with warmth.
“Solara, is that really you?” I ask, pinching my arm in an effort to wake up.
But my pinch only leaves a red mark.
Solara whips her gaze around so fast, it’s a damn miracle her neck doesn’t snap.
“Shadow?” she says, dropping her bouquet of cattails into the water at her feet.
As they drift away with the wind, she meets my gaze with a deluge of raw emotion.
“Shadow, you’re here. You did it.” Her words streamline across the pasture and flutter all the way to my heart.
She’s real. She’s really real.
I sprint toward her, through the field of yellow flowers and past a pasture of horses, not stopping until I reach the creek and its shaded shoreline, where the smell of blooming flowers greets me. My sister is real. I’m here with her. In her world.
The Mother of Chaos brought us together across the universe.
I tackle her with a giggle. Then I squish her flushed cheeks, which feel warm beneath my hands, like they’re infused with sunlight and not made of ice.
“I knew you could do it!” she giggles back. “The answer resided within you all along.”
I drop my hands from her face and stumble back. “The answer?”
“Yes,” she nods vigorously, her smile dissolving into concern with a slight incline of her head. “You must’ve revealed your deepest secret in order to free her. You don’t remember what it was?”
“I…” I stare at the rippling water floating past, which is teeming with lily pads and swamp mist. How did I get here? What happened? One moment, I was in Skaldrathia—in the Sanctum with the statue, to be precise. Bella and Maxine were holding me back. I was threatening to eviscerate the queen.
And the next…
“Are you alright?” Solara asks, eyeing me warily.
“Augustine,” I realize suddenly, picturing his fallen form bleeding out in the crater below.
“Augustine… he….” I fall to my knees in front of the creek, scoop up a handful of water, and splash my face.
Solara kneels beside me and sets a gentle hand on my back.
I stare at her reflection through the glassy waves, blinking rapidly.
“He died,” I choke out. “The queen, she killed him. He wasn’t breathing.
He was…” I grab at the collar of my jumpsuit, which suddenly feels like it's choking me. Or maybe it’s my grief that’s swallowing me whole.
“I’m so sorry,” Solara says.
I tear my gaze away from the water to look her dead in the eyes. “I said that I loved him. That was my secret the whole time.” A snort escapes me at the ridiculousness of it all. “It was a good secret too, considering how I hadn’t even realized it. At least, not until…”
It was too late.
“See?” Solara says, wrapping me in a tight hug. “It just needed a bit of coaxing out. But I’m glad that you’re here now. I’ve been waiting for us to be together again.”
Coaxing out?
Like Augustine dying right in front of me?
My eyebrows knit, and my heart thuds. I slump away from her arms.
“Isn’t this what you wanted?” she asks, looking confused.
“Yes.” I swallow, but it’s dry and forced. She closes her eyes and nods, then she scoops up all of her jars of cattails and strolls toward the cottage.
“Wait!” I shout, stumbling after her. “Where are you going?”
“I know your heart better than you know it yourself,” she says, spinning around to face me, her gaze catching a monarch butterfly zipping by. “Which is how I know you’re lying.”
“What are you talking about?” I stroll toward her.
She hovers near the cottage door, shifting all the jars around in her arms so she can grab the doorknob properly.
Behind her, a peachy-pink sunrise is staining the sky, decorated in white tufted clouds that stretch along the horizon for miles.
“Finding me is what you thought you wanted, but you’re not quite sure anymore,” she explains.
“There are people back home who are counting on you, and you’re worried about their safety. Aren’t you?”
I sputter.
She levels me with a knowing look.
“How did you—” I fumble my words. “How did you know about that?”
Solara props open the door with her foot, revealing a quaint little cottage with quilts and teapots and trinkets in all shapes and sizes, scattered all over the counters and floors.
Gaggles of jars are grouped along windowsills, each one painted a different color of the rainbow, each holding a different plant inside.
So this is what my sister does in her free time.
“I’ve been watching you,” she says, as though the answer is obvious.
I follow her inside, where she sets her jar of cattails onto the dining table.
“What do you mean?” I ask, imagining that stalking people is another hobby of hers, just as much as collecting plants in painted jars is.
“Every time you needed help, I was there,” she says. “I never left your side. Not really.” She arranges the cattails nonchalantly and then turns back to me. “Close the door behind you, will you? I’d hate for the bugs to get in.”
I close the door and take a step toward her. “Yes. But how?” I ask. “How did you always apparate to where I was?”
Solara sits down, crosses her legs, and smooths out her dress. “I think you know exactly how,” she says.
I shake my head and lean against the counter, my confusion making me dizzy. But the more I stare at her, the more she fades in and out of my vision. And things around me warp.
Almost as if…
No, that can’t be.
She’s real. She’s standing here right before me.
Isn’t she?
Solara gives me a somber tilt of her head. Her wistful gaze drifts over to the window, her expression losing its luster as she says, “I think it is time you’re told the truth…”
“What truth?” I ask.
She draws a deep breath. “You might want to sit down.”
But I don’t move.
She sighs. “You are welcome to stay here, of course,” she begins with thoughtful articulation, as though she’s treading a very thin, wobbly line.
“But you must know, this place is not what you think it is. By remaining here, you journey along a dangerous path of getting lost inside your own mind forever.”
My brows buckle in confusion. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“Everything in here feels real, because it’s real to you,” she continues, her gaze pensive. “Including me.” She plucks a sunflower out of a jar and holds it over the counter. “Look closely.”
I take it, not quite understanding what she means. Its texture is soft and rubbery, it’s coloring rich and vibrant. I twirl it and then set it back gently into her hands.
“This doesn’t answer anything,” I say simply.
“Look again,” she urges. I take the sunflower and sigh, only to realize how it fades to gray every time I blink, its color rapidly returning with vigor once I refocus my eyes.
“I don’t understand.” I ogle at it in confusion, thinking of the rose back in the forest, and how it had also shifted colors then.
Solara gives me a rueful smile. “This world isn’t real, Shadow. I’m living inside your mind. I’m the piece of you that was forgotten in your last lifetime. The fragment of your soul that was left behind.” She points to my head and adds, “I’m your subconscious.”
I stumble backward, my heart trilling in my chest. The creek flickers in my peripheral vision through the window, the coveted luxury of its waters suddenly resembling a skeletal wasteland.
I blink.
I rub my eyes.
I catch sight of a horse on a hill, which turns into a demon.
I blink again, only to fog up the window with my rapid breath. Then I smear away the fog with the back of my hand. The horse flicks away a bug from its tail and nickers in annoyance, leaving me feeling like I’m responsible for piecing back together this beautiful world until it’s whole again.
“N… no,” I stutter. “You claimed you were my sister. That I needed to find you. I’ve known you for as long as I can remember. We were the best of friends until that demon stole you away in the night. I remember.”
Solara fiddles with more flowers, arranging them in a neat bouquet.
“Oh, Shay, I was never real. Once you grew older, you stopped seeing me as clearly. There were flickers of moments where you’d remember, of course, and that’s when you’d believe I was apparating to you.
The demon that stole me away was just a story you fabricated to help you cope with the missing piece of yourself from your previous lifetime. ”
“So you’re a piece of me?” I ask as the blushing pink skyline morphs into slate gray and pale white through the window. “Why convince me to find you? What purpose did this serve?”
Solara coils a strand of hair around her finger. “I did it for us. So that we could become whole again.”
“Whole again?” I ask, withdrawing my gaze from the window.
“This is exactly what Augustine and the Harvest Queens were talking about, isn’t it?
My mind is broken, and it’s all because of you.
” I point at her, my tone accusatory, my lungs squeezing tightly in my chest. “If you had just let me be, let me live…”