35. Chapter 35
Iemerge from my dreams in an icy bath, gasping for air.
Sweet, fresh air. It fills up my lungs and pumps through my blood as my heartbeat hammers in my ears.
A flurry of soft hands finds my shoulders and helps me sit up.
Another hand combs through all the soapsuds entangled in my hair.
“Thank all the gods,” a smooth voice whispers from somewhere behind me.
“I thought for sure she was dead.” My eyes blur at the woman seated on the edge of the tub, whose brows are knitted in concern.
A woman who looks exactly like Maxine. Wait, that is Maxine. Isn’t it?
“I’m not dead,” I choke out. “Just feel like it.”
“You look it too,” Maxine quips, her frown melting into a grin.
“Well, what are you all waiting for?” comes another voice, this one bossier than Maxine’s had been. “Help her out. She must be freezing.”
Is that… Lily?
I’m quickly helped out of the tub as a minx robe is enveloped around my shivering frame and a fresh towel is wrapped around my hair. Gods, it is so cold in here.
“I knew it would work,” Maxine says, a dimple appearing in her cheek. “Her heart is so damn cold the way it is, I figured why not let her body reset?”
“What… what are you talking about?” I ask, my teeth chattering as I survey the room, which is littered in geometric tiles and ornate walls, and plants that encircle a bathtub filled to the brim with icicles.
“Where are we?” I ask, rubbing my bleary eyes.
Once my vision comes into focus again, I see Sunshine, Amber, Snow, Bella, and Maxine.
They’re all here. Even Lily. And they’re all looking at me like I’ve just resurrected from my grave, their eyes glistening in a way that people’s eyes should glisten at funeral marches, not in fancy washrooms.
“Lily?” I gasp breathlessly. “Lily, you’re alright!”
Lily embraces me in a tight squeeze, her hair looking less purple-tinged than before. “I’m just fine. Although perhaps you should tell that to Maxine, who hasn’t left my side in weeks.”
“And I’m not about to… not after what happened,” Maxine asserts.
“Weeks?” I ask, my brows lifting.
No… that timeline doesn’t make sense.
“You were asleep for weeks, Shay,” Bella gently whispers, confirming my suspicion. “We thought you’d never wake.”
“The Mother of Chaos,” I suddenly recall, pulling away from Lily, only to feel like I’ve been dunked in that bath of ice water all over again. “What… what happened?”
As if on cue, Snow brings me a gown stitched in diamonds. One far too expensive and exquisite for someone as undeserving as me.
Augustine died to save me.
Solara… isn’t… real.
My stomach pangs at the memory, only to recoil as the rest of my memories come landsliding back to me. I am the Raven Queen reincarnated. But how can that possibly be?
“After you passed out,” Maxine recalls, setting her arm over Lily’s shoulder, her hand draping over her collarbone, “the Mother of Chaos took all the gods to Purgatory, including the Goddess of Love.” Wait.
There’s no ring seated on her finger. In fact, there’s no rings on any of their fingers.
Not even Lily’s. A cascade of relief rushes through me.
“And Augustine?” I ask, feeling like I’ve just swallowed one of those floating ice cubes in the tub. “His body?” The words feel sharp as they slip from my lips, slicing my heart wide open at the seams.
Augustine is dead. All because of me.
“We couldn’t find him,” Bella reports, her gaze downcast. “After the Mother of Chaos took the other gods to Purgatory, Augustine’s body went missing.”
“She dragged the queen away by her neck,” Maxine snorts, looking pleased. “I wish you would’ve been awake to see it…”
“I—” I fight back the urge to break down.
“I’m so sorry, Shadow,” Bella trails off.
As I damn near suffocate on my own tears, Sunshine does something so profound that I nearly faint from the shock of it.
She withdraws a ruby red ring from her satchel and slides it onto my finger.
The very same ring that the forest gobbled up a lifetime ago.
The same one that Augustine had claimed belonged to my mother, before he’d instructed me to hide it from the queen.
“I think that belongs to you,” Sunshine says with a small flicker of a smile.
“Where… where did you get this?” I ask, staring at it in wonder.
“He asked me to keep it safe for you,” she reveals.
Augustine…
Tears prickle my eyes as Snow motions for me to step into a diamond-studded gown.
At some point, my hair is dried and styled by more flurries of hands, and velvety charcoal is applied to my eyelids.
Lily tells me all about her adventures in the infirmary, including going into detail about a very handsome dragon lord she met.
As Lily and Maxine are gossiping over the dragon lord identities, Amber braids my hair in the mirror.
“This is new,” she whispers as she guides my gaze toward my forearm where the raven spellmark should reside—a pitch-black bird with a pointed beak and feathers who had been my humble companion for the last twenty-five years of my life.
But instead, I find something else entirely. A black teardrop stroked by lightning.
I didn’t even get to say goodbye.
“This is the mark of the Stormwielder,” Snow whispers, her eyes widening. “You remember everything now, don’t you?”
My gaze cuts toward my pewter eyes in the mirror as I stare at the woman who once lived an entire lifetime before me—a woman who was loved beyond measure by a man who is no longer breathing.
The very same man who’d carved out the entire universe to keep me safe and died trying.
Between mist-ridden eyes, I focus on the power that has harbored within me all along.
It trickles down my nerve endings and surges through my heart, making me feel like I’ve been dusted by the cosmos.
An icy fractal appears on my fingertip, which I use to paint the mirror with.
One little word that glistens like a diamond catching the sunlight, carving out a new space in my heart that’s here to stay.
Stormwielder. Solara’s powers were mine all along.
I remember everything now. From this lifetime, and from the one before.
I don’t need to marry Sylas to become the queen of Skaldrathia.
The throne is already mine, passed down to me by my mother in my previous lifetime… one hundred years ago.
Sunshine bows before me. Snow falls to her knees. Amber does a quick curtsey and then sweeps a strand of hair from my eyes, smiling at me. Even Bella, Lily, and Maxine all gaze at me with honed regard, stopping their conversation short to stare.
“Welcome back, Raven,” Sunshine whispers.
“What do I do now?” I ask them.
“Behead a few people,” Maxine suggests with a smile.
“You lead,” Bella says.
I spot Sir Valiant waiting for me in the corridor.
I’d recognize that mop of unruly hair and those pistachio-colored eyes anywhere.
I don’t bother with formalities. Instead, I throw my arms around his neck and squeeze him tightly, inadvertently coaxing a ripe blush from his cheeks.
“You escaped the Castle of the Four Gods!” I give him a quick kiss on each cheek. “You’re free!”
“To be honest, Milady, there wasn’t much to escape from,” Sir Valient says, adjusting his shirt collar and standing up straighter once I’ve released him.
“With the queen gone, the curse that once held me captive was vanquished, and the castle turned to dust. Speaking of…” He takes a knee before me and holds out a gloved hand, looking almost ashamed he hadn’t done so sooner.
“I heard what happened, Milady. How you vanquished the Goddess of Love. Everyone is talking about it. I owe you my life. As tribute to my gratitude, I swear that I will serve you for the rest of—”
I hoist him up by his arm. “You owe me nothing, Sir Valiant. Other than your friendship. Do you remember what we talked about regarding you calling me Milady?”
“Yes, Milady.” He clears his throat, looking frazzled. “I mean, Shay.”
I nod in approval. “Formalities aside, I do have a burning question for you,” I say, looping my arm through his and nearly skipping down the hallway over how happy I am to see him alive.
“How did you manage to get all the way to the Skaldrathian Castle by yourself? The Leviathan Sea is quite the beast to traverse alone, is it not?”
“When I was leaving the castle,” he recalls, strolling alongside me down the corridor, “I spotted a group of Valenorians evacuating Aurora on ships. I sort of snuck onto one.” His eyes darken, but he doesn’t elaborate further. I briefly wonder whether there’s more to that story he’s not sharing.
“Hang on a second,” I pause. “Why would the Valenorians evacuate from Aurora?”
Sir Valiant stops in his tracks, his next breaths coming out ragged. “No one has told you yet? Ah, I suppose that makes sense. You’ve been asleep for the last two weeks, so there wouldn’t have been an opportunity. I’m glad that you woke up, Milady. I was beginning to think—”
“Tell me what, Sir Valiant?” I cut him off.
His shoulders fall. “After the gods were taken to Purgatory, the wraiths infiltrated Aurora like the plague,” he explains, his voice strained.
“They casted the entire continent in a shroud of forever darkness and began slaughtering all things living. Mortals that survived the initial onslaught were herded like cattle and locked inside prisons hewn from ice. Forests were being set ablaze with unnatural flames. The rivers ran gold with bloodmagic of all the slain.” He gives me a hopeless look.
“The Valenorians were snuffed out of their underground fortress by toxic smoke. Thank the gods they had ships to turn to, otherwise who knows what would’ve happened to them.
But this is not the most distressing part. ”
“What could be more distressing than that?” I croak out.