Chapter 26
Sag e
“Y ou remembered something, didn’t you?” Artemesia asked, her hand reaching across the table, falling on top of my wrist. Her touch was warm, comforting.
Instinctually, my hand fell over hers. How incredible it was that her existence had been exempt from my memories, but the moment she stepped back into my life, that same love I’d held for her in the past had returned immediately, untarnished and unwavering.
Slowly, I nodded. “I did. It was of when the empress came to our family home.”
“That was a very dark day,” she stated, her solemn expression emphasizing the weight behind her words.
“Please, don’t take her!” Artemesia’s young voice called out as she tried to keep up with the carriage, her hand reaching for mine.
“Artemesia!” I cried out, wedging myself through the window, my fingers reaching for hers. We were so close.
But the coachman cracked his whip, and the carriage picked up speed.
“Sage!” she cried, tears racing down her rosy cheeks as she tried to keep up.
“Artemesia!” I bellowed her name as my heart was cleaved apart.
Pulling back from the memory, I looked to my sister, and with a lump forming in my throat, I asked, “What happened after that?”
“You went with her,” she said somberly, her gaze falling to the table, “and I never saw you again.”
For a time, we sat there, silently grieving the past. The sadness that we felt for being pried from one another’s lives. And although neither of us shed a single tear, because we had given enough, someone else cried for us—
The wind. Outside, it began to pick up, and now it howled for us.
For the loss of two close sisters who had been torn apart.
I gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “I am glad that we have found each other once more.”
“As am I, dear sister,” she said.
We remained like that for a while.
I think she knew that I needed the quiet, so I could come to terms with everything I had just learned.
In my last lifetime, I had been forged from the womb of the moon and given a goddess’s title, but in the lifetime I had just recalled, I had been a mortal.
I’d had parents—a mother and a father. I looked across the table—a sister.
Merging from the depths of my thoughts, I asked, “What happened to them? Our parents?”
“They lived, and eventually, they passed from old age, their deaths occurring three days apart,” she answered. “I buried them at our family’s summer home, although there wasn’t much left of it. Mother always loved it there so much.” She smiled warmly. “She always said she loved—"
“The long summer nights where the moon was close enough to touch,” I said along with her, my mother’s favorite words returning to me.
“Yeah.” Artemesia smiled, and we both chuckled.
After, I asked, “Before, you mentioned something called the Great Divide. What was that?”
“Right, okay, I’ll get to that. First, I need to finish what I was telling you before,” she said, shifting back in her chair.
“After you left, the realm fell quiet for a few years, to the point we wondered if the empress had called off whatever she had been planning. Then, one day, word reached us that the creators were at war. Father desperately wanted to travel to Avolonia to see if he could find you, but Mother didn’t seem to think that was a good idea.
I remember being so mad at her. We argued and fought, until she took me to the kitchen and told me that the safest place for you to be was with the emperor.
I knew Mother was religious and she strongly believed in him, but I couldn’t understand why she thought you would be with the emperor when it was the empress who had taken you.
Mother refused to tell me any more and told me not to speak a word of what she had said to Father.
” Artemesia paused. She gave a gentle shake of her head and an apologetic smile.
“Sorry, I got a little off track there. Anyway, the empress ended up beating the emperor in the final battle. With his dying breath, he drove his mighty sword into the land and fractured it apart, thus ending the old realm and creating hundreds of others. Then, with a mighty roar, he used the last remnants of his powers to cast the realms out into the universe thus creating the Great Divide.”
My eyebrows furrowed. “Why did he do that?” I asked. “Why break the old realm apart and create hundreds of others?”
“He discovered what the empress had planned, that she was going to strip all rights from males and force them into a life of slavery. He didn’t want that for his creations, and so, in a last attempt to protect what he had made, he broke the realm apart and sent them away so they could be free of her. ”
I sat with that for a bit, my gaze flicking back and forth on some random spot on the table. There was still so much I didn’t understand, and in truth, knowing that the realms had been cast far into the universe made me feel . . . lonely.
Because it meant Von was way out there , and I was here.
I reminded myself of his promise, held tight to it.
Looking up at Artemesia, I asked, “Do you know if there is any way to travel between the realms?”
“The empress can send souls to different realms, but there is no way to travel between them.”
“Ah,” I said, dragging my hand over my face.
“You look tired,” she noted.
“I am,” I answered honestly.
“Perhaps we should pause this conversation for now. I’m sure this is a lot to process,” she said, standing up from her chair.
Following her lead, I stood too, and stretched out my neck.
“Do you need anything else for the night?” she asked.
I glanced around the tent. It was a far cry from the cell I had been locked inside. “I think I’ll be fine.”
She wrapped her arms around me. “Alright. If you do need anything, you know where to find me.”
“Thank you, Artemesia. For everything.” I hugged her back.
She responded warmly, “What are sisters for?”
After she left, I peeled the clothes from my body and crawled under the soft sheets. I knew I was filthy and I should probably wash the grime from my skin, but I was too tired.
The doors to the armoire were still open. The black leather jacket very much there .
“I miss you,” I whispered to the darkness, longing to hear his voice.
But all that replied was lonely silence. And it was deafening.
A tear slipped down my cheek, landing on the pillowcase. Plip . Then another. And another. Until I was shaking and sobbing. Until I cried myself to sleep. But, as I would soon find out, nothing but horror awaited me there.