Chapter 31 #2
There was no denying what waited at the end of all this.
Once the bond was broken, once Aedric's mind was freed of that kernel of magic, and once Rìan found Dannis, there would be war.
Rìan had no intention of stopping at revenge.
Whatever plans he had for reclaiming his throne, the Full Circle would stand against him.
They would fight to the death for the continent.
I didn't know where that left me—or whether there was any way to escape the bargain Rìan had trapped me into making.
But one thing I knew with absolute certainty: I'd fight tooth and nail before becoming his puppet.
I'd sooner have Aedric lock me away again, chain me in iron if he had to, than allow myself to become an unwilling weapon in the devil's hands.
Still, looking into Levinica's earnest eyes, I found myself making a silent vow.
No matter what happened, no matter that she'd risked everything again to stand beside her brother, I would see that she was left in peace when all this was done.
All she truly wanted was her son back—to hold him in her arms again and live quietly with him, safe and happy. That, at least, I could give her.
“Do you believe in fate?”
Levinica's words pulled me back into the moment. In the fading light, she looked almost painfully beautiful, the setting sun catching in her dark hair until it glowed like a halo around her head.
“Yes,” I managed thickly.
“Good.” She nodded once. “Me too. I think what you stumbled upon with the wells was fate.”
She clutched the pendant to her chest, holding it there as though she could somehow press it into her heart.
“Fate is why I never stopped searching for him.” Her face was bright and serene, alight with hope. “Because I know fate will bring us back together again.”
I swallowed against the sudden tightness in my throat.
“Sometimes I wonder if he'll know me when he sees me.” Her gaze drifted, though not in the unsettling way it did when madness threatened to claim her. It was the faraway look of someone lost in a cherished memory.
“I’m sure he will,” I said, blinking against the sting gathering behind my eyes.
“I wonder if he’ll smell the same.” A crooked smile touched her mouth.
“I used to bury my face in his hair every chance I got. That warm, powdery baby smell…” She laughed softly, shaking her head.
“It’s strange, isn’t it? How your child can become your home.
Your world.” Her gaze settled warmly on me. “I hope you know that feeling someday.”
The thought caught me off guard. I'd never truly considered children of my own. In the mortal lands, it had always seemed cruel to bring a child into a dying world.
And now... now I knew I was half Eidra. Eidrae never survived childbirth, surrendering their full magic—and their lives—to their daughters.
For the first time, I found myself wondering which blood would prove stronger.
Would my human half somehow allow me to survive, or would I die before I ever held my daughter in my arms?
Before she ever had the chance to become my home.
It was unbearably sad. And terribly unfair.
“He was five when he was taken from me.” Her voice trembled ever so slightly, though there was no anger in it.
“He still smelled like a baby then. I doubt he will anymore, though I hope there will still be the faintest trace of it left—a little reminder whenever I kiss the top of his head.” A wistful smile touched her lips.
“Though I wonder if I'll even be able to anymore.”
“Why wouldn't you?” I could barely force the words out.
Her smile turned sad. “I don't know if I'd be able to reach. By now, he'll be a male fully grown.”
Something in me stumbled. Fully grown. I knew three hundred years had passed...
yet some foolish part of me had still imagined Levinica's son returning to her as the little boy she'd lost. Perhaps because every glimpse I'd ever seen of him—in Rìan's memories, and Aedric's—had preserved him that way in my mind. Young. Small. Frozen in time.
Or perhaps it was because of the way Levinica spoke of him whenever the madness took her. Like he was still little somehow. Still hers to scoop into her arms and soothe. As though three hundred years had never passed at all.
But no.
He would be grown now.
Bitter anger tore through me as I realized what had truly been stolen from them. Levinica had not only been robbed of her son, but he'd been denied the chance to grow up loved by a mother as gentle, kind, and fiercely devoted as she was.
“Don’t make that face.” She tucked her pendant back beneath her neckline. “He may be grown now, but he’ll always be my baby.” Her voice softened, dropping almost to a whisper. “Always.”
She exhaled heavily and offered me a weak smile before scooting her chair closer to mine, disturbing Titter Mouse enough that he sprang indignantly from her lap to the floor.
“Now where did we leave off?” She tucked a loose strand of dark hair behind her ear as she turned through the pages.“Ah. This should distract us nicely.” She angled the book toward me.
And she was right. My attention caught instantly upon the page.
The Keepers of Mind.
I stared, transfixed by the image of what could only be the Dreamwalkers.
A figure stood rendered in thick strokes of charcoal, its edges blurred as though even the artist had been unable to decide where flesh ended and shadow began.
Smoke-like tendrils unraveled from its form, dissolving into nothingness.
No true features had been captured beyond the faint suggestion of a face and the unmistakable silver blaze where its eyes should have been.
It was the unformed shape a nightmare might wear.
I swallowed against the sudden dryness in my mouth.
Beside me, Levinica guided me across the page with one slender gloved finger. I tried to steady my voice as I began to read aloud:
“And where the Keepers of Mind set their gaze, the self unravels.
For how might one trust memory, thought, or even sight itself once the mind has been touched?
No true accounting agrees upon their form.
The Keepers may possess body and substance, silver-eyed and shadow-cloaked—or perhaps they are creatures only of dream and illusion, entering where defenses lie weakest.
“Yet all accounts agree upon this: when the Keepers of Mind draw near, it is already too late. Shielding offers the only meaningful protection, though even that proves useless in sleep. For once the dreaming mind opens itself, the Keepers are already there, waiting.”
My heart pounded in my ears as the implications settled over me. Never truly knowing whether your thoughts belonged to you. Whether your memories could be trusted. Whether your mind had been invaded and reshaped. I shuddered.
Levinica was watching me expectantly, brows raised as though she anticipated some grand response to what I'd just read. I had no idea what to say.
She laughed. “You look positively horrified.”
She smoothed her skirt before angling the book toward herself.
“The author was terribly prejudiced, if you ask me,” she said tartly, idly turning the pages.
“This entire book paints the Keepers as dreadful creatures to be feared, while the Fae are cast in an almost heroic light, brimming with goodness and selflessness.” She gave a soft, derisive snort.
“Everyone knows the Fae are horrid little beasts.”
“Oh?” was all I managed. I glanced sidelong at her, wondering if the madness had begun to creep in again, but there was nothing. No distant look in her eyes. No disconnect in her expression.
She hmmphed softly as she turned another page, and the book landed once more upon the giants.
“I will admit,” she said, “the author must have met one of the Tharuun because the drawing is uncanny, truly. But they’re painted here as bringers of catastrophe, when they were really a peaceful people. Not violent at all unless seriously provo—”
She stopped. Her breath hitched.
She drew the book closer, her fingers beginning to shake as she lifted it to study the page more intently.
I straightened at once, immediately alert. “What is it?”
Her eyes flew wide. “I think I know why the map didn't align with the drawing,” she breathed, her face alight in a way I'd never seen before. She shot to her feet and hurried to my side, thumping the book onto the table hard enough to make me jump.
“Read this.” Her finger landed upon the passage about the Tharuun.
“I already have.”
“Read it again,” she insisted, bending closer.
I lowered my gaze to the text. As Levinica leaned over me, her pendant slipped free from the neckline of her dress, swaying gently from the leather cord around her neck. Back and forth. Back and forth.