59. Sybilla
Chapter 59
Sybilla
I mpossible language.
There were so many fucking vowels, and the inflection held so much nuance. I struggled over the Brennac words that Krait had used to open the alley doorway into the cavern. Ready to give up, I heaved out a breath, with my forehead pressed to the door.
With Caym inevitably on my heels, doom crashed around me.
Krait had told me that I would never face dangers alone again, and I longed for that to have been true. I wanted him here.
“Repeat,” a feminine voice whispered to me. She sounded familiar but her voice was so vapory at the edges that I knew no physical form accompanied it. I shivered to think that it resembled my mother’s cadence.
The voice whispered Brennac to me, and I repeated it, hoping this wasn’t just an illusion of my own creation. As I spoke the words, I somehow understood their meaning. “Welcome me. For I seek not darkness but cannot find the light. In the Shadows we trust.”
The lock gears turned, and the door beneath my forehead gave in. I whimpered in relief. Running into the tunnels, I tried to remember the way.
“Left, left, right, straight, left, right.” The whisper in the wind continued to guide me. Every muscle in my body burned, every joint aflame, but still, I ran. Adrenaline and fear fueled my hurried pace.
When I burst into the cavern, Lymrasi hissed. She coiled and lifted her serpent snout in my direction. “I knew you would be back sssooner than you expected.”
I gasped for air, but approached her without fear. “How do we wake them?” I motioned toward the other stone serpents. “I’m calling on you for help now. ”
“Ssso many have sought us for Death. What is it that you wish to ruin, child?”
“Nothing!” I huffed out, “We don’t have time for riddles. I don’t plan to ruin anything. But Caym will if we do not stop him. You told me not to fail—to come back to you when Isolde’s power has been returned. I beg you. Help me, Lymrasi.”
“Lymrasssi means ‘center’ in the Brennac language. It was not my given name.”
I groaned, clenching my fists. “Then what is your given name?”
“Isssleen.”
My back straightened.
My cousin and healer had been envoys, and my ancestor was a winged snake. No possibility seemed off the table. I felt as though I knew nothing.
She hissed, “When we laid him to rest, he changed me and all but one of my children—made usss monstersss. We want to be free of him, so she must ssspeak with you now.”
I looked around; no one else stood in the cavern, yet the distinctive feeling of being watched overwhelmed me. The same voice that guided me here said, “Sybilla, forgive me.”
I spun to face the woman who had both broken and shaped me.
“Mother?”
She stood there in iridescence, like a shimmering cloud atop a mountain. My mouth hung open as I took in her face and curls—so similar to mine. I’d never had a chance to face her as the woman I’d become.
“We do not have much time,” she said. “He will still rise once more, but you can stop him today, Sybilla. You have always had access to one of the ways to stop him—he fears the weapons Isolde created, for he cannot wield them, but they can destroy him.”
“How...” I glanced at Lymrasi, or Isleen , and then back at the ebbing form of my mother. “How do you know? How are you here? ”
A pang of guilt settled in my gut. My father had driven a wedge between us long before the day she’d been executed.
“Because I am a daughter of Isleen, my child, as are you. I am the reason your father had visions, the reason he thought himself an Oracle. Your father’s prophecies were never his. I made him hide the boy and train him.”
Her words shattered everything I’d thought I knew about my childhood.
“But Caym found me all the same. So long as he thought me naive about my power, I was safe. You were safe. But Mortag discovered what I had been doing and...”
“They killed you...”
My mother nodded. “The tea Mortag served us stifles our power—muddles it to a dim portion of what we are capable of. But the garrot root helped you stay well.”
That’s what he’d been doing with the tea.
“He was our healer for years—why didn’t he just kill us?” I asked.
My mother’s cold hand found my cheek. “At first, he did not know what we were—who we were. And then…he could not.” She looked at Lymrasi.
The serpent spoke. “My mother’s bargain with Caym had one caveat. He losesss her power if he killsss a child of Isleen. It’s why, instead, he coveted me, why he turned us to ssstone instead of killing us. He can tear the world down around you, but he cannot kill you or your child himself—try as he might.”
“I only hoped that you would remain unaware until you were ready,” my mother whispered. “I ran out of time to prepare you.”
“I’m still not ready,” I snapped back, feeling like the petulant teenager I’d been when she left me. “I don’t understand what I should be ready for. ”
My mother rubbed my cheek once more. “You are. It would not come to you now if you were not. You are ready to face him, ready to prevail today so that your daughter can one day end his reign.”
My daughter.
She spoke in such absolutes.
Something gleamed at my feet, and when I looked down, a sword rested there. “What is this?” I asked.
My mother answered, “It is the sword Isolde crafted to defeat Caym. It is one of three relics your child must wield against him. It can stop him tonight.”
Isleen’s serpent head nodded as she tasted the air.
I reached down and picked up the sword, assessing its weight. It was oddly familiar—mostly steel, but the handle was cut with gold. Rubies encrusted the guard. My hackles rose to see a deathmark on the very bottom of the pommel. This was not just any sword...It was Emmerick’s broadsword.
The one he denied naming after me.
“I made him hide the boy and train him.” I’d always found it odd that my father had been so willing to train the baker’s son. He hadn’t been charitable with his time when it came to me.
“It was you,” I gasped. “You protected Em. You made Father protect him. Father gave him this sword...” My eyes welled, tears threatening to spill over.
“Yes. Your father never knew what weapon he’d gifted young Mattock. And neither did Caym. Even after he put his awful mark on it, it still longs to destroy Death—and because Caym built that bond to the sword, it can now find him. All you must do is ask it to.”
I stepped toward my mother and reached out with my free hand, longing to take hers. The luster of her felt like cold air as my hand went through her. “This can kill Caym?”
“Ssstop. Not kill,” Isleen corrected. “He will rise once more. But do as you can to delay him until your child has all the relics.”
“Then how do I kill him?”
“You will not,” Isleen hissed back. “Only a child of my lineage and the fifth heir of Shadows will know the way.”
My head tilted. “And if no child comes?”
But something warmed within me. I envisioned Krait as a father; he held our swaddled daughter to his chest and looked down at her with a smile that I’d never seen him wear before. It flashed like a memory I had not yet made.
My mother’s voice seemed to grow farther away as she cut in, “There are many ways to fulfill a single prophecy. The path you carve is uniquely yours.”
The iridescent shimmer started to fade until my mother’s face dissipated into nothing but fog, which drifted to the ceiling of the cave. “Don’t go!” I shouted and reached out for her. “Please.”
My mother whispered, “I will be with you through it all. Always.”
She was gone. It had been so abrupt. I slumped, and the sword’s blade touched the ground.
I turned to Isleen, wanting to scream, “Bring her back!”
Instead, I asked, “Why does he seek destruction? Why does he want me? ”
“In early timesss, I’d married a mortal man with whom I had ten children. But when my mother made her bargain with Caym, that changed me. I did not age, while my husband grew old and passed. Desidero was there for me when I mourned. He cared for me and that care blossomed into love. But Caym grew jealousss. He wished for my hand. I chose Desidero but met my end before we could marry. He wasss my second love.”
I wiped away the tears from my cheeks, looking up at the beast before me. Not a beast. Isleen—a woman who had loved, lost, and lived. My resolve built in my chest.
“What am I to do?” I asked her.
“What does your heart tell you to do?”
Before I could answer, panic seized me. Not my own.
“Sybilla. You are my eternity. You always were.”
No—no, no. Krait. I needed to reach him.
“I told you, child,” Isleen hissed. “You cannot fail, no matter the cossst.”
The sensation of falling overtook me as I plunged into a depth of my mind that I’d never visited before. It felt like peeling away viscous mercury.
Krait stood before me, helpless and veiled in a thin layer of gray translucent fabric. I reached out through the darkness, fumbling toward him. Then I grabbed the veil and yanked it away from his face.
I cupped his cheek and said, “Then fight for me. And don’t you dare fucking die.”
Krait’s eyes widened for a moment before he ducked and then disappeared.
Unable to hold onto that place, unable to stay with him, I crumbled to my knees in front of my ancestral power. When I came to, I stared up at Isleen’s fangs.
“I wish to end Death’s reign. I will do whatever it takes. Please ,” I begged.
“Very well.” She slithered around me, her feathered wings tucked tightly to her sides. “Climb up, and we shall go.”
The stone of the other nine beasts began to crack—ten beasts of nightmares. My kin. I carefully climbed up Isleen’s scaled back, less than gracefully. Once seated, I looked down at the sword in my hand and said, “Lead us to Caym.”
The creatures hissed and stretched, awakening around me. “Caym created usss, but we answer to only you now,” they sang together.
We left the cavern, and pounding wings took to the wind of the night sky.