Chapter 10
For a heartbeat, I’m certain Raina Bloodgood might help me. It’s a false hope, because a moment later, she rises and turns to leave. She’s not only a seer, but I also think she’s a resurrectionist.
And she’s going to let me die.
At least the last thing I will ever lay my eyes upon in this long life is a powerful woman of both beauty and fury. A soul delicate yet wild and so deeply moving—even if she does wish me dead.
In the last few years, when I’ve visited Silver Hollow on Collecting Day, I’ve been incapable of preventing my gaze from lingering on her face, though she has never so much as lifted her chin to look me in the eye.
I can’t blame her. In another life, I would’ve tried to know her.
I would’ve admired her and read her poems written by my own hand.
I would’ve walked with her through fields of stardrops, danced with her in the stream.
This is not another life.
She turns back and casts a long look over her shoulder. I watch her, standing in her bloody, soot-stained dress, the wind tearing stardrops from her long hair, white petals drifting through the smoke like snowflakes.
If I could speak, I’d tell her I came here to help her.
To help us all. I’d tell her that I’m not evil.
That I’m not entirely good, but I never meant to bring her sorrow.
I’d tell her I’m terrified of what my death means for Tiressia, and that I’m worried about leaving her alone, because she doesn’t realize how alone she might truly be or what evil has yet to come.
I would tell her to go to Littledenn. To see if all the women and children in the root cellar survived. I’d tell her to get them out of the vale, though where they might go, I cannot fathom.
I fear war is coming, the likes of which Northlanders have never seen. The Prince of the East has indeed walked inside the Shadow World. He also has power he should not have, a living amalgam of all the things people claim: shadows, souls, and sin.
In truth, my death will weaken the Eastlanders’ chances of success at conquering the Summerlands, and I tell myself that I’m ready to sacrifice all.
But it’s what I’ll leave behind that Tiressia must fear. I am salvation and damnation. There cannot be one without the other.
Something in Raina’s eyes shifts from dark to light. She returns to me and kneels in the grass, ash falling all around. Conflict swirls in her irises, but as the last breaths of life slip from my body, she lifts her slender hands and, with the most graceful movements I’ve ever seen, begins to sing.