Chapter 13
The sunrise came too soon and not soon enough.
We’d put in hours of frantic work establishing refugee sleeping arrangements and trying to coordinate a defense against an enemy who seemed to anticipate our every move.
Aidon had finally dragged me outside for what he called self-care.
Translation: He was worried I'd collapse from exhaustion before Lyra even showed up.
"You need five minutes to breathe," he insisted, settling me into one of the Adirondack chairs on the back deck. "The babies need you calm, and I need you functional."
"I am functional," I protested, though even I could hear the exhaustion in my voice.
"You're running on adrenaline and pure stubbornness," he replied. His power curled protectively around both of us as the first rays of sunlight painted the sky in shades of gold and pink. "That's not sustainable."
“Thank you,” I told him as I grabbed his hand and leaned back in the chair.
The morning was deceptively peaceful. Birds chirped in the trees that our Fae refugees had enhanced overnight.
They’d added protective enchantments. The ocean whispered against the shore beyond our property line.
For just a moment, I could almost pretend we were a normal couple enjoying a quiet sunrise instead of supernatural beings preparing for war.
Of course, I should have known it was a mistake to let my guard down.
That was when I was suddenly somewhere else entirely.
I was standing in a cramped cottage. A young girl, maybe twelve years old, was hunched over a wooden table covered in spell components.
Her dark hair hung in greasy strings around a face marked by hunger.
Even at that age, I recognized Lyra's distinctive bone structure. Holy shit. What was this?
"Please work," the child whispered. Her small hands were shaking as she arranged crystals. "Mama needs this to work."
Through the vision's strange clarity, I could see the woman lying on a cot nearby. She was wasting away from some disease that made her skin gray, and her breathing labored. The girl's magic was raw and untrained. Yet powerful enough to make the air shimmer with potential.
The healing spell failed. They were incredibly difficult to do. The crystals cracked, releasing stored energy in a violent burst. The young Lyra was knocked backward into the wall. And her mother's breathing stopped. On ho! My heart began racing in my chest.
The scene shifted, and I watched as neighbors turned away from the grieving child. Whispers followed her through their small village: "Cursed." "Dangerous." "Should have been properly trained." "Her mother would be alive if she'd controlled her power."
I watched as Lyra grew older in flashes. It was like pages turning in a book. One written in blood. Each failed attempt to find acceptance changed her. Each rejection by potential mentors scarred her. And each lonely night led her to experiment with progressively darker magic.
"If they won't teach me," teenage Lyra snarled at her reflection in a cracked mirror, "then I'll learn to take what I need."
Her first parasitic spell was crude. She had latched onto a dying animal and tried to steal its remaining life force.
She told herself she wanted to understand how healing magic flowed in reverse.
The reality was that she wanted the power.
That was why the creature died. There were no tears as Lyra relished magic rushing through her veins like liquid fire.
For the first time since her mother's death, she was in control. That was her turning point.
"Phoebe," Aidon's voice seemed to come from very far away. "Phoebe, come back."
I blinked, gasping as the vision released me. My cheeks were wet with tears I didn't remember shedding. "She was just a child," I whispered. My hands went to my belly, where the triplets were stirring restlessly. "She killed her mother by accident and turned evil when she tried to make up for it."
"Who?" Aidon asked.
"Lyra. I saw her childhood. Her first experiments with stealing magic." I wiped my eyes. My heart ached for the lonely girl who'd grown into a monster. "She wasn't born evil. She was made that way by grief and isolation."
“That is unfortunate. But she made a choice,” Aidon pointed out. “She willingly went down that path. And it doesn't excuse what she's become. Or what she's trying to do to our children."
"I know," I said quickly. "I'm not making excuses for her. But understanding how she became this way might help us stop her."
The back door opened, and Jean-Marc stepped out with his laptop clutched against his chest. "Mom, Dad, we've got a problem. A big one."
My shoulders slumped as I gestured to one of the chairs. "What now?"
"I've been analyzing the anchor feedback patterns all night," he said, settling into the chair next to mine. "The data is showing things we never suspected."
"Such as?" Aidon prompted when Jean-Marc hesitated.
"Lyra's been siphoning power from ley lines for decades.
It was not a recent thing. The corruption goes back at least sixty years, maybe longer.
" Jean-Marc's fingers flew across his keyboard.
He pulled up charts and graphs that made my head spin.
"She's been building this network for a very long time.
"Look at this," he continued, turning the laptop screen toward us.
He showed a map dotted with red markers that spread across the continent like a disease.
"Every major supernatural community disaster in the past six decades?
The Salem fire. The Vancouver pack massacre.
The Chicago coven collapse. All of them happened at ley line convergence points. "
"Holy shit. She's been systematically weakening the supernatural community for generations," I breathed, watching the pattern emerge with horrible clarity.
"There's more," Jean-Marc continued in a voice tight with barely controlled fear. "The anchor data is showing massive energy buildups at sites we haven't identified yet. She's not preparing for tonight's eclipse. She's abandoning her current strategy entirely."
"What do you mean?" Aidon demanded.
"I think she's planning to trigger a cascading failure across the entire ley line network," Jean-Marc said. "If she can't steal the babies' power directly, she'll collapse the magical infrastructure of North America and feed on the resulting chaos."
The enormity of what he was suggesting made my vision gray at the edges. "She'd kill millions of supernatural beings."
"And probably destabilize the Earth itself in the process," Aidon agreed. "The ley lines are what keep magic stable and predictable. Without them..."
"We'd have random magical surges, reality breaks, and dimensional bleeds," I finished. My nurse's training made the catastrophic implications clear. "It would be Armageddon."
"Which is why she's abandoned subtlety," Aidon snarled. "She knows we're onto her, so she's moving to scorched Earth tactics."
The sound of Nina's laughter drifted from inside the house.
It was incongruously bright against our grim conversation.
When I looked through the window, I saw her sitting cross-legged on the living room floor with a young Fae girl who couldn't have been more than eight years old.
The child was laughing while Nina gently braided flowers into her silver hair.
"When this is all over, we'll plant you a new garden. An even better one." Nina's magic flared softly, creating tiny illusions of butterflies that danced around the child's head. "See? They're already waiting for you."
The little Fae giggled, clapping her hands as the magical butterflies settled on her shoulders. "She's developing empathic abilities," Tarja informed me telepathically. "Being around so much pain and loss is awakening dormant magical gifts. She's feeling everyone's grief as if it were her own."
My heart clenched as I watched my daughter comfort a child who'd lost everything. Tarja’s comment changed how I saw my daughter.
Nina had always been compassionate, but this was different.
It was a deep, magical empathy. One that would be either a blessing or a curse.
Depending on how she learned to control it.
"She's going to need training," I murmured to Tarja. "Empathic magic can be overwhelming if she doesn't learn to shield herself."
"After we deal with Lyra," she agreed. "Right now, she's helping more than she knows."
Jean-Marc cleared his throat, drawing my attention. "I don't think Lyra's is working alone anymore."
"We knew about the Forgotten Ones and the other factions Cordelia mentioned," I said.
"Not them. These are human magical signatures. Powerful ones." Jean-Marc's expression grew troubled. "She's recruited other witches to her cause."
"Who would be stupid enough to join her?" I demanded.
"People who think she can make them more powerful," Aidon replied grimly.
"Either way, it means tonight's assault won't just be her vile creatures and stolen magic," Jean-Marc said. "We'll be facing Tainted witches who can combat our spells."
A soft knock on the door frame interrupted our conversation.
Thalia stepped out onto the deck. "Cordelia finished explaining my family's history," she said without preamble.
"The prophecy about the lost daughter? It's not about me returning home.
It's about me sacrificing myself to break the parasitic network. "
The deck went dead silent except for the distant sound of waves and the soft murmur of refugees inside the house. "What exactly does that mean?" Aidon demanded a second later.
"The parasitic bonds can only be severed by someone with the Pleiades bloodline who willingly gives up their life force to fuel the severing," Thalia said matter-of-factly, as if she were discussing the weather instead of her own death.
"We can't let you do that," I said immediately. "We'll find another way."
"There is no other way," Thalia replied sadly. "Lyra's network is too extensive, too deeply rooted. The only power strong enough to cleanse it completely is a Pleiades soul freely given."
"I won't let you die for us," I insisted, struggling to get out of my chair. "There has to be another solution."
"Phoebe," Thalia said gently, "I've been dead for thirty-eight years. Everything since my escape has been borrowed time. If I can use that time to save your children and protect the supernatural world, then it's time well spent."
"The prophecy could be interpreted differently," Jean-Marc said desperately. "Lost daughter could mean metaphorically lost, not literally sacrificed."
"I've considered every possible interpretation," Thalia replied. "Cordelia was very clear about the requirements. And honestly? After what Lyra put me through, after seeing what she's done to innocent people, I want this. I want to be the one who ends her."
"There has to be another way," I lamented. "There's always another way."
"Sometimes there isn't," Thalia said softly. "Sometimes the best we can do is choose how our story ends."