Chapter 12 Kaira
KAIRA
The moment Alyana stepped out of the dining area, I stood up and went after her. She wanted me to stay put, to just accept these vague answers, but I was done sitting around waiting for something to happen.
The sound of the doors opening made me brave enough to cross through the living room and toward the entrance to the hallway, but I didn't want her to know I was eavesdropping. I didn't want her to know I wasn't in the dining room.
Hushed voices filled the silence—Alyana's and another, feminine-sounding voice. My feet carried me toward the wall closest to the entrance to the hallway, and I plastered myself firmly to it. I closed my eyes to listen to what they were saying.
"Is it true?" the newcomer asked with no greetings and no other words.
"Is it?" But nothing came from my aunt, not a single word.
"We've talked about this, Alyana. We spoke of this day, and both of us knew it would arrive sooner rather than later.
I know it's difficult and I know it isn't what you wanted, but I need to know.
We all need to know and prepare because they won't wait.
They probably already know, because if I could feel her arrival, so could they. "
Feel her arrival? Whose arrival?
"It is true," my aunt confirmed. "And I don't know what to do. She can't leave, but we both know what would happen if she stays."
"The fulfillment would happen," the female said. "We always knew this day would come, so now it's up to us to handle it in the best way possible." Silence followed after her words and I pressed closer to the entrance, realizing they were whispering.
More than that—they were talking about me. I could hear my name mentioned here and there. I could hear Alyana mentioning my mother. But why? What was it about me?
"Does she know?" the female asked, her voice quieter this time. "Does she know about—"
"No," my aunt interrupted. "My sister is dead, as I suspected, but she never told her.
She… Gods, Elandra, she didn't prepare her.
I warned her what would happen. Not what could happen, but what would inevitably happen, and she still chose to keep her in the dark.
She still blinded her own child to the truths of this world.
How are we going to fix this? How do we handle this? "
"Carefully," the woman, Elandra, said. "Slowly and carefully and as much as it pains me to say, maybe your sister was right.
Maybe she wanted her daughter to live a carefree life because she knew what was coming.
" What the fuck was going on? "But we need to act fast. We need to start preparing and we need to meet with the others.
He won't wait long and we both know he has eyes and ears everywhere in this place. "
"What about," my aunt quietened, "you know?"
"I haven't spoken to him in years. If it wasn't for Grimm popping over at my place every now and then I would've thought he was already dead. But he must have felt something. He must have."
"I saw him this morning when I went to greet her," my aunt admitted. "He didn't exit the forest, but he was there. I think Grimm was with him."
This morning? Was she talking about the man on the edge of the forest I had seen? The man that disappeared the moment my aunt appeared?
"Does she have the sight?" Elandra asked. "If she does, then we need to be even quicker than I initially thought."
My aunt took a deep breath, releasing it before she spoke.
"I don't know. We haven't seen anyone this morning, so I can't be certain, but if she's here, if she survived that, then she must have.
I didn't speak with her long enough to gather all the information, but I can feel her. I can feel her, Elandra."
The woman, Elandra, kept quiet for a second before speaking again. "We can all feel her, Alyana. The moment she approached the shores this morning, I could feel her. The moment her foot stepped on the ground, it was as if the energy went wild. Haven't you looked at the forest?"
My heart kept hammering in my chest because the way they spoke of me, of this place…
It couldn't be. It simply couldn't be. They were talking about energies, about someone, but none of it made sense.
Nothing made sense anymore. I've been here for just a couple of hours and I only got more questions than before.
"Alyana," Elandra suddenly said. "We're not alone." That they weren't.
I slipped out from my hiding spot, only to come face to face with a woman with almost white eyes and snakes looking at me from the top of her head.
My entire body froze, my feet refused to move, and everything I wanted to say died on my tongue as my eyes tried understanding what it was that I was seeing.
She… she had snakes instead of hair. Living, breathing snakes. Snakes that were looking at me. Snakes that were moving like they were a separate entity, watching me carefully. I closed my eyes, rubbed them, and reopened again, only to be met with a woman with the same eyes but no snakes in sight.
Her hair was as black as midnight, falling over her shoulders in soft waves, right over the white shirt she wore, tucked inside black pants.
"Hello, Kaira." She smiled, kindly, too fucking kindly for my liking, and stepped toward me. "It is nice to meet you."
"What the fuck is going on?" I said, my limbs still frozen from what I had seen. Or what I thought I had seen. "Who are you?"
"Kaira," my aunt interjected. "I told you to stay."
"And I told you I wanted answers," I bit back.
"I am not staying in the dark anymore, and seeing as you were discussing me, I'm pretty sure I have every right to be a part of this conversation.
So I'm going to ask again—what's going on?
" I asked my aunt directly and then looked at the dark-haired woman. "And who the fuck are you?"
The soft smile she carried slipped from her face almost instantly, replaced by the look of a predator if I had ever seen one, and the snakes… The snakes came back, slithering over her head, dancing to the music only they could hear.
"My name is Elandra," she purred, coming even closer to me. "But you might know me by a different name." I suspected as much. "You know me as Medusa."
I was a rational person, searching for logical explanations in every single aspect of my life, but right now my logic was failing me.
Terribly. When I woke up today I only had one thought in my mind: find out more about my mother's past. And I guess I did, in a way, but not exactly in the way I expected it to unravel.
My eyes were still glued to the small coffee table in front of the sofa in my aunt's living room, after I screamed fucking murder when I saw those snakes.
I couldn't speak.
Couldn't look anywhere else.
Couldn't even think.
The dark, beady eyes of those snakes were etched in my mind and no matter how many times I tried to move, I was frozen, my mind working overtime, trying to conjure the most logical explanation to what I saw.
But there were no logical explanations and this was not another one of my weird dreams I could wake up from.
Elandra, Medusa, whatever the fuck was her name, was sitting on my right, giving me space, but she didn't leave. She didn't laugh at my outburst either, deciding to stay and apparently let this unfold while my aunt kept calling my name ten thousand times, only for me to stay silent.
Silence was good. Silence was perfect right now, but every now and then one of them would speak up, breaking my perfectly comfortable silence, reminding me I wasn't alone.
"Is she in shock?" my aunt asked Elandra, her voice muffled behind the ringing in my ears and the impending headache crawling from my neck and up into my skull. "She seems to be in shock."
"She'll live."
"That wasn't my question," she grit out. "This wasn't how I wanted this to unfold."
"Well." Elandra chuckled. "She handled it quite well, I must say. Most people faint." Yeah, I was glad I didn't faint, but I wasn't far from that possibility. I wasn't far from grabbing my suitcase that was still standing next to the entrance to the hallway and running away from here.
My mind ran through every story my mother had told me.
Every time I laughed when she claimed mythological creatures weren't just things living in history books.
She tried telling me in her own way, and every single time I laughed at her, shrugging off her attempts at educating me.
Now I wished I had listened. Oh, how I wished I had believed earlier.
Actually, I wasn't sure I completely believed in those stories even now, but the proof was right in front of my nose. Both literally and figuratively.
I could hear those snakes hissing. I could hear Elandra talking to them as if they were creatures that had cognitive thinking, and I wondered how many things I had missed.
How many signs did I ignore because my mind was wired to ignore everything that wasn't logical to it?
There was no logic to all of this. There was no logic to fucking Medusa sitting in my aunt's living room, drinking her tea as if it were just another day, completely regular and not at all something that tilted my entire world on its axis.
"This isn't a dream, is it?" I suddenly asked, my voice raspy from keeping quiet for this long after screaming like a banshee in the hallway. My eyes stayed on the coffee table and the now cold cup of coffee my aunt had placed in front of me, thinking it would help.
Elandra slowly moved, her legs in my peripheral view, and leaned forward.
I could see the dark shadows running from the tips of her fingers where her claws sat, up toward her knuckles, ending just before they reached her palms. I could see the runes, the tattoos on her wrists, on her forearm where the sleeves of her shirt had been rolled up.
"I'm afraid not, Kaira. And I am sorry for scaring you, but I'm not here to hurt you."