6. Ivy
6
IVY
I glare at Morrigan, the snake still coiled around my body. “Look, we clearly have a clusterfuck of epic proportions on our hands here. Fighting amongst ourselves isn’t going to solve anything.”
Morrigan’s eyes narrow. “You expect me to just let this thief keep my power?”
“I’m not a thief,” Bram snarls.
“We need to focus on the bigger picture here. In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve royally fucked up the timeline and unleashed who knows what into the world.”
Torin nods. “We need to stop fucking about and fix this mess.”
Morrigan laughs bitterly. “Fix it? You foolish children. There is no fixing this. The damage is done.”
“There has to be a way,” Tate insists. “Some ritual or spell to set things right.”
She shakes her head. “It’s not that simple. You managed a time reverse, somehow. The gods only know how. You can’t move time back to where you broke it.”
“Why not?”
She smiles at me again. “You are a little chaos bitch, aren’t you? Messing with reality and everyone in it like it’s nothing to you.”
I glare at Morrigan, bristling at her condescending tone. “Look, I get that you’re pissed about your power. But we’re dealing with something a lot bigger here. Reality itself is unravelling.”
“And whose fault is that?” she sneers.
“Ours, for fuck’s sake! Which is why we’re trying to fix it. Now are you going to help, or just stand there being a bitch?”
Morrigan’s eyes flash dangerously. “Watch your tongue, little Death. I could obliterate you with a thought.”
I laugh harshly. “Go ahead and try. I’m Death now, sweetheart. You can’t kill me.”
“But I’m the goddess of war, death and fate. Where do you think your power came from in the first place?”
Oh, shit . She has me there. I hadn’t even considered that. Damn you, David, for not giving me a history of this power!
I wanted to! You resisted!
Oh, fuck off.
I ignore the unsettling voice of David Beech in my head. That’s not how this works, is it? Can I hear the souls of all the beings across the past?
Closing my eyes for a brief moment, I stumble as the cacophony of voices overwhelms me. Thousands, maybe millions of souls cry out in my mind. Past Deaths, victims, warriors, innocents. It’s deafening.
“Ivy?” Torin’s concerned voice cuts through the noise. His hand on my arm steadies me.
My eyes snap open, and I shake my head, trying to clear it. “I’m fine,” I grit out.
Morrigan watches me with keen interest. “Ah, you’re hearing them now, aren’t you? All the souls you plural have collected.”
“Shut up,” I snarl, but there’s no real heat behind it. I’m too overwhelmed.
She smirks. “It’ll drive you mad if you let it. You will end up nothing but a wild, feral creature with no power and no way to control death around you.”
Her words scare me. Seriously scare me. They terrify me because I know she’s right. Pushing at the pressure that is threatening to explode my skull and splatter my brain out all over the forest, I focus on the pushback, and the voices fade to a dull roar in the background. For now.
Locking gazes with her, I know she is going to be no help, whatsoever. She is here for one thing and one thing only. Her power. So we either give it to her or we kill a goddess. It’s too bad we need that power inside Bram to fix this mess we are in.
She must see the predicament we are facing in my eyes because hers narrow. She takes in all four of us and purses her lips. “This isn’t over.”
“It is for now,” I say, but she has already vanished.
“Are you okay?” Torin asks, his hand still on my arm.
I nod, even though I’m not sure I am. The voices of countless souls are still there, just below the surface, waiting to overtake me again. “I’ll be fine. We have bigger problems.”
“No shit,” Bram growls. “What the fuck do we do now?”
I run a hand through my hair in frustration. “I don’t know. But we need to figure something out fast. Who knows what other ancient beings we’ve unleashed.”
“Not to mention the fact that reality itself seems to be unravelling,” Tate adds grimly.
“Okay, let’s think,” I say, trying to stay calm. “We reversed time to save me and Tate. There has to be a way to undo it.”
“But Morrigan said we can’t just move time back,” Torin points out.
“Maybe not,” I concede. “But there has to be something. Some way to stabilise things at least.”
“There is,” Tate says grimly, and I know before our eyes meet that he’s right.
There is one way to fix this.
Put everything back how it was before they did the ritual to bring me back from the thousand realities.
“No,” Bram states as he and Torin get up to speed. “No. We are not sending you back there.”
“I don’t think we have much choice,” I murmur, my heart beating a bit faster as the snake slithers off under a bush. “We have to fix this, and that is the only way. That is what was meant to happen, and we ruined fate by reversing what we did.”
“No,” Torin says defiantly. “We will find another way.”
“There isn’t one. It’s okay. Maybe being Death this time will make it easier.” I keep my tone light, but the dread inside me of being torn apart again courses through me. Can I survive it happening all over again, but more importantly, can I survive an eternity shattered into minuscule pieces and watching the worlds go by without me?