Chapter 54 Seren
Chapter fifty-four
Seren
The world was a spinning, tilting mess of dark purple-blue and startling bright light. It was warm—warmer than I remembered—but I could not recall where I had been. I did not know where I was now.
I blinked, the movement sluggish—lashes dragging. It felt as if I were moving through honey, thick, viscous liquid slowing my brain and body.
A voice sliced through the haze, clear as a bell and even more beautiful. It sharpened my surroundings, and I wondered if I was only just waking.
My eyes widened at the sight that surrounded me. I was no longer on the mountain in the Sárkhona Draum.
A midnight sky wrapped around me like a downy quilt, soft and warm and tangible in a way I could not have imagined. The bright lights that had burned my eyes were now in focus, so clear and impossible in the same measure.
Stars.
I was surrounded by thousands of brilliantly sparkling stars.
My soul had left the mortal realm. I was among the Celestials.
I turned, my body moving strangely in the mind bending space as I searched for the voice.
It rang through the air again. “Welcome Seren Corso, daughter of Anna and Stephanus Corso. Welcome Seren Sgalier, daughter of Katalin and Tarquin Sgalier. You are two, yet you are one. The Celestial Realm has awaited your arrival.”
When I finally found the source of the voice, I gasped. My hand pressed to my open mouth in astonishment.
A dragon hovered before me, massive and menacing and endlessly beautiful. Her scales were iridescent blue with wide wings that were outstretched, floating on an invisible current. She did not move save for the slow blink of her massive golden eyes.
I bowed as best as I could, body threatening to upend as my weight tipped forward. “Great Drakány, thank you. I have come to receive the trial of the Goddesses. To strengthen my power, if they determine me worthy.”
The Drakány hummed thoughtfully, though from the expression on her scaly face, I could tell the creature knew why I had come.
“The trial of the Goddesses,” the creature began, floating closer to me with each word, “is a test of your morality and your will. Your willingness to become a better version of yourself. Are you prepared for this task?”
I considered the last few months. I had changed so much. I had been evolving into a better version of myself all this time, almost as if I had been on the path to this very moment without even realizing it.
My heart pounded, but when I affirmed my decision, my voice was steady.
The Drakány blew a hot breath of approval through her snout. “In order to successfully complete the Rite of Celestials, both sun and moon must be deemed worthy. One cannot be stronger than the other, they must always remain in balance. Do you understand?”
“What does that mean?” I asked, looking into the golden gaze of the beast.
“It means, child, that both you and the sun wielder must agree to and pass your trials. If one or both of you reject the trial or fail to pass the Goddesses’ tests, your mágik will be forfeit.” The dragon's voice remained unchanged, the same smooth, musical sound, despite the heaviness of the news.
“Oh…” I frowned down at my hands. We had known that failing the trial would have consequences, but I had not realized our mágik was at risk nor that our fates were so tied to one another.
“Do you accept the consequences and seek entry to the trials?” The Drakány asked, either unaware or uninterested in my moment of hesitation.
I took a deep breath, thinking of Ayla, surely facing a similar conversation elsewhere in this realm. I thought of Harkin, believing in me so firmly, and of Théo and Safiya, who helped us even at great risk to themselves.
There was only one answer, in the end.
“I accept.”
With the click of sharp talons, my vision faded to blackness.
When my sight returned, I stood in the courtyard in Ordelés. My hands trembled with fear, my heart thumping an unsteady rhythm.
Luca screamed, his youthful face scrunched in fear. Tears ran over the curves of his round cheeks as the Rázuri backed him against the fountain. There were too many of them, and I knew my brother would die without my help.
My chest erupted in fear and pain. Panic seized me—a familiar friend—but I fought against its embrace. I lunged forward, reaching for my sword, but my grasp came away empty. I had no sword, no method to defend him, for this was not the present. It was a memory of a time when I had been helpless.
Luca died because I had not been trained with blades or mágik. I had been young and naive, and I thought mágik would never hurt me or those that I loved.
I was wrong—painfully, desperately, bone-achingly wrong.
I gasped around the anguish of this memory. I tried to tear my eyes away, but I could not, and when Luca fell to the ground, limp and lifeless, I wailed. I knew I was not really there, not anymore, but the pain and hurt and anger which gripped me felt so real, so immediate.
The Rázuri approached, breaking away from the memory and what had really happened that night.
I held my ground, that familiar desire to hurt and kill rising in me, but there was something else, too. Some small niggling feeling in the back of my mind that told me not to give in.
The Rázuri stood before me now, the memory warping into something unnatural as their cloaks whipped in the wind. Wicked smiles spread across their cruel faces.
“Don’t you want revenge?” the first hissed.
“We know how you’d love to kill us all,” claimed the other. “I bet you’d love to watch the light leave our eyes… Wouldn't you like to drain the blood from our veins?”
They laughed, and the sound was grating.
I pressed my palms over my ears. Tried to push away the answer I knew they wanted.
Yes, my heart said. I would torture them as they had done to so many of my people. I would tear their hearts from their chests. I would not stop until every trace of hurt had been burned from within me, an old wound cauterized.
But some other part of me yelled, no.
I thought of Safiya standing over the king’s corpse, the vindication on her face that had been so quickly washed away. There had been only devastation left, when she saw the betrayal on Ayla’s face. Safiya had taken her revenge, and she had lost everything for it.
I remembered every time I had protected that black spot on my weary heart and every time I had forced myself into seclusion because of it.
The Rázuri awaited my answer.
“I forgive you,” I whispered, eyes fluttering shut with the bittersweetness of doing the right thing even when it went against my nature. “You were a pawn in a pointless war, following orders. I have killed senselessly, too. I am no better than you, and I forgive you.”
I opened my eyes, and they were gone, as was the courtyard. I sat in my childhood home, hands resting on the oak table. My parents sat across from me, and I knew in an instant what this memory was.
Stephanus had an angry way about him that had not existed before Luca’s death. He looked upon me then with disgust and anger and maybe even a hint of fear.
Anna was softer, as she always had been, the grief settling deep into the lines of her aging face. She did not speak as she traced her fingers over and over again on the grooves of the wooden table.
I waited for the quiet pain to settle over me as it had all those years ago. The hurt was a thing I lived with—knew intimately—but that first day it had been so sharp I could barely breathe.
“You are no longer welcome in this house. You have broken this family and remain only as a reminder of what we have lost.” Stephanus said the words as if he held no attachment to me. I was only a nameless, faceless nobody, not the daughter he had raised so lovingly.
I remembered the way the tears had streamed down my face, how I had begged him. Father, please. Please let me stay. This is my home. I have no one else—no where else to go!
“You are a pest, a scourge, a blight on this household! Leave now, or suffer the same fate as Luca!” Stephanus continued to deny me, to berate me, to threaten me into leaving. The memory darkened as he spat vile words that I had no memory of him saying.
I tuned out his hurtful words, pushed away the needle pricking at my chest.
Instead, I thought of that night at the spring with Harkin. I had realized then that my parents must have always known about my ancestry. Perhaps not that I was a member of the royal family, but that I was Rázuri.
They had done their best to raise me with knowledge of my history, and I had loved it so. They had known and taken me in despite the risk. The risk that later took their only son, their only blood relative, from them.
In the memory, I would have heard enough. With tear stained cheeks and an aching chest, I would flee the house that was no longer a home.
But in this moment, I stayed.
“I have hurt so many people. I have allowed my pain to overcome my goodness in ways that I often regret. I hope those that I have hurt may one day find it in their hearts to forgive me, but I cannot control what they do. Only what I do.” I locked eyes with each of my parents in turn.
“I forgive you for turning your back on me. In your grief, it was the only thing you knew how to do. It was wrong, and you wounded me deeply, but I understand why you did it now. I forgive you, because it is the only way forward.”
Their expressions shifted to something like regret and hope, but in an instant, they were gone, the memory fading away into nothing. I wondered if my parents wished they could take those moments back, but I doubted whether I would ever truly know.
Images of Harkin flashed behind my closed eyelids. Every lie he had told and the small betrayals of my trust, but the picture never formed fully because I had already forgiven him. Because he was the one who had taught me how to forgive.
He had told me the truth, and he had chosen me, even when it meant he might lose everyone he loved. He had hurt me, but he had always been there to patch up the wounds.
“I forgive you,” I whispered to the fading image of Harkin. “I love you.”
The world went dark once more. A note of finality hung in the blackness. The Goddesses’ test was almost over. I felt it in my soul.
When the light poured back in around me, I came face to face with a mirror image of myself. The other Seren smiled, but it did not reach her eyes. She did not talk but instead lifted her hands. With a flourish, the image of me disappeared, replaced with a hundred overlapping memories.
I turned away my fellow Guardians, uninterested—or so I said—in friendship or companionship.
Lili Barta’s blonde hair whipped past my vision.
I cut through flesh and bone, slaying dozens of Rázuri in dirty streets and crowded woods.
Dead eyes watched me from the grave. Over and over, I chose to build the wall around my heart.
The one I now knew prevented me from finding happiness.
I had wasted so much time, and it hurt far deeper than any of the previous memories.
I had to face the fact that of everyone who had ever hurt me, my own actions had cut the deepest. I had made myself into my own worst enemy, but no longer.
There was a different choice to be made, and I had chosen it.
When the memories faded, and I was left alone with the mirror version of myself again, I said the words. It hurt, pulling them up past my aching chest, through my throat which was thick with emotion.
I felt, for a moment, that I still did not deserve to say the words which would absolve me of the past. Tears fell for every version of myself, and I said them anyway.
“I forgive you,” I whispered. “I forgive myself.”
My mirror disappeared, a genuine smile upon her face, but the world did not go dark as it had before. The space lit up, brilliant again with starlight. This time, it was joined with the golden glow of the sun and the silver gleam of the moon.
The three Goddesses, in all their celestial glory, floated before me.
They were all perfectly unique and yet utterly similar. An air of power rippled through and around each of them, black and brown and gold hair rustling on an unseen breeze. Their skin tones varied from deepest brown to lightest beige. The Goddesses' only commonality was their striking eyes.
Each of the Celestials had disparate eyes, like my own and like Ayla’s.
Lunanya’s were the most similar to mine, one charcoal gray and the other palest silver.
Soliana looked on from eyes of gold and brown.
Stellány lingered between them, the evidence of both the moon and sun mothers within her gold and silver gaze.
“Welcome, Daughter of the Moon.” The words came from Lunanya, the Moon Goddess herself, but they were echoed by Soliana and Stellány, the Sun and Star Goddesses.
“You were chosen before your birth for the rare honor of celestial mágik, for we saw the potential your spirit carried. You have proven today that you desire to use your gifts for the betterment of yourself and your world. Today, we have deemed you worthy of the moon mágik you were gifted, and so much more.” Lunanya’s voice was like a song, and her words were so sweet.
“Thank you, Goddesses,” I said, head bowed and eyes wet with unspent tears. “Thank you for seeing in me what I did not see in myself. Thank you for this gift.”
Mágik rushed through me, far stronger than it had before. Silver bands of power rippled and twisted around my body like it had at the spring tenfold.
“Use it well, Seren, Daughter of the Moon. We will be with you.” Lunanya smiled, a more beautiful sight than any I had ever seen.
Each of the Goddesses moved closer, pressing a kiss to my brow in turn before blinking into nothing.
I felt the absence of them like a hollow in my gut, but when I reached deep inside, to the well of mágik within me, I knew Lunanya had spoken the truth.
They were with me, and their mágik lit my path.
I turned to see Ayla standing behind me. My cousin had tear stains on her face. Her eyes were swollen and red rimmed, but she smiled, and I knew we had both been successful. We had both chosen to risk our mágik because we trusted each other, and we trusted ourselves.
I thanked the Goddesses that the risk had paid off.
My mouth slanted in an answering grin.
Darkness rolled in, soft as a quilt this time. It washed over me as the stars and all their wonder faded like a receding tide.