Chapter 28 Fate Isn’t Final
Fate Isn’t Final
My breath freezes in my chest. Robin’s eyes are just blown-out pupils, dark as night, as if the shadows have bled into her mind. Her perfect hair whips around her in wild locks. She’s strung in the air by countless shadows, fell magic spilling out of her.
It’s the first time I’ve been in her presence—the real her, not her shadow—since I learned of all her deceit and treachery.
But for some reason… I’m not angry.
Robin lied to me about everything. She lied to all the people of Heartland. She’s put us in danger.
But when I see her…
I remember that little girl in the haunted house, cloaked in darkness. Alone and brokenhearted.
And my fury melts.
When I look at her, even in this form, I see my home.
I see the magical school that would make tea in the mornings, warm the floorboards when my feet were cold, keep every hearth fully lit, and soothe me through times I was sick, with music that spilled through the windows, carried by an enchanted wind.
Swancrest was always warm, like a hug wrapped around me, making me feel whole.
Now I know it was all her. The school was a reflection of her feelings. Wordless gestures of love she didn’t always know how to express herself.
Robin is Swancrest.
And right now… both are breaking.
There’s a series of distant crashes as something up above caves in. Dust spills from the ceiling, tiny rocks falling. I think of my friends still there, holding off the birds. How long until the entire fortress falls around us?
“I told you to stay in your room,” Robin finally says, her voice distorted.
She sounds like a stranger. I don’t recognize this side of her, but I keep focused on the sliver of the woman who raised me that must still be in there somewhere, beneath the sadness and pain.
Instead of running away, I take another step forward. “And I told you to stop trying to control my every move.” I lift my shield and sword.
Her gaze zeroes in on my accessories. “Put those down. You’ll hurt yourself. You don’t know what you’re doing.”
The knot in my chest, of never feeling good enough, of feeling unworthy, of being told what I can and can’t do or be, tightens. But I breathe past it. Truth is proved in actions, not words. In experience—not projection.
“I do,” I say steadily. “I’ve seen other worlds. I’ve survived countless dangers. I saw everything you tried to hide from me, in fear that it would harm me, but it didn’t. I’m not as weak as you think I am. I am strong. I know that now.”
Her face flashes with hurt, as if for a moment she can see the pain that her actions have caused me. A second later, it smooths back into that blank mask of nothingness.
“You don’t know what danger is. You think you know this world just by traveling through it for a few weeks? You—you have no idea.” She shakes her head. Her voice is matter-of-fact. “So I have to keep you here. I have to keep you safe.”
There’s no warning before the walls start bleeding silver.
I watch in shock as the metal of the disused armory swords begins to melt down, the iron folding as easily as paper under Robin’s magic, then pooling onto the ground.
I inhale sharply as the clump of liquid metal begins to take shape and divide until it becomes a multitude of hardened metallic shackles.
All headed toward me.
I drop my shield, reaching into my armor and closing my fingers around the compact, willing its pulse to return. But, though whatever magic my mother imbued into my weaponry is faintly holding on, the compact still stays silent.
The metal restraints are upon me now.
I lift my pink sword in a desperate attempt to stop them. Glitter spills out of it as it strikes metal, turning the shackles back into pools of silver.
But there are too many. They all lunge at once.
With a rough pull, the sword is tugged from my grip. It joins my shield on the floor.
Then the shackles wrap around my wrists and force me to my knees. I fight their hold, using every bit of strength I’ve gained, teeth gritted. But it’s no use. I’m unable to move a single inch.
“You see…” Robin says, floating toward me. “Magic is dangerous. It isn’t to be trusted.”
No, your magic is dangerous, I think, struggling in vain against the force keeping me on the ground.
I’m no match for metal. Or this sort of matured, mastered magic.
Even my mother’s hint of enchantment in my armor and weapons sputters—
Then goes dark.
What light remains is coming from the shackles around me, glimmering with Robin’s fell enchantment.
The rest is only shadows.
Slowly, Robin lifts her hand. The hand that once wiped away my tears. The hand that once gave me everything I ever needed.
Now, with a flick of that hand, she forces the metal around my wrists even tighter, winding around my bones, tearing a gasp from my lungs, pinning me in place. Making me powerless to do anything but watch in horror as Robin reaches out again—and tears both necklaces right off my throat.
“No!” I say, feeling the immediate coldness in the absence of the charms’ magic. Tears prick my cheeks. The necklaces.
My reminder of my mother.
She took them.
The moment both necklaces are clutched in her palms, the shadows seep darker. They expand in a flash, sharpening into dozens of blades, scraping against the walls of the armory.
The building begins to tremble again. I can feel the school constricting, her magic like a fist around us all.
Robin keeps speaking. Her voice is louder, resonant and wrong. “Magic is the real danger. It’s why I must control it. It’s to protect you all. For choice leads to chaos. Unchecked, magic leads to death.” She lifts her chin. “One day, you’ll see. You’ll understand. You’ll be grateful.”
She walks around me, as if to leave me here. The shadows around her bleed across the floor.
They’re poisoning her mind. Telling her this is the only way to save me. To keep all of Heartland safe.
I remember the shadows in Rock Bottom and their poisonous whispers in Nightmareland. I remember how they tried to control me. They’re crawling toward me now, as if to latch on to another target.
The shadows want me to turn against her. They want me to hate her.
But I won’t give up on her.
If my journey taught me anything, it’s that this world is full of opposites, and contradictions, and light and darkness. Still, we have the power to forge our own paths through the mayhem. We have the choice to see wonder in chaos—and to find light through darkness.
“I saw you,” I say, my words punching through the shadows, my neck straining as I look over my shoulder at her. She pauses. “I saw you, as a child, in Dreamland. Sad and alone, in a haunted house, with a storm cloud above your head. I saw—I saw my mother pull you out of that sorrow.”
Slowly, Robin turns toward me, pain twisting her features. As if she’s reliving those moments in her own mind.
“And I… I’ve been to Nightmareland. And back.
I know what it feels like to be sitting at the bottom of a well, I know it feels impossible to crawl out, I know it seems like darkness always wins, but here I am, offering a hand.
Here to remind you of all the good you’ve done, and all the good you are, because it outshines any of the bad. It always has.”
Robin grimaces, unconvinced. “Any true light I had… it died with your mother,” she says, and the shadows around her… they begin to burn like flames.
An earsplitting crash sounds from above, and then rain is spilling down into the stairwell I just came from, as if the ceiling has been ripped away, letting in the storm.
Winds rush down the turret in a howl. They wrap around Robin, lifting her higher, rain sputtering, thunder roaring from outside, rattling the walls.
The shadows and fell magic are growing stronger. The shackles tighten, digging into my skin.
But I stay firm. I shake my head. “That’s not true. Her light lives on. In me… and in you.”
Robin laughs, the sound distorted. The shadows seeping from her flare, as if laughing with her.
Hail cracks against the stone staircase. I look around, remembering the school as it was before this fell magic took over.
“When I saw Dreamland, and you and my mom as children… I figured out why everything in Heartland is pink.”
From the canals, to the school, to Robin’s own clothing. All the same color.
“It’s not your favorite color… It was hers.”
Robin’s dark eyes turn suddenly glassy. She does not deny it.
All this pink wasn’t a nod to Dreamland. It was a tribute to her best friend.
“I know you made this world for the two of you. Best friends, joining their magic together, strong enough to create an entire land.”
“No,” Robin says sharply, and those shadows loom even larger. I flinch, wondering if this is the moment her fell magic finally fully takes over.
But then she says, voice so quiet within the storm that I barely hear the words: “We didn’t make this world for ourselves.”
The shadows and storm continue to rage. Still, Robin’s expression turns softer, and I wonder if part of her is trying to fight it. If that’s why the fell magic is fighting back…
“Barbie, this entire world… was built for you,” Robin finally says. “Shaped in a heart… with you at the center of it.”
The words I was about to say die in my throat.
Swancrest is at the center of Heartland. And my room is at the center of the school…
My eyes burn with tears, at the fact that someone—two someones, Robin and my mother—loved me enough to create a whole land.
I was loved.
I am loved.
My mother might not have witnessed my childhood, but I always felt her love, through the gaps of every floorboard, through the light that poured through every pane of stained glass, through every piece of fabric she stitched for me.
And Robin made sure of that.
Robin, who was grieving just the same. But fought the darkness for all those years…
For me.
“If that’s true,” I say, raising my voice to a shout to be heard over the roiling tempest, “then let me live. Really live. Let me see all that I can be. Let me make mistakes. Let me fail.”
Robin’s eyes flash with fear. “But—but your mother.”