93
I felt like I was being lassoed around my waist and pulled backward. No, not backward. Inward.
I found myself in a meadow, surrounded by endless green hills and a calm stream to my right. Soft pale blue clouds drifted slowly across the white sky.
Where was I?
“My child.”
I turned slowly, my heart pounding in my chest from the emotion.
“Calien,” I exclaimed in a whisper.
My grandmother was even more beautiful and ethereal than in the many paintings portraying her.
As tall as Mornon, she wore a simple white robe that exposed her bare feet, with long lace batwing sleeves.
Her very long, wavy, white-floral hair framed her face with pronounced cheekbones and a tad large nose.
The kindness and immense wisdom in her eyes, blue like mine and slightly hooded, overwhelmed me so much that I had a lump in my throat.
I looked down. “I didn’t succeed,” I said, feeling terribly embarrassed to desecrate this bright place with the violence that oozed from my appearance. “He’s too . . .”
Everything.
Calien’s soft hand rested on my dirty cheek. “I know, dear.” Her full lips curved into a compassionate smile. “I know it well.”
Still, I suspected she couldn’t truly understand how helpless I felt in front of Mornon—how inferior I felt—since she possessed the same divine and unattainable aura as him.
It was as if Calien and Mornon represented the two ends of a straight line, one half white and the other half black. I was the midpoint, and because of me, that line was about to turn completely and irreversibly black.
“So, is it really over?” I asked desolately. “Is there anything at all I can do to stop him?”
“There is only one solution.” She wiped away my tears with the back of her slender fingers, showing no disgust at the burst capillaries branching from my eyes. “A solution you’ve already found.”
“My sacrifice,” I thought aloud. The gruesome images of what had happened in the Forest of Witches inevitably replayed in my mind, and I shook my head faintly. “I’ve already tried, and it didn’t work. He blocked Araton’s arrow and—”
“You no longer need your brother’s help,” Grandmother interrupted me.
My brows drew together. “But how . . .?”
She gave me the nicest smile. “You know.”
Her eyes sank into mine, and in that instant, what I had to do to destroy the enemy was revealed to me in my mind.
My blood ran cold as a wave of terror washed over me. “He will kill them to stop me from doing it,” I murmured.
“Yes, he might,” Calien said solemnly. “But I assure you that my son is prepared to sacrifice himself to save his people. And I’m certain the same applies to Araton.”
Just imagining my mother wandering alone through Aegel’s Palace for who knows how long, before finally feeling ready to reunite with her family in the Rest, brought tears to my eyes once again.
“What if things don’t go as we hope? What if Mornon won’t be as affected by my death as we believe?
What if seeing me die before his eyes doesn’t break him?
” Panic crept through me, and my tone grew antsy.
“He will wipe out our race and humans and witches. He doesn’t .
. .” I paused for a moment, realizing a frightening truth.
“He doesn’t need the Crystal to get what he wants.
He could exterminate the entire universe using only his monsters and demons.
” Why hadn’t he done it already? “But then he would remain completely—”
“Alone.”
I flinched and went still. So that was the real reason Mornon wanted to create a new species. It wasn’t simply to be idolized.
He no longer wanted to be alone.
Calien framed my shocked and sorrowful face in her loving hands.
“There is a reason why the Spirits have destined you for each other.” She slowly kissed my forehead, giving me the feeling of being wrapped in a spiral of light.
“You are the only hope,” she declared as she stepped back with a final caress.
Confused, I opened my mouth to flood her with questions, but the world around me started to blur.
“I just hope he accepts he’s in love with you before it’s too late,” my grandmother added as her figure’s outlines started to fade, dispersing like fog.
I jerked forward to grab her hand and beg her to wait, to tell me more, to help me find another way.
But . . .