Chapter 15 #2
“Oh yes. Very important. In fact, their threads will be bound to the daughter as surely as she will bind the realms together when she returns. They will guard her back and give her strength when she leads her forces in the fight against the Shadow.”
“Why haven’t you told me this part before?” My voice is a whisper. So is hers. We never speak loudly where Father or his men might hear us. Not even in my own bedroom.
“Because you’re right,” she whispers, brushing my hair from my forehead gently.
“You probably are getting too old for fairy tales. You’ll need to forgive me, my little ember.
It’s a mother’s biggest fear and greatest honor to realize her child is growing up.
I’m doing you a disservice, trying to hold on to your childhood when you’ve already experienced more than most adults. ”
“I like the stories,” I whimper, scared she might stop telling them completely. I don’t want that. I don’t want any of this. I want to rewind to an hour ago when Mother still saw me as her little girl.
“Stories don’t go away as you get older, Idril.
They change. Just like you change. You’re an Omega now.
I’ve spent years trying to preserve your innocence, but if I continue to rely on fairy tales, I’m doing you a disservice as your mother.
It’s time to explore more worlds, my love.
New adventures. And it’s time I start teaching you the truth. Fates know you can handle it.”
I want to ask her what she means, but it’s late and we’re both tired. Drained. Once again, Father’s rage has left us mere shells of Omegas by the end of the day.
She leans over, presses a kiss to the top of my head and stands, effectively ending the conversation before it begins.
The room darkens as she leaves, flicking the light switch and double checking that the door clicks shut behind her.
I stay awake long after I should be asleep, mind spinning with a million questions and not a single answer.
Three weeks later, she was dead.
I never did discover what truths she spoke of. Now that I’ve had years to realize her stories came from her and not from a book, I keep thinking I’ve missed something important.
Creatures of fang and shadow sound an awful lot like vampires and wolven.
Were any of her stories true? Or were they all fancy? Tales she created to encourage me to keep dreaming while faced with Father’s eternal cynicism and hate.
My thoughts cycle through early memories like flipping through pages in a book. I lose myself in the past until a flicker of shadows darting between the trees catches my attention.
My heart leaps into my throat with excitement. I push to my knees whispering, “Shade?”
I wait with bated breath, praying his large feline body will slink out of the shadows. After a while, my hope dwindles until I’m forced to admit there’s nothing there.
I’m imagining things. Again.
I slink back down, but the buzzing anticipation from earlier is back, and it’s impossible to shake. It makes the hairs on my arms and the nape of my neck stand on end, a chill I can’t alleviate, no matter how tight I wrap my cardigan around myself.
Maybe it’s all the memories causing the feeling of foreboding to deepen. My instincts are screaming at me to leave; to run as fast and as far as I can. My internal alarms are screaming ‘danger!’ even though there’s no danger anywhere I can see.
With the most pathetic Omega growl ever, I tuck my “blanket” tighter around my legs.
I need to relax. I have a plan. It might not be a great plan, but it’s something. If Caelan comes back, I’ll be here to warn him before he gets hurt.
If only I could shake the darkness clinging to me.
I continue my vigil for the rest of the evening and into the night, never once taking my eyes off the forest beyond.
Even when it gets too dark to see. Even when Father leaves for his nightly meeting with Alexander, and the crunch of tires on gravel startles a whine out of me.
Even when I feel my eyelids growing heavier and heavier.
Even then, I force myself back awake, pinching my skin and pulling my hair in hopes that the pain will shock away my exhaustion.
But days without food, hours spent healing, and nights spent listening to my Omega’s keening whines and please for safety and love ultimately win out. I don’t know when it happens, but my heavy lids eventually slide shut.
And when I fall into a restless, anxious sleep, it’s not Caelan I dream of.
It’s my mother. Locked behind a massive silver gate, hands extended through the bars, grasping, stretching, reaching frantically for something I cannot see.
Her hair isn’t the pale golden blonde I remember. It’s living fire, red and orange flame flaring like a halo around her pale, beautiful face.
The world behind her burns as well. Towering buildings, thousands of homes, farms and markets. Cities I don’t recognize that feel ancient and alive. Every corner of every structure is under attack, shrouded in shadows and lies.
I glance down. Mother’s feet are bare. She stands in a pool of crimson blood that shimmers with a horrifying sort of beauty. A few feet in front of her, a still-beating heart lays discarded in the dirt. It’s pulsing and bloody, beating in a chaotic rhythm that matches the beating heart in my chest.
Beautiful iridescent wings, thin as tissue paper and tipped with curved talons as large as my hand, rise from her back, born of smoke and fire. I try to yell. To scream. Beg her to use her new wings to escape.
It would be so easy! She could fly and fly, leaving the pain and darkness behind. I scream and shout and sob as the fire rages behind her, devouring stone castles, forests, homes and fields of golden wheat, reducing it all to ash in seconds.
I hold Mother’s gaze, screaming louder, but my words are stolen away, snatched from the air by an unseen hand as each sound falls from my lips.
I don’t give up. Over and over I shout, praying she’ll somehow understand.
Leave, Mother! Escape!
Fly away! Fly far, far away, and never come back!
No matter how hard I fight, I produce nothing but silence. The world dies as my mother cries, and Fates—she could escape if she’d only look behind her! All she has to do is use her wings and fight!
She lunges, slamming against the bars of the gate, straining and reaching with a desperation that breaks my heart.
I push forward, intending to run to her, but I can’t.
An invisible wall prevents me from separating the distance between us.
A glance over my shoulder exposes an endless dark void.
It goes on forever, stretching into eternity in every direction.
I’m… trapped. Caged. I can’t look away from that ominous black nothingness.
Will I never escape? Will I spend my entire life longing for the taste of freedom and safety?
Helpless, exhausted I spin back around, searching for the loving gaze of my Mother. When her eyes lock with mine, a mutual understanding passes between us like a jolt of electricity. There’s a single, desolate moment when my pain is reflected back at me in eyes identical to my own.
My body sags on a sob. Mother shakes her head furiously, denying our reality. Denying what we both know to be true.
We’re trapped, and as much as we wish it, love alone won’t break us free.
Mother’s face twists in anger. She bares her teeth in a soundless snarl of rage, slamming her fists into the bars over and over and over until her skin splits and bruises bloom.
She sobs, hanging her head in defeat. When she lifts her head, the pain I expect to see isn’t there. Instead, her eyes burn as bright as her hair. The fire of fury rages hotter than the fire still greedily consuming the world behind her.
Her fists clench. Her body tenses. Her face hardens with anger and determination right before she opens her mouth, and screams.
It’s silent and endless and full of hopeless rage. The longer she screams, the harder I cry. I watch for what feels like forever, sure she’ll fall to the ground in exhaustion any moment.
She doesn’t. Her scream goes on and on, silent yet somehow so loud I have to cover my ears.
Her back bows and her mouth widens. Strands of hair made of flame burn brighter and higher, spinning and twisting and whipping around her head.
Furious, angry sparks split from the strands, arcing wildly through the air like a living manifestation of her rage.
“Mother!” My throat aches, the silent plea ripping past already strained vocal cords.
She doesn’t hear me, too lost to her rage.
Her lips part. My eyes widen in horror as her mouth opens wider. It stretches and expands unnaturally, like something out of a nightmare. The flames give voice to her silent screams with a keening wail of pain that fire shouldn’t be able to make.
The louder the flames scream, the more her mouth and throat morph until nothing remains of her face but a gaping maw of fire and ash.
At that moment, I know. Whatever she was trying so desperately to reach…
It’s already too late.