Chapter Forty-Nine
My sister throws herself to the ground, tackling me in her embrace.
“How?” I cry, holding her close. “You’re—you’re—”
“Older?” She laughs, drawing back to look me in the eye.
“But how?” I choke out, touching her cheek, just to make sure she’s not some figment of my imagination.
“When I was taken,” Elsie says, slowly, patiently, as if I were her younger sister, “one moment I was with Lew and you, and the next, I was here.”
I shake my head, trying to swallow the lump in my throat. “But that wasn’t so long ago.”
“It wasn’t, was it?” she asks, a wistful gleam in her eyes. “Time moves differently here. What might be days for you could be weeks in Elysia, and what would be hours here could be minutes in your realm.”
My realm. Not hers.
“Oh, Aster!” She embraces me again, squeezing tight.
She’s alive, and I’ve found her, but she isn’t the child she was when she disappeared. There’s so much lost time we’ll never get back.
“I want to show you something!” Elsie smiles through her tears, leaping to her feet and holding out her hand for me to take.
Another sob wrenches my gut as I take her hand and allow her to lead me back through the garden, Rainai following at a comfortable pace.
I feel like I’m stumbling in a dream, but Elsie moves through the streets of the town with effortless grace, waving hello to Myths as we pass stands selling flowers that sing and tiny frosted cakes that smell like happy, peaceful feelings.
She tells me whimsy is her favorite flavor. “You have to try it!” she says, and her ease twists my stomach into knots.
This is Elsie’s home now. Has she forgotten all about us? Will she not want to come back with me?
Should I even ask her to?
Finally, we reach the castle, and Elsie waltzes through the front door, greeting the tree nymphs at the entrance with a bow.
There are no guards, but the entry hall buzzes with activity: people laughing, wings fluttering, daffodils harmonizing.
Rainai is pulled aside to speak with a Myth who reminds me of a toadstool with eyes.
“Do you live here?” I ask.
Elsie smiles, tugging at my hand as she leads me up the stairwell and down a hallway lined with paintings of landscapes wholly unfamiliar to me. As we pass a row of doors, Elsie points inside the rooms.
“That one I decorated for Lewis,” she tells me as we pass a room filled to the brim with rolls of fabric.
“This one for Charlie,” she says, gesturing at the room full of carpentry tools and a variety of woods—most of them not of our world.
“Margaret and Jack.” A room clothed in silk, lace curtains fluttering in the open windows.
“Albert.” A room with a table set for a game of Clubs.
“Mother and Father.” A room that overlooks the sparkling lake.
She lingers in the doorway of a room with maps plastering the walls. “For Owen,” she says, her throat bobbing. “I started working on them when I first came here. I had hoped that if the curse was broken, and the gates to Elysia reopened, you could all join me in this realm. That was before…”
Before Owen and Jack were taken to a different realm—the realm of the dead.
I squeeze her hand. “They’re lovely.”
Her glassy eyes brighten. “Do you want to see yours?”
The contents of my room are simple. Linen bedsheets, a chair by the window. But the walls…
Painted portraits of our family, framed in pieces of wood that I recognize in an instant.
“Is that…” My voice catches.
“Wood from the Lightbringer,” Elsie says, and I think her bottom lip quivers as she smiles. “Not easy to come by, mind you, but a few mermaids owed me a favor.”
I touch the surface of a canvas portraying our family’s ship, the sails washed golden in the light of dawn. “Did you paint these?”
She beams at the portraits. “No,” she says, but she doesn’t tell me more, and I don’t ask, because she’s already dragging me out of the room and down the hall.
She shows me the kitchen, a vast room full of sunlight, equipped with tools I don’t recognize.
“For you and Father and Owen,” she tells me, swiping a tear from her cheek.
When we reach the end of the hall, Elsie pauses at the double doors, her mischievous grin reminding me so much of Owen I start to cry.
She wipes away my tears, her nose scrunching with a kind smile.
I thought Elsie forgot us. That she moved on. But she’s spent all this time preparing a place for us to join her someday.
And I think, as Elsie leads me into a library the size of a ship, it would be so easy. I could simply wish for my family to be whisked away from the battlefield—for them to come here, where we can all be together. Safe. Happy. Whole.
Rainai enters the library, lingering near the open doors, and there’s a proud, fatherly glint in his eyes as he watches Elsie race from aisle to aisle.
“I found these for Titus,” Elsie says, pointing at a shelf stuffed to the brim with fairy tales. “And these—” She drags me toward a stack of cookbooks. “I thought Henry would like these. Oh! And Gabriel…”
When she tugs on my hand, I don’t move.
“Az?” Her brows knit. “Is everything all right?”
My chest tightens. “I have to go back,” I say quietly.
Her face falls. “Now?”
I try to speak, but all I can manage is a small nod.
She takes one last look around the library, as if she were saying her own silent goodbye. “Of course,” she says, half to herself. “It’s time.” She pulls me along behind her as she makes her way to Rainai. She glances at me sidelong, my hand clasped firmly in hers. “She’s ready to make her wish.”
Rainai’s expression is solemn, his smile heavy. “And what is it that you wish for, daughter of the sea?”
I clear my throat. “My ancestor,” I say, my voice shaking. “He wished to free the Underlings for power—not because he truly wished for their freedom.”
Rainai nods slowly, his twinkling eyes narrowed.
“He sought to wield them as a weapon, just as Morana continues to do. Both he and Morana claimed to pity them, but the Underlings are born of the things which humans try to hide—their wickedness, yes, but also their shame, their grief.” His gaze softens with fatherly reproach.
“The only way to free an Underling is with love. And love doesn’t seek power or control.
It keeps no record of wrongdoing. Sometimes love is knowing when to let go.
” He glances at Elsie, and my stomach sinks.
“But,” he says, peering down at me with a knowing look, “sometimes love is knowing when to hold on to those who give us strength. That—love, family, friendship—is true power.”
My ancestor wished for power, and it brought a curse.
And now I have the opportunity to wish for anything—the full power of the Lightbringer, Morana’s defeat, the Underlings vanquished. But it would mean letting go of Elsie. And even still, I can’t be sure that if I wished for any of those things, it wouldn’t cost me something else.
I realize, now, that there is only one way to defeat Morana.
I take a deep breath. Lift my chin. I knew, before I’d even seen her, what I would wish for. But now… I fear it isn’t my choice to make—not after seeing the life she’s built here, in this heavenly realm. Still, it’s the only thing I truly want.
“I wish for Elsie to come home with me.”
I glance at Elsie, tears rolling down her cheeks, and it feels like the wind has been knocked from my lungs.
I say, my voice breaking, “Only if you want to?”
The smile that transforms her face is brighter than starlight. “There’s nowhere else in the universe I’d rather be.”
Rainai tilts his head, his gaze narrowing. “You could have wished for power.”
I tighten my grip on Elsie’s hand, holding on to her like I wish I could have that night aboard the Tidesinger, and for the first time in months, my smile doesn’t hurt.
“I did.”
Rainai gives me a knowing look, laughter playing on his lips. He turns to Elsie, then. “Would you like some time to say your goodbyes?”
Again, that mischievous twinkle in Elsie’s eyes—that grin that reminds me of Owen. “Already done.”
Rainai’s chuckle sounds the way happiness feels. He holds out his hands for us to take.
A soft whoosh of wind carries us from the castle, and in the blink of an eye, we stand at the open doors that lead to the clearing from which I first entered this realm, still glowing with that glittering golden light.
I take a step toward the door. Almost no time will have passed in our realm, but I’m eager to return—to fight alongside my family and friends. But there’s something I must know—something I can’t leave here without asking.
I touch the hilt of the Sword, turning to face Rainai. “I still don’t understand,” I say. “Why the Sword?”
Rainai’s lips twitch as he nods slowly, clearly thinking hard about what he’s about to say. “When you crossed over, Vera determined that your intentions were pure, and there was no need to keep you from entering.”
I shake my head. “Then why did I need it?” And softer, “Why did Owen have to die?”
Even Rainai’s frown is kind, his eyes brimming with tears that never fall. “May I?” he asks, gesturing at the Sword.
I draw it from its sheath and pass it to him.
He weighs it in his grasp. “This Sword was made for Hildegarde by her husband,” he says, his voice somewhat strained.
“After his death, she gave it a name. And before she hid the Sword, she placed an enchantment on it. I believe she hoped that one day, someone worthy of the Sword would find it, and that person, whoever they would be, would have no need for vanquishing the guardian of the gates. Instead,” he says, presenting the Sword to me, lowering his voice almost conspiratorially, “I think she hoped it would be used for something else entirely.”
I take the Sword, sheathe it at my hip. “For what?” I ask.
His eyes twinkle as he grins. “She called it Cursebreaker,” he says, as if that were all the answer I need.
Cursebreaker.
I clutch the pommel of the Sword in one fist and take Elsie’s outstretched hand with the other. But as we turn to face the open doors, I look over my shoulder at Rainai one last time.
“My mother told me you had a plan for me,” I say. “What if I make the wrong choices? What if I stray from the path? How will I know if I’m living my purpose?”
His grin broadens. “There’s only one way to find out,” he says, motioning at the open doorway—at the glittering gold dust of creation. “By living.”
Remember, you have to live. It’s not always easy. I know I’ll make mistakes. I know, sometimes, I will fail, and I will fall. But every moment I’m alive—every minute I spend with my family—is precious. Time is a gift, and I get to choose how to spend it.
I don’t turn back again.
Elsie squeezes my hand. “Ready?” she asks me.
“Ready,” I say.
And with my sister by my side, we step through the open doors.