81. Vera
Vera
Death didn’t come the way I expected. There was no falling, no void swallowing me whole, no spirits guiding me to the after life.
It was just…stillness. It stretched on for what could’ve been seconds or decades, silent and weightless.
I couldn’t feel my body. I couldn’t feel the fire from the ritual, nor the cuts on my skin. I couldn’t even feel my own breath.
But then came the fog. It was soft and golden as it seeped into the darkness. It rolled over my feet, spreading like dawn into the emptiness. I looked down to see my body wavering and blurred.
“Am I dead?” I asked. My voice made the fog at my feet billow outward, then curl back toward me. In response, the air shuddered. A deep hum rose from the fog, and a chill swept over my skin, racing down my spine.
Now that, I could feel.
The golden fog separated, swirling upward in columns to form three figures. They bore no real faces, merely holes in the smoke where eyes and mouths should’ve been, and the shadows that made up their bodies swayed in and out of focus. But there was no mistaking who stood before me.
“You are not dead, little phoenix," one of them said, their rich voice racing over me.
“Not yet,” another said with a giggle.
“You stand in between,” the third finished.
I blinked. “In between…what?”
“Between what was,” one began,
“And what will not be,” another finished.
My irritation flared, proof that I was, in fact, still alive. “Can you people speak in anything but riddles?” I shook my head. “If you’d just told me everything last time, we might not be in this mess.”
The fog flared. “We warned you,” one said, anger in its mystical voice.
“We told you the sacrifice would be too much.”
“We urged you to give up while you still could,” the one with the high-pitched laughter crooned.
I licked my lips. “Yeah, well, a quick ‘the Elders are sadistic murderers and you need to kill them’ would’ve done the trick.”
A chuckle reached my ears, and fingers trailed up and down my neck. “Oh, you cannot kill them, child.”
“But we can stop them,” all three Fates said as one.
My eyes widened. “How? They’re becoming immortal as we speak. Or…maybe they already are, I don’t know.” I brandished an arm. “Their ritual—”
“We know of their ritual,” one said.
“But they will fail,” another said, fog rising at their words. “The ritual only works if they still have a vessel from which to draw magic.”
“A living vessel,” another added. “Until they claim the last ounce of your life as their own.”
Hope sparked in my chest. “So you’re here to save me?”
“And give them a chance to use you once more?” The fog breathed out, as if sighing. “We’re sorry, little phoenix. We’re not here to save you.”
I closed my eyes. “You’re here to kill me. To make sure they can’t finish the ritual.”
There was a pause. “We must preserve the balance.”
“The High Elders cannot take this immortality. It was not meant for our descendants, and we regret the power we brought into this world.”
“It must end,” the three said together.
Maybe it was the fact that I had already accepted my fate twice tonight, but hearing their plan didn’t make me angry.
It didn’t make me want to beg for my life.
They were right: the High Elders couldn’t be allowed to live forever with that much power.
And if it meant I had to die, truly die, then I couldn’t stop it.
I had vowed to bring them down, and maybe this was how it had to happen.
By scattering them in my ashes.
“Don’t stop fighting, Songbird.” Everett’s dying words filtered through my mind unbidden, pulling at the threads.
I didn’t, I wanted to shout back. I fought until the very end. Everett was surely dead, and now I could end this for good and join him.
But he’s not the only one you’re fighting for.
The thought blazed to the forefront, along with memories of Kieran and Odessa, still at the mercy of the Elders.
Of Tessa, who didn’t deserve such a horrible death.
Of the rebels hiding away. Of Nox and Mama, who would never know how sorry I was for leaving them.
Who would never know the truth—not that their love wasn’t enough for me, but that I thought I wasn’t good enough for them.
“Wait,” I cried out.
The fog rippled. “You cannot change our minds,” the higher-pitched voice said.
“Our decision is final.”
“No—I know,” I said hastily. “But there are people in this world I love. People I need to make sure are taken care of.”
“A noble thought, little phoenix,”
“But the lives of a few are not worth the fate of all.”
“Maybe not to you, but they are to me. I promised I would fight for them. I know the High Elders have to be stopped, and the only way to do that is to take away their vessel. But—” A thought slammed into me, so hard it knocked the breath from my lungs.
The ritual only works if they still have a vessel from which to draw magic. That was what the Fates said. It wasn’t my life the High Elders needed.
It was my magic.
“What if I didn’t have magic anymore?” I asked, my gaze snapping between all three figures. The fog stilled. The air became silent, as if we all held our breaths.
“What do you propose?”
“Take away my magic,” I said, steadier this time. “If you remove it completely, then there’s nothing for them to draw from. They’ll still fail, and I’ll still live.”
Their forms rustled, swaying closer. “You would surrender your power?” one asked.
“If it’s between that or my life, yes. Now nobody will ever be able to use the power of the Lightbringer again.”
My decision came without hesitation. My magic had defined so much of my life.
It was what I thought made me Vera Duma, the most powerful Veridian to ever live.
But I didn’t need magic to make me powerful.
I was powerful in spite of it. I could still bring justice to those who had gone before me, and I could still free those held in cages like I once was. It didn’t take magic to fight.
The Fates’ response was a single word. “Why?”
A smile crept up my lips. “Because I’m not done.”
The golden fog swirled with whispers, as if the Fates were speaking to one another. My heart—if I still had one in this in-between space—pounded in anticipation.
Then the light inside the fog swelled. “As you wish.”
Faster than I could blink, the smoke shot at me like three outstretched hands, tearing straight through my chest. My back arched as a gasp left me. I could feel them pulling at my magic, my essence, gripping it by the threads and unraveling the pieces.
My Alchemy came first, severed at the core. Then my illusions, my Strider magic, my lightning. My shadows were dragged, wisp by wisp. And then…my flames. My phoenix half let out a mournful wail as its claws were extricated from my heart, leaving a hollowness in its wake.
My chest heaved from the loss. I sank to my knees, and the fog shrouded around me.
“It is over,” a Fate said.
“The conduit is broken.”
“Stand, Vera Duma,” the three of them said. The fog shifted into fingers and flew to my chin, tugging me back to my feet. I swayed as I stood, weightless and empty, a yawning pit settling in my chest.
“Now will you send me back?” I whispered.
“We will send you back,” one agreed.
The fog picked up, swirling in great clouds at my feet. “We have seen many things, little phoenix,” the voice echoed.
“Death and life, battles lost and won.”
“But one thing we know for certain,” their voices joined together, the golden fog rising around me as the wind whipped my hair into a frenzy, “Is that you, Vera Duma, are not done.”
I opened my eyes, and the world exploded.