Chapter 28 #2
Neither could I. Bressen and I had both read her mind before we’d agreed to let her help us trap Sandrian and Magdalene, and we’d seen nothing but pure intentions. She’d been committed to helping us, at least at first, but something had changed at some point.
I wasn’t sure why I was looking for reason in Talyn’s actions or defending her to Samhail. Part of me wanted to kill her for taking Bressen – a large part – but a tiny sliver of me, like Samhail, wanted to believe there was more to why she’d done what she’d done.
We didn’t say anything more, and I closed my eyes to try and sleep. Samhail’s presence next to me made a difference, and I finally fell asleep a few minutes after his own breathing became deeper.
Cyra
I was in the middle of a forest without any memory of how I’d gotten there. The feeling was familiar. It’s how I’d ended up in Axenus’s nightmare weeks ago.
I looked around for an indication I was once again dream walking and found it immediately.
Two women faced off against each other near a small cottage that stood in a clearing in the trees.
One woman seemed ancient. Her long gray hair was tied back in a loose knot at the nape of her neck, but she stood straight despite how thin and delicate her body looked.
The other woman had her back to me, but I could tell without seeing her face who the petite blonde was.
Magdalene.
“What are you doing?” Magdalene asked the woman warily.
The older woman smiled. “Going where you can’t follow,” she said. “Or where you won’t follow.”
She put a hand to the center of her chest and the spot glowed, as if she were channeling magic into herself.
“No!” Magdalene screamed. She lunged forward, but the woman’s body was suddenly engulfed in flames, and I clamped a hand to my mouth to stifle my scream.
I stared in horror as the woman’s body burned, yet she didn’t seem to be in pain. If anything, she wore a faint smile, as if she were savoring Magdalene’s obvious misery.
Magdalene continued to scream as she tried to get close to the woman, but the heat of the flames kept her back.
She seemed to be trying to use her frost power to counteract the fire, but it had no effect, and a second later, the older woman’s body turned completely to ash and collapsed to the ground in a pile.
The flames died, and ash puffed into the air as the woods once again went silent.
Magdalene sank to her knees next to the ash. She looked as though she wanted to reach out and touch the pile, but I stepped forward, unexplainable anger surging through me at the thought of her touching what remained of the woman.
“Magdalene!” I yelled.
Magdalene started and spun around. She stood quickly as she saw me.
“Cyra?” she asked, cocking her head in question. “How are you…?” A look of understanding passed over her face. “You can dream walk. I’m jealous. That’s a power I never managed to pick up.”
“What did you do to that woman?” I asked, my voice full of menace.
Magdalene huffed a laugh. “I did nothing. She did that to herself.”
I blinked. “What? Why?”
“To escape me,” Magdalene said. “It was her only way out.”
“She killed herself just to escape you?” I said incredulously. “Why? What were you planning to do to her?”
A grin crept over Magdalene’s face. “You don’t know who she was.”
“Should I?”
Magdalene’s grin grew wry. “In a way, she was your mother.”
I blinked again. “What in the three hells are you talking about? I already have two mothers, and she isn’t one of them.”
“Her name was Crissail,” Magdalene said. “She was the Hand of the Nemesis before you, and she died so you could be born. She knew the only way to escape was to pass the power of the Nemesis on to another.”
My mouth hung open in disbelief, but I was incapable of shutting it.
“It was twenty-two years before you finally used that power yourself and allowed me to sense you,” she said. “Unfortunately, the Triumvirate got ahold of you before I was able to find you.”
I couldn’t move. Not only had I just witnessed the death of the last Hand of the Nemesis, but somewhere across the world, her power had just passed to me as I was being born.
Well, not really. This was a dream, but it was nevertheless the memory of how I’d been created.
“It was noble of her,” Magdalene went on, still oblivious to my shock, “and she bought the world a couple decades, but her sacrifice was ultimately in vain.”
Magdalene smiled as she rushed toward me, her hand outstretched as if she meant to touch me. I tried to step back, but I didn’t react fast enough to avoid her.
It turned out to be moot. Magdalene’s hand passed right through me, and her eyes widened in surprise.
I smiled as my shock finally wore off. “We’re in a dream,” I reminded her, “and by your own admission, I’m the only dream walker here. You don’t control what happens. I do.”
I held out a hand and sent Magdalene flying backward with a forcefield. She landed hard against a tree and crumpled to the ground.
It had been an experiment. I wasn’t entirely sure I could affect her here, but apparently I could.
Magdalene’s eyes narrowed as she pushed herself to her feet and threw her hand toward me, likely trying to use her frost magic.