CHAPTER EIGHT
“Samara.” My mother’s voice was hushed, weakened by pain. “It’s okay. I trust you. I love you. And I need you to live. To survive. So take it. Take as much as you need.”
“No, no, I can’t. You’re … Mom, you’re—” I cut myself off before I said the word out loud. Before I made it real. That she was dying.
She took my hand. But I pulled away, shaking my head, too terrified to continue touching her, to continue taking from her. “No,” I said. “Don’t. Don’t touch me.”
The chimera howled behind me. And from the corner of my eye I could see the dead bodies of our guards. They lay strewn unceremoniously across the snow-covered ground, their corpses mixed with the soldiers of King Tirian. There was so much blood, so much seeping out beneath them.
“Samara, my love, my daughter. Princess Shamhira,” she whispered, her eyes shining with tears. “I promise. You are strong. You will survive this. And you will lead.” She shook her head. “Now fight. For me. Fight.”
My lips trembled, tears blurring my vision.
She reached for me, wrapping me in her arms, pulling me against her chest. It was the kind of hug I hadn’t reached for since I was a child, the kind of hug I feared.
The hug that would allow me to take too much, to steal from the very last person I wanted to.
But I was practically lying on my mom, her arms tightening around me.
Her love engulfed me, surrounding me. And for one split second, amidst the chaos and violence, I was safe. I was hers.
Until the forest ground shook as the chimera stalked closer.
I could feel it, feel the Azete inside awakening, hungry. Desperate to survive. To feed. It was already happening.
My stomach twisted.
“No! No.” I tried to pull back, but my mother wouldn’t let go, her grip on me vice-like.
She knew it was happening. I could feel it in her touch, hear it in her mind.
And yet, she kept giving and giving, pouring her love, her trust, and her hope into me.
I couldn’t help it. I took it. The Azete devoured each drop, taking more and more. She grew weaker, and I grew stronger.
Slowly, my body stopped struggling as the Azete took control. It began to strengthen, to feed with vigor, drawing more, needing more. Taking, taking, taking.
“Mom, please,” I begged, my voice deep and hoarse. “Let go! Let go of me!”
She shook her head. “I can’t—I won’t.”
“You have to! Mom, you have to! You know what I am, you know what I do!”
She smiled, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I do know. And I love you. I’m so proud of you. You are the greatest daughter a mother could have. You know that, don’t you? I love you so much.”
“I love you,” I tried to say, but my voice cracked with grief, the tone somewhere in between my own and the thing that had taken control.
Her emotions were pouring into me. Our minds linked.
I could see myself in her eyes. See what she saw before her.
I looked so young in her eyes, like I was still a child, and not a woman of twenty.
But even more devastating was that I was beautiful, more beautiful than I’d ever dreamed.
All the imperfections I’d obsessed over or used magic to change were gone.
In her eyes I was perfect. Overwhelmingly so.
Complete and so worthy of her love. Even as she was dying. Even though I was the one killing her.
Then her vision blurred, memories filling her head, her mind moving backward in time.
She was watching me through the years. Tucking me into my blankets, clapping joyfully as I danced at court.
Holding my hand as we ran through ribbons tied to a maypole in the town square.
I saw myself growing younger, and younger.
Sitting on her lap. Being carried in her arms. Lying on her breast after I was born.
The Azete felt like it was crawling out of my skin, slashing through me like a Demonos possessed. Hungry, Starving. Needing. More, more, more.
No! No! No!
A terrible howling and hissing sound grew louder behind me.
My mother still gripped me, but some inner instinct, something based in my own mortal need to survive, finally snapped.
I broke free, sick and horrified, her hand still reaching for mine, her fingers opening and closing, her blue eyes shining. Blood in her hair. It was honey blonde like mine. But darker. Deeper.
“Samara,” she said. “Shamhira. My daughter. My princess. Fight. Fight.”
“Stay,” I said. “Mom, stay with me! Swear.”
“I will be with you.” She blinked, fresh tears falling, and her hand fell at her side, no longer moving. “Always.”
I turned around. Fire flaring to life inside of me, flowing through my veins. Fire that did not burn me. I took a step forward, my arms outstretched, my fingers lengthening and sharpening into claws. Red scales exploded from my skin, and I roared.
I woke up with a start, practically flying out of my bed. My head hurt, my stomach cramped, every inch of me in pain.
And I was crying. Crying so hard it was making me sick.
It had been years since I’d dreamt of my mother’s death, years since I allowed myself to return to that night. To what I’d done. What I’d become.
To remember just how I’d failed her. How I couldn’t hold her hand at the end. How I wouldn’t touch her when she took her last breath. How even though I was there by her side, she’d died alone.
As I sat on my childhood bed, it felt like the years hadn’t passed.
As if the time I’d spent grieving and crying never happened.
All the energy I’d put into healing and surviving, gone.
The pain from the chimera slashed through my arm.
The permanent reminder of that night—the one scar I’d never heal.
But seeing that morning had come, I pulled the blanket from my legs and stepped onto the floor, forgetting just how cold the stone was.
I still wore the riding pants and linen shirt I’d conjured.
They were filthy, and they smelled of old lake water.
Not exactly fit to meet the Queen. But a quick inspection of the wardrobe told me that I was out of luck if I wanted to change.
None of my old dresses or riding pants remained.
Just like every other personal item in the room, everything that was mine, everything that I had picked out, or made, or used.
It was like my aunt had wanted to erase me.
I went to the window and pushed open the glass, breathing in the air, hearing the distant chatter of witches mulling about outside.
Some were gathering herbs. Others floating buckets of water from one of the town wells.
In the distance, I could see the maypole being erected.
Witches surrounded the base, their staves pointing at piles of flowers and ribbons all bursting with color.
They were laughing and full of excitement as they adorned the pole.
Someone was playing a lyre, and the sounds of joy and camaraderie all came together in an all too familiar way.
I looked beyond them, to the green-topped Mortsen Mountains outside our walls.
They guarded over the Dark Woods, the forests that lay between us and Eskalon’s southern border.
The place where my mother had died. Revulsion built in my chest. Chimera hated mountains and rarely crossed them–which meant Eskalon remained protected, and we dealt with the threat. Until last night …
I padded across the stone floor to the other side of my bedroom, staring out the windows facing west to Kalder Forest, the impenetrable woodlands.
What had drawn the beasts through Kalder and into the town? Something was wrong—this wasn’t their usual behavior. And the fact that there were two of them …
More will come …
That was the warning the wolf chimera had given me—the prophecy. Before I killed it.
I sat back on the bed, not sure what to do, or what to make of what had happened. But something on the top shelf caught my eye. An item left behind. It was an old wooden box, the phases of the moon painted across the front, with a light coating of dust atop the lid.
I climbed onto a stool and pulled it down, unclasping the golden lock.
As it sprang open, I gasped. I’d seen hundreds of these sets before, but it had been years.
And I couldn’t recall keeping one in my room.
The box had been specially designed with indents to hold miniature deities—statues of the three Gods most famously associated with the Doom, the same three worshipped by both the witches of Azeal and the people of Eskalon.
Batrir, Kavrir, and Orsete. The Goddess had always been the only one that mattered in the castle. And yet, over the last seven years …
My stomach twisted as I realized the day I’d begun to acknowledge Batrir, the day I’d begun to call upon and invoke the God of strife, was the day I lost my mother.
Never before that day had I uttered “by Batrir,” and then suddenly, it had become my normal.
But seeing the box in my hands, and the deities, and moon engravings, Gods, it reminded me of her.
Reminded me of a life before I needed Batrir’s name to help me through the day.
Reminded me of goodness and love, of the time before my body felt like a weapon.
But most of all, it reminded me of my mother.
I pulled Batrir’s figurine out first, feeling the heavy weight of the sculpted metal in my hand.
He’d been designed with a male warrior body, muscles thick enough to defeat a chimera with his hands alone.
Two horns protruded from his head, much in the way he was depicted in the art around Eskalon.
Especially the art at Geoffrey’s. Something began to niggle in the back of my mind—some uncomfortable truth—but I couldn’t name it or remember.