Chapter 2 #2
“You heard what he said. If she goes to Noctavara…” Mom pauses, and when she speaks again, it’s obvious she’s reciting something. “‘Her broken wings will only end the curse when her own heart stops’.”
“My flower, you remember the prophecy so easily?”
“Of course I do! When a seer looks at your baby and tells you that there’s a second prophecy about her, as a mother, you remember that shit, babe. Especially when it talks about her heart stopping to break someone else’s curse.”
“It could mean something else,” Dad says calmly. Like always.
“Does it matter? They see Alana leaving Sombra. They see her dying.” Mom’s voice breaks. And, yes, that’s not unusual, either. “We can’t let her go to Noctavara.”
I lift up just enough to peek through the window in time to see Dad enveloping Mom in a big hug. Her pale yellow hair stands out against his deep red chest as he strokes the strands.
“Alana is your daughter, my Shannon. Do you think we could ever stop her?”
If I never hear the word ‘prophecy’ again, it’ll be too soon.
I can’t. I just… I can’t.
Mere moments ago, I was bemoaning how stagnant my immortal life felt.
I figured that was something that happens to young demons as they mature.
The idea of a never-ending forever is daunting, especially for a halfling.
My mom is in her seventh decade. Dad’s seen more than ten centuries.
That gap is almost incomprehensible to me when I’m barely a quarter of one century.
I’d get over it. I was just whining, an unappreciative spawn who was bored. Then I was too nervous to face Rafe’s mother. By the time I was ready to get over myself, I heard something I wasn’t supposed to, and now I don’t know what to do.
A second prophecy. You have got to be kidding me!
Part of me wanted to march into our home, confront my parents, and demand they tell me what they were talking about.
I couldn’t, though. The moment Mom mentioned the doppelseers, then Dad pointed out that I can be as hardheaded and stubborn and contrary as Mom…
I was already dashing away, clutching my skirts, Binx scampering right behind me as I beat a quick retreat.
It’s been years since I was in the company of the doppelseers. The only twin demons in all of Sombra, they make the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stick on end. They not only have the power to see the future and utter prophecies, but they’re the oldest demons in our realm.
They’re the seers that saw my birth, who saw that Duke Haures would one day be bonded to a human female, and that after Duchess Susanna cast the matefinder spell that cracked open the rift between Earth and Sombra, there would be many more human women who would follow…
and the first one who gave birth to a half human, half demon spawn would bring into the world the child destined to save it.
It was Damien who said the fateful words more than two millennia ago:
a child born of two worlds,
belonging in both, belonging in none,
will bring with them the rain,
and the fires of Sombra will be forever done.
For my entire existence, I’ve felt the weight of the first two lines of the prophecy.
By being both Sombran and human, I was born of two worlds, but I don’t really feel like I belong in either.
Sombra is my home, of course, but each of us halflings have never been able to forget that we’re different than the full-blooded demons in our village, despite how much they’ve welcomed us and our human mothers.
And I did bring the rain. When I was only four months old, I cried as most spawn do, and the rain came. Water falling from the sky, something that’s commonplace in my mother’s world but unheard of in my father’s, it nearly snuffed out Sombra’s fires—until I was captured by King Yelios.
I didn’t do anything. I survived him. It was Mom who found me and confronted the mad king, and Duke Haures—who, along with being the ruler of Sombra, is also a bondmaster—is the one that used the ashbalm flower to sever any ties that I might’ve had with Queen Alana’s mate.
That’s it. I didn’t die. I made the rain fall with my tears, and when King Yelios finally was defeated, I became a symbol for a new age in Sombra.
Even Mom admits that the first prophecy was more about the first halfling spawn setting off King Yelios’s madness and his desire to take Sombra down with him, but I’ve gotten all the credit since.
And now there’s a second prophecy?
Her broken wings will only end the curse when her own heart stops…
I don’t know what that means, but anything that involves curses and my heart stopping—which obviously means the end of my existence or, you know, death—can’t be good.
No wonder Mom made me promise not to go to Noctavara until I was ready. If Damien saw my future death and mentioned Noctavara, it makes sense that the fiery realm be closed off to me.
I’d never even heard of it until two gold moons ago when Katrin mentioned a squad of fire demon soldiers had visited Brille Rouge, searching for…
something. She had hidden with her fellow seamstresses so she wasn’t sure what they were searching for, though Rafe insisted that we go to their realm and see for ourselves.
Only I couldn’t break through. It was the first realm that wouldn’t open to me, and I’ve been harboring a grudge about it ever since.
Maybe this is why. Maybe, like Mom said, I wasn’t ready. Because she… she’d heard of Noctavara before. I could see it in the lines forming on her normally smooth forehead and how her dim eyes shadowed over to hear me mention the fire demon realm.
Because of the prophecy? Well, yeah, Alana. Of course it’s about another prophecy.
I don’t want to know. That’s what I tell myself as I flee to the edge of the shadows at the end of Sombra. These same shadows were the ones that took me when I was a child, and though King Yelios no longer lurks in their depths, no one in the village will think to find me there.
Even Binx is hesitant to step paw into the shadows. Many ungez make their home in the darkest part of the woods—including Binx once—but they are the smallest and gentlest of shadow beasts. With my luck, I’ll go to think… to sulk… and find an arkoda roaring at me for invading their territory.
And while arkodaskin makes excellent leather, it usually takes a pair of hunters to defeat the monstrous beast—and that’s nothing compared to some of the fiercer creatures waiting to snack on unsuspecting demonesses.
I’m upset, but I’m not an idiot, and I don’t go too far into the shadows. Just enough where I can sink down into the ash, ignoring the scattered bones lurking in the debris, as Binx curls up around my shoulders.
Then I berate myself for running. A mature demoness would have confronted Mom and Dad. If I’m in danger, hiding it from me won’t help anyone, and it’s not like I can stop the future from happening anyway.
If the doppelseers saw it, it’ll happen. It’s only a matter of when, and considering it took two thousand years for their vision of a halfling babe and a rain in Sombra to come true, there’s no reason for me to be panicking now.
I give myself some time to calm down. When Binx chitters softly, telling me that I need to be heading back, I listen to my soul-pet. Besides, I need to talk to Mom. I need to ask Dad what’s going on because, odds are, she won’t want to tell me.
I need to—
Shit.
Rafe.