Chapter 26 #3
She turned to Theodon. “Why . . . why did he do it?”
“When the gods created our realm, Brahm allowed the other gods and goddesses to take mortal lovers, so their bloodlines could begin to grow. The gods had agreed long ago that lying with each other was forbidden—creating a new god could be too dangerous, causing a power struggle or, worse, another immortal war. So Brahm gave them mortal companions. But Valhoor never found his. He was convinced Brahm slighted him and never made him one in the first place. He became jealous.” Theo’s eyes flickered.
“He began to destroy indiscriminately. Nothing and no one in Lynor was safe. Something had to be done. Many of the gods retaliated, uniting to banish him to live alone in his hell realm.”
The Death Realm, one of the six.
Helaina huffed out a breath as she found a wall to lean on. The ache in her leg was throbbing. She had always wanted answers, what her power was, who gave it to her. Now that she knew, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know more.
“Before he could be sent away, Valhoor set his plan for revenge into motion. He found Ures’s companion, Fessa, while she was with child.
He crept into their room as she slept, placing his hands on her womb and tainting Ures’s bloodline with his dark magic.
He vowed that they would have many children, but one day, one child would possess his mark.
” He gestured to her moon-silver eyes. “That child would signal his return, and together they would create such a massacre that no living mortal would survive. It was a curse and a promise.”
All her suffering had been for something so senseless. It could have been anyone in her family, anyone in any generation to hold this curse—but it landed on her.
Anger rumbled in her chest.
“So my choices are to wait for him to come for me . . . or listen to you and drive that dagger through my own heart?”
“Yes.” Theo’s tone held some odd form of misery.
“That’s not a choice at all!” she shouted. Her hands balled into fists. “One of you must have the power to undo it, to take whatever’s inside me away.”
“Undo it?” Theo grew close, far too close.
She was once again between him and a wall, but she refused to let him see her quake.
“Yes,” she hissed. “Undo it, get rid of it.”
“You could be the key to ending a divide that has lasted since the beginning of time . . . and you ask for a way out? To simply erase it?”
She bit her own cheek to prevent her lips from curling up in an ugly snarl. “That’s what a sensible person would do. If I have any chance of causing disaster—”
“There’s also a chance you could prevent it,” Theo interrupted.
She was about to fire back when Manos stepped between them, forcing them apart. Clearly, he didn’t want a repeat of their previous altercation.
Theo turned away, muscles tensed as he fidgeted with the leather coverings around his wrists. “Her history lesson is over. Take her back to her room.”
Manos did as he was instructed. Helaina could do nothing but reluctantly follow. She had escaped Oakmire only to find herself with another escort, another guard.
This was not salvation. She would never know the meaning of the word.
Manos paused in the doorway to her room as she sank down on her bed, her leg aching from the walk.
Those shadowed eyes gave her a once-over.
“You can’t undo fate, Helaina. You can accept it, or try to change it.
Running from it just delays the inevitable.
We don’t know the plan; we only know the east is stirring, that they are stealing lives for a purpose.
We fear war is near. For the first time in our histories, the Divine might not be enough to stop what’s coming. ”
She grew angry. Why her? Why should any of this have to rest on her shoulders?
“The ghosts that haunt you . . . leave them in the past,” Manos said. “You think you owe the dead a debt? Pay it by saving lives here, and now.”
“You know nothing about me or what I’ve lost,” she seethed.
He Tapped his temple as if reminding her. “Oh, I think I do.”
Such an intrusive trick, to climb into her thoughts and suddenly think he understood her.
He paused and gestured with his head to the corner of the room. “When you’re ready to train, knock on Theo’s door.”
“I haven’t decided anything.”
“Yes, you have.”
Before she could reply, he was gone, the sound of his boots clacking on hard stone faded in the distance.
She breathed her anger out through her nose, remembering Adriel’s tricks to help deter her emotions from getting the best of her.
Fight or flee. She only had two paths to choose from.
This was what Adriel had prepared her for, to somehow prove the prophecy wrong, to make her own destiny. She released a guttural cry and shoved the entire empty tray to the floor, shattering more porcelain dishes over the other broken pieces.
Weakness and running were what got Krysta killed.
Weakness was what made Adriel slip into his addiction.
Weakness could no longer be her course of action.
Manos was right, she’d already decided.
Fight.