Chapter 15
fifteen
“Your freckles really look like the stars in the sky, Tala.” I tell Natala, the Queen of Midaeliea. I study her face across the table, noting how the afternoon light catches the constellation of tiny marks scattered across her nose and cheeks.
I feel the familiar weight of my mortal form – this body I’ve inhabited for decades now.
My hair no longer shows the silver at the ends it once did, the strands just cobalt.
I run a hand across my neck, marred by two freckles instead of one.
This life I now walk was to experience life as one of my children does.
The salt-tinged breeze caresses my skin, carrying the scent of the Great Sea below us. My great sea.
The pitgoni birds dive through the air, catching sunlight as they soar down to snatch tiny fish from the water’s surface. Their movements are precise and graceful.
Below us my daughter runs across the sand, her fifteenth lunar year making her both child and woman.
Carnaxa, I named her. And what a joy she is.
A miracle I never thought possible. Her laughter carries up to us on the wind, the sound of it is pure joy.
Her cerulean hair shining bright, and I smile at the freckles she has that match mine – except for three.
The young guard assigned to her tries to maintain his formal posture, but I see how his expression shifts from irritation to delight as she splashes him, water droplets catching the sunlight like diamonds.
“That’s what people tell me,” Tala replies, bringing my attention back to her. “I used to hate them when I was younger, but they are growing on me.” She takes a sip of tea from the blue glass in front of her.
I will not be here long. Day by day, something is changing inside of me … something that will change everything. I will go back to my original name, Drāhēn? instead of Iviloan—the name they call me now when I was born this life.
Natala looks at me more carefully, her eyes narrowing slightly. “Are you okay? Is Carnaxa?”
Her perception startles me from my thoughts. I try to smile, but I know it doesn’t reach my eyes. My glass clinks against the porcelain saucer, the sound sharp. “Carnaxa will be fine, but things are changing, Tala. For good this time.”
I reach across the table and take her hand in mine. My skin feels cooler than it should be, almost like the water I once commanded with such ease. The water or the chaos that I’ll soon return to.
“There’s something important I need to discuss with you, and I also need you to hold on to something for me, until Carnaxa needs it.”
I feel fear rising within me – not for myself, but for what comes next. For the burden I must place on my daughter. For the battle that looms on the horizon, set in motion centuries ago when I fled from Khaysus with his flame magic hidden within me.
Tala squeezes my hand, her warmth seeping into my increasingly cold flesh. A disease of sorts, because I can’t call myself home like I have for so many other souls in Ashonera. This world has become something so much more than I expected. But now, it’s time …
“Ivy, you are scaring me. What is wrong?”
I release her hand reluctantly and look up at the sun, feeling its warmth on my face. Once I could have drawn the tides up to greet it, could have created rainbows in the spray with nothing but a thought. Now I feel the light passing through me, as if I’m becoming nothing but a shell.
“Something that started many lunar years ago,” I whisper, my fingers tracing patterns on the table.
Unconsciously, I leave faint trails of moisture – the small amount of power I still have even though magic has vanished since I banished Atlas.
A small amount of it remains in me, even after being re-birthed.
“I wasn’t always Iviolan, the baker’s daughter,” I continue, my voice falling into the rhythm of waves against the shore – a cadence I can’t shake, even after decades in human form. “Before this life, I was Drāhēn? or as you know her … The Goddess of Ashonera.”
I see disbelief flash across Natala’s face.
Of course she doubts me. The stories of The Goddess are taught to every child in Antalis.
I’ve heard the tales they tell – simplified versions of my true history, legends that barely capture the weight of creation.
But I always tell Carnaxa more of the story.
“I know how it sounds,” I say, my gaze drifting to Carnaxa, who now builds a castle from wet sand.
The boy, Thylas, once again right beside her as he smiles down at her.
I tried to ignore the look of him, I tried to ignore where I know, in my soul, he comes from.
The darkness that surrounds him. I turn my attention back to Natala.
“Two hundred years ago, I was reborn … to start the cycle again because I was losing. I walked among the mortals.”
The memories wash over me: the ritual of rebirth, the agony of compressing all I am into a more mortal form, the slow awakening in a human body with only fragments of my power remaining.
The joy of finding Thesix again, my twin drop, now reborn as Clennom.
The miracle of bearing a child together – something I thought impossible for a creation of Tiyo.
“And Clennom, the King of Antalis, he was once Thesix, my twin drop.” A genuine smile touches my lips, warm with the love that has spanned centuries. “We found each other again, as we always will.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Tala asks, her voice sounding less of disbelief.
I feel my expression darken as a chill runs through me, one that has nothing to do with my fading connection to this world.
“Because … the soul of Atlas, the King of Shaston, has been reborn in a new body time and time again. Until now. Now, his body is once again the same as the man I knew. He carries the same obsession, the same desire to possess what isn’t his. ”
“Khaysus?” Tala whispers, proving exactly why I wanted to trust her with this. She knows the stories better than most.
My eyes snap to hers. “He didn’t make it to this world, thankfully.
There was a sacrifice – Kya, a friend of mine in the end.
She sacrificed herself to contain him, leading to the southern continent’s formation.
” This was something I watched above, as Kya gave a u?ji tu?ru? as the Minasians now call it.
When I changed, she felt him approaching – and then she shut the doorway.
But even that, one day, will wear out with Atlas still here. “The price of creation is always high.”
I notice Natala studying my face, perhaps seeing how the blue of my eyes seems to fade. My hand trembles slightly on the table – another sign of the sickness taking over me.
“Carnaxa doesn’t know yet,” I continue looking down at my daughter with a fierce love that makes my heart ache. “But she is the one who will finally finish what began with Khaysus and Atlas. The last piece in the puzzle I’ve been assembling unknowingly.”
“What do you mean, ‘finish’?” Natala asks, dread creeping into her voice.
I reach beneath the table and pull out my leather-bound journal – the same one I began when I first created this world, its cover worn with age.
The cover still bears the symbols of the elements that started this world, only now a divot has been formed.
A divot to unlock her magic, her memories.
To help her connect to me. The magic I took to reforge the world buried inside the stone – a stone her guard now carries.
“This contains – everything. My memories as Drāhēn?, the proper history of our world, and the prophecy that Carnaxa must fulfill.” I push it toward Natala, feeling the magic that she holds – that earth magic waiting to be awoken.
“Keep it safe until Carnaxa is ready … I trust you to know when. Then, she will have all that she needs.”
“Upon the day the moon turns bright, the loyal heir’s death awakens eternal night. The waters will rise and the fires will blaze, then only the sacrificed can save. That prophecy?” Natala asks, as I simply nod in agreement. “But why can’t you tell her yourself?”
I smile sadly, accepting what I’ve already known. “Because … I will not be here much longer.”
Soon … so soon.
“Does Clennom know?” she asks.
I shake my head. “No.” My voice remains steady, though my eyes glisten with unshed tears.
“Things must happen as they will. But I know she will do what is necessary. I know because I put the protections in place.” I think of the young boy I met from Shaston that was not Atlas’s heir …
and know exactly how she must have two to hold her heart … a fail-safe for one another.
Below us, Carnaxa laughs as she shapes her sand castle, adding shells for windows. My beautiful daughter, unaware that her Ata is slipping away. That her destiny is now written in the ancient journal sitting between Natala and me.
“The cycle is completing itself,” I say, unable to look away from Carnaxa.
“Shaston grows stronger daily. I know magic will wake because soon … Carnaxa will have to go to that dreaded place, setting everything into motion.” I feel it – the weakening of the magical barriers that have held Khaysus and Atlas as his puppet at bay.
“When Shaston comes for her … you’ll know it’s time. ”
Natala places her hand on the journal, and I see her shiver slightly as she feels the vibration beneath her fingertips.
“I’ll keep it safe,” she promises.