Chapter 5
FORGOTTEN PROMISES
Istraightened my shoulders and composed a mental to-do list.
Acquire weapons.
Food.
Water.
Protective gear.
Oh! Maybe past me had packed everything?
I attempted to unzip the backpack, but it remained stuck. Even when I used pliers, scissors, and a saw.
Whatever. A bigger problem remained: Jasher’s condition. No way I could carry or cart a thousand-pound metal statue around a nightmare forest with quicksand pits and poisonous poppy fields. He’d had the elixir. Why hadn’t he changed?
I glanced his way and—our gazes locked, and I gasped. He was staring at me, hard, his sunset eyes no longer masked by silver. They projected an obvious message: I’m aware, and I’m not happy.
Adrenaline lit me up. I scrambled over and clasped his hands. Still too cold, too hard. Too metal. “Hey. Not sure how much you overheard, but I fed you a potion, and it’s freeing you from the metal prison. Might take minutes or hours—” or days “—but it’s working.”
His nostrils flared, his breaths coming in shallow pants. His irises glittered with rage. More than he’d ever projected.
He must be fighting for freedom with everything he had.
My sweet Jasher. I petted his cheek. “I won’t leave you,” I vowed. I would wait for his total recovery, then return to Hakeldama with him…but not my mother. No way would I lead her onto a battlefield. For her safety, I would leave her here.
I nodded to punctuate my decision. To beat Ian, I required aid. And I knew just who to approach.
If the water maidens were anything other than tricky, it was informative. Better get a feel for Elowen and decide if I trusted her. Although, if she was anything like Iris, I’d pay a steep price for this interaction.
I didn’t care. To ensure my mother’s safety—the baby’s safety—to right the past and the future…worth any price.
If Emma could summon Elowen, maybe I could, too. I’d summoned Iris without knowing it. And honestly, I wanted—needed—to just…meet her. Every time I heard her name, my heart blipped?
I stepped up to a large puddle across from the executioner. It was enough to summon an everyday, average water maiden. Why not the queen?
Anticipation bubbled, as effervescent as champagne. “Elowen,” I called to the water. “Come. Let us bargain together. Tit for tat.” Catnip to those like her. “What do you say?”
For once, I didn’t have to wait. Within seconds, a disturbance cast little ripples across the surface. Water splashed, a beautiful woman rising gracefully from the liquid as if lifted by a cloud.
I stumbled back, certain of three things. I’d never met her, I was slightly awe-struck, and even now, connection flickered.
While Iris had been pink from head to toe, Elowen shimmered a vibrant red.
Pearl strands wove through her cascading scarlet tresses.
Ruby eyes somehow as familiar as they were deep reflected an ocean I couldn’t see.
She wore a blood-red gown with silver embroidery and a hem that billowed like mist. More scars than I could count crisscrossed her coral skin.
A jagged line even bisected her face, running from brow to jawline.
A crown of sea glass and shells perched upon her head. Bands stacked one upon the other around her wrists and ankles. The faint scent of sea foam and blooming lilies wafted from her, intensifying the sense of connection.
“Hello again—for the first time.” Her voice.
A whisper of mysteries, remembrances, and secrets knitted with the unmistakable authority of a woman who fully comprehended her power.
“I am Her Serene Majesty Elowen, Queen of Water Maidens, Supreme Oracle of the Great Unknowns, Lady of the Deepest Depths, Keeper of the Silver Tides, High Enchantress of the Azure Realms, and Empress of the Moonlit Seas. At your service…Moriah Shaker.” She stepped from the water, completely dry.
Her very presence embodied each title. “You know Sandrine is my mother.”
“Yes.”
Well, no one else did, which meant she could have told them but had chosen not to. “Please, call me Rye. Though I feel as if I know you, we’ve never met.” Honestly, how confusing was my life right now?
“You should go by your title, the Oracle Great and Terrible. It fits you best.” Elegant but creepy, she canted her head at me. “You have seen the future, yes?”
Not the way she meant. “According to my… to Queen Sandrine, only water maidens are oracles, and I’m no water maiden. No matter what I claimed in your past.”
Elowen smiled, ruby eyes sparkling. “Are you sure you’re not an oracle?”
“Quite sure.” But I recognized her tactic.
Allude to a mystery, prompting me to lower my guard before she went in for the kill.
Moving on. “I’ll be blunt. I have questions for you, but I don’t trust you.
My dealings with water maidens have been…
not good.” Every other description in my head would insult her to those deepest depths she’d mentioned.
“Ah yes.” She glided farther from the water, her bare feet leaving no prints across the wooden floor. “You dealt with my daughter, Iris. Or you will when she’s older. My sweet darling is only nine now.”
My eyes bugged out. You’ve got to be kidding me. Not only was the Iris I’d known currently a child, but I now had to deal with her mother.
“Did you start this time loop?” I asked flatly. Might as well dive in.
“I can do many things. I’m an oracle like you. But I cannot do that. I started none of them. Perhaps the storms carried you to where you needed to be.”
Uh. “How many are there?”
“Depends on who you ask,” she said, making no sense. Then she paused to contemplate me more intensely than I was comfortable with. “What is it you want from me, Oracle Rye?”
“I told you. I’m not an oracle. And you’re not a very good one.” I’d learned my lesson with Iris. To negotiate a discount, you must showcase a water maiden’s weaknesses. “Someone as powerful as you should know what I am, and what I’m not.”
“I assure you, I’m not wrong about your origins.” She heaved a heavy sigh. “I’m never wrong. You will come to learn this. I just hope you do so faster this go-round.”
I, too, heaved a sigh. Forget my supposed title. Wasn’t like I could prove I wasn’t what she thought. Forget the time loops, too. The past, the future. “Let’s focus on the present and get down to business.”
“Silly girl, we are in the middle of our negotiations.” She stalked a circle around Jasher.
“You should restrain the monstra.” A pair of ancient handcuffs appeared draped over her palm.
In one fluid motion, she tossed the cuffs near my feet.
“If you do not, Daniel Shaker and Queen Sandrine will be harmed. You will, too.” Menace iced her tone. “I don’t want anyone harmed.”
I reared back a step, disturbed on multiple levels.
Shackle Jasher? No. Never. But let my parents get hurt?
No again. “First, I’m unwilling to pay for the cuffs.
” In fact, I left them on the ground. “Second, I need passage for two to Hakeldama with a side of time-travel.” She couldn’t start loops.
Fine. Maybe she could bend a few months.
“I also require information about restoring my mother’s memory loss and finding the Ember of Everlight. Let’s talk payment.”
“Those I love, and those who aid me, I protect for free. The shackles will aid you, which will save Sandrine and Daniel. Therefore, no charge.” Elowen faced me and canted her head in challenge.
I still didn’t touch the cuffs. Free gifts from water maidens weren’t gifts but hooks. Plus, the shackles would damage Jasher’s trust in me. And perhaps that was her game. Ruin my relationship with the executioner so I’d have only one source of aid: the water maiden herself.
“The timing of your landing isn’t up to me,” she said. “I am not the one who manipulates time.”
“Then who?” Because it wasn’t me.
She skipped right over my question. “Tell me why you seek the Ember of Everlight. Consider it payment for my presence. I’m eager to leave, you see.” To reinforce her claim, she glided back to the puddle.
Dang her. “Supposedly, I can use the Ember to stop the time loops, save Queen Sandrine and King Ahav, and spare Hakeldama from Ian and his monstra. Spare you from the monstra.” I hadn’t met her in the future. She might be a casualty of the war.
I didn’t mention my plan to free Jasher from his tie to the Guardian. She might refuse to help. “Payment has now been given. Your turn.”
She slipped into quiet reflection. “I know the Ember was found by the first of my kind, Andrea. Not Morris, as the Ori’Emets believe. She was his first wife, and she, through the Ember, ended the original monstra invasion.”
Andrea. Not a name I’d heard before. But like Elowen’s, I reacted to it.
“The Ember will indeed do all that you hope,” she said, “though perhaps not as you wish.”
I wouldn’t ask. “What’s the price for passage to Hakeldama?”
One of her brows winged up. “Passage for two, you said, neither of which is the queen?”
“Let me guess.” My dry tone drew a tinkling laugh from her. “This, you won’t give for free.”
Now, she stalked a circle around me, sailing between shadows and light. “Considering your monstra is the second passenger, I require a small…donation. As for Sandrine’s memory loss, I can do nothing. She drank a potion to hide her memories, and she made me swear never to restore it.”
“She wouldn’t do that.” I couldn’t reconcile the strong, vibrant mother I’d grown up with willingly wiping away her past.
“The loss of King Ahav broke her,” Elowen admitted quietly, scars stark. “She did it for her baby. Among other reasons.”
For me. Sorrow pierced me, an arrow straight to the heart. “She’s started to remember on her own.”
“Yes.” She said no more on the subject. “Daniel spoke true. This Jasher is probably playing a…what did he call it? Oh yes. A long con,” the maiden said, tone coaxing. Leading. “You would do well to end your association with him.”