Chapter 25
SISTER MAY I
So many thoughts and too many emotions as I stared at my sister. On the front lines? Torrents of anger that whipped hard. “You knew of our connection from the beginning, yet you left me floundering. Why not share everything right at the start? Why make me find out this way?”
Elowen raised her chin, familiar and foreign to me at once. “You think I didn’t try that, in other lives? It never turned out well. In each life, I have learned something new and done something different. Anything to keep our enemies off your trail until you are summoned to Hakeldama.”
Okay, so, she was going to be reasonable. It only made me madder. “Who summoned—summons—me twenty years from now?”
“Iris, at my instruction. She is learning to wield the storms. Though she hasn’t yet mastered the craft, as you experienced. That’s why she sought the monstra in Gerald’s camp. To study its connection to the rain and the wind.”
I remembered my first trip, the chapel I’d taken shelter in, how it went spinning wildly through the sky.
Recalled the agony of breaking my wrist. The shock of being in a whole new world.
Almost dying on Jasher’s chopping block.
No, she hadn’t mastered her craft. And yet, my anger downgraded to irritation. “Go on.”
Elowen closed her eyes, as if gathering her thoughts.
“I know many things when you’re born, but you aren’t the only one forced to put the pieces together.
” She crossed her long legs in casual repose, yet strain infiltrated her mouth, thinning her lips.
“What you’ve gleaned of Morris and Andrea is true.
They were married, and I’m their child. He mined in Mount Emerald, and there was a cave-in, trapping him in a cavern with Sin, Malkom, and the shells. ”
“Sin hurt your father.” A statement, not a question.
“She used his blood to spawn her first horde. They were my half-brothers, I suppose. Or my half-fathers.” A laugh devoid of humor.
I shuddered, images of the siren ghosting through my head. Eerie and quiet. A mystery promising a multitude of surprises. “I want to hear all about Sin. About Morris and Malkom. After I learn more about our mother.”
Elowen traced a fingertip over a swirling pattern in the mattress. “Andrea—Sandrine—was pregnant with me when she saw her husband in a dream. Saw what Sin was doing to him. Mother set off to find him.”
“I can’t imagine being pregnant on such a journey,” I muttered, only then noticing the similarities between the two names. Take away the S in Sandrine and you get Andrine…Andrea. “She must have loved your father very much.”
“They loved each other, and it was quite nauseating,” the maiden replied with great affection and wry humor.
“Took her months, but she found and freed Morris from his prison. In the process, Mother awoke the monstra inside their shells before they were ready. They broke free, flew from the mountain, and destroyed everything in the vicinity.”
I could picture the devastation, and it was gruesome.
“The war lasted years. Toward the end, when I was eight, monstra killed me. Mother saved me. She comes from the same land as Sin. Not Hakeldama, not your Kansas, but another. Our mother hadn’t yet found the Ember, but she knew the power of the shells, an ingredient in serpens-rosa.
She risked her life, acquired some, and brought me back. ”
So that was why Morris had believed he could revive Andrea. Those oh, so powerful shells. “That means you and Mom are both centuries old.”
“Yes. Under the right circumstances, our kind ages much slower than humans.” She drew a deep breath, as if needing to prepare for the next part of her story. “Mother knew the Ember was the only power able to extinguish Sin and all her creatures. So, she hunted until she found it.”
“And absorbed it?” As I had.
My sister nodded. “The Ember is life in its purest form. Once, a single shell contained it, but it broke upon arrival, scattering shards. The Ember concealed itself. But that’s why the shells function as they do.
They carry its essence. Sin gathered the pieces and with Morris’s blood, created other eggs. With those, she produced the monstra.”
“How do I wield the Ember, as Mom did?”
A sad smile. “You must give it your life, Moriah.”
I sputtered for a bit. “I have. Many times, apparently. So did Mom.”
“Perhaps giving your life doesn’t mean death in the sense you assume.
I do not know how, exactly, it works; I simply tell you what Mother muttered before she marched into battle for the last time.
” My sister’s shoulders rolled in. “I hid in the mountain’s crook when she ascended with water wings.
The Ember ignited within her, and in a blink, the monstra crystallized.
I thought she ended Sin and Malkom with them, but the two must have slinked off when our mother fell.
Morris was there, too, on the battlefield, fighting alongside royal soldiers.
He carried Andrea into the mountain and covered her in the shells. ”
Elowen closed her eyes, a tear trickling down her cheek. A tear trickled down my cheek. I reached out and placed my hand over hers. How we’d all suffered.
“Mother wasn’t dead,” Elowen explained softly. “Father and I were both certain she would awaken. But weeks passed, and she did not.” Pain laced every syllable. Pain that cut through me like a blade.
How gutted they both must have been.
“We remained with her, concealed inside the mountain. But royal soldiers finally found us. They had seen Morris fighting, aiding Mother, and believed he was the one who’d handed them the victory.
Called him a hero.” Another smile, this one grave.
“He took credit to keep Mother hidden. Then the king arrived with an order to raze the mountain. He also offered the hand of his eldest daughter to Morris.”
I didn’t have to wonder what happened next. “To protect Andrea, Morris agreed.”
Elowen laced her fingers with mine. “He moved into the palace with me and had Mother brought to the catacombs in a coffin.”
So Ian had told the truth about that. I leaned closer to her, desperate to hear more. Everything. “But the catacombs collapsed, too.”
“Not for several years.” She clung to my hand. “I hated life at the palace. I was the world’s second known water maiden. Red while others were…not. Always having visions I didn’t understand. I became a novelty and a freak.”
“I never really felt like I belonged in Kansas either,” I admitted. Or at college. And I’d never known why. Now, the truth couldn’t be denied. I’d not been of that world.
Elowen and I…we may not have grown up together, but we were linked. Shared similar experiences. Loved the same people.
She released my hand to flutter her fingertips over her throat, becoming a picture of guilt, shame, and regret. “Morris seemed to forget me, his life revolving around awakening Andrea. I just…I just wanted him to be my father again.”
“What did you do?” I asked, my throat tightening. Some part of me already knew.
“I yelled at him, begging him to let her go. To love me again. And I…my screaming…”
“What?”
“My screaming brought down the mountain.” The guilt and shame deepened, coating her features.
“You were a child,” I reminded her.
“Perhaps, but a falling rock killed him. He bled all over Mother. That’s when she awoke.”
Poor Elowen. Horror after horror. Saving one parent by killing another.
“We tried…” she swallowed hard. “We tried everything to revive him with the shells, but they don’t have the same effect on humans as water maidens. Flesh can be mended, but not revived. And the rocks kept falling. I knew we would die, too, if we stayed. We barely escaped through the water.”
I dragged in air, processing everything. In order to live, they’d had to abandon husband and father. How they both must have suffered.
“She was…not right after that.” Elowen shuddered as memories overtook her.
“We lived deep in the sea for many years, and she was crazed for every one of them. A woman driven mad by visions. All that time she slept in the shells, she dreamed the future on repeat. Watched her husband die again and again. Saw the monstra rise the second time. Saw a daughter she was to have with another man. One who carried the Ember and saved the kingdom. Or destroyed it.”
I closed my eyes for a moment, simply breathing.
In. Out. In. Out. As if oxygen alone could keep me from splintering beneath the weight of it all.
So many secrets. So many lives braided through mine before I’d drawn my first breath.
The question I’d carried like a stone in my pocket. What happened to my mother?
When I opened my eyes again, the world looked subtly altered, as though a veil had been pulled back, and I was seeing the bones beneath the skin of things. The prophecy. The Ember. Andrea. Morris. Elowen. Ian. Sin. Malkom. None of it had begun with me, but all of it had been waiting for me.
“You’ve protected me from others and even myself,” I said slowly, my voice steadier than I felt. “Protected our future.”
Elowen’s lips parted, surprise flickering across her features.
“And you’ve paid for it.” My chest ached, an old, familiar ache, now finally given shape. “With loneliness. With guilt. Watching me stumble through truths you already knew but couldn’t dare share.”
My sister inhaled. “I regret nothing. How can I? One day, Andrea came to me. Told me we could win the war. All we must do?” Bitter irony infused her tone. “Erase her memory, ensure she meets Ahav, and keep you out of Hakeldama for twenty years.”
“Oh, that’s all?” I quipped just as drily, then closed my eyes for a beat. “And the time loop? How did Mom start it?”
Confusion lit Elowen’s scarlet eyes. “She didn’t. You did. Or rather, the Ember in you. Though snuffed out in her, you absorbed it. Whenever you die, it resets time, and our memories, at your conception. Though I’ve noticed it’s dimmer every time we start again.”