Chapter 30
NO FILTERS
The Ring of Truth blazed, a huge bow that arced over the obsidian dais. Alive—crackling and colorful—pulsing with otherworldly power.
I tried to ignore a wave of nervousness.
Jasher stood at my side, his expression carved in stone, posture rigid. He suspected what I did. Everything was about to change.
Perspiration slicked my palms. Around us, the wide, ancient cathedral mirrored the Ring’s glow, reflecting its light. Those unnatural hues of sapphire and violet held a stronger draw today, as if they knew I was ready to hear the secrets trapped within.
Rourke waited behind us, a hand on the hilt of his blade. “Enter, and the flames will do the rest.”
Lifting his chin, Jasher offered me a hard, flat statement. “Today we learn the truth, whatever the consequences.”
“Whatever the consequences,” I echoed.
He kissed me, hard and fast, then released my hand and motioned me forward.
I mimicked his posture and ascended with slow, measured steps, tremors hounding my knees.
Why did I feel as if I approached a firing squad?
I wanted the truth. Needed it. My entire life had been a lie, and it was time to learn what, exactly, had happened.
Jasher remained two beats behind me. The stairs creaked beneath our boots, the perfect accompaniment to the steady drip of water I felt in my bones. The fragrance of salt and limestone coated the cool air.
Upon the dais, we paused. He looked at me, and I looked at him. His rigid determination slipped, just for a second, revealing features bathed in worry, hope, and yearning. Perhaps my features revealed the same.
We took the final step, entering the circle together.
A wave of heat instantly enveloped me, gentle against my skin yet strong enough to yank me off my feet. I yelped in surprise, hanging there, suspended mid-air, unable to see beyond the fire. It was just me and Jasher. Until the flames swallowed him.
Fear slashed through me, ice-daggers cutting straight into my veins. Something pulled at my insides. Then time collapsed, becoming a pressure inside my skull. I screamed, wrestling against my invisible restraints. Fighting to escape. Tugging, kicking, throwing elbows.
In a blink, everything stilled, even me. My gaze met—my gaze.
Shock hit. I stood across from myself. The other me smiled, so cold and emotionless, reminding me of the visions, when I’d stood atop the mountain, viewing the world around me, utterly unaffected.
“Look,” she commanded, thousands of whispers compounded into one voice. She glided her hand slowly, as if moving in water. “See.”
Then. That moment. Pain struck, sharp and sure, and I lost sight of her, too. My body seized, my head falling back, arms spreading, spine bowing. Hundreds of lives played out in warp-speed bursts, resetting over and over, images, conversations, and emotions rushing through me in tandem.
The different families Mom and I had lived with in the human world, when Elowen had switched up her strategy. All the monstra I’d encountered. Flames. Death. So much death. Everything flashed, there and gone, playing backward, leaving behind a tangled string of memories.
Crying out, I gripped my temples and squeezed my eyes shut. Too much, too much! Finally, though, one life crystallized—the nucleus of every other. That life locked. The very first.
In a heartbeat, I entered the scene, becoming part of the vision.
Cool stone and shadow wrapped around me, and I breathed in the scent of pine and damp earth.
I crouched in the forest, gazing from my oasis with longing.
The royal palace loomed beyond the trees, ivory towers visible through branches.
A promise I couldn’t yet claim. For now, I was to remain inside this hideaway, unknown even to my parents. For the good of the kingdom.
I spent my time painting and training, always warded against monstra. Anything to protect the Ember inside me. A spark eager to ignite.
I saw myself: lean, sharp-eyed, restless, glowing bright green. My body bore the marks of hard battle: bruises both blooming and fading, muscles forged by blades, fire, and determination.
When I tired of staring at the palace, I paced the narrow clearing outside my cabana, fingers flexing, power humming beneath my skin like a caged sun.
The whole of my life, I had trained in secret while awaiting the arrival of the monstra, as foreseen by my sister. Now, they were here. I was ready. The Ember was ready. It must be. We waited only for Elowen’s approval.
As if she heard my inner cries, she rose from the spring that ran through my oasis.
Instantly breathless, I raced over. “Sister!”
Silk and shells clung to her ruby form, droplets sliding over flawless, sun-kissed skin. Queen of the Water Maidens. My best friend. My only constant.
She was clearly worried about something, but she smiled with adoration, just as always. “The moment is here, sister mine. I feel it in the tides. Hakeldama calls for you.”
Relief and fire crashed together. “I won’t let you down,” I swore. “I’ve given my life to the Ember. It will shine for me when I reach the battlefield. I know it.”
She nodded. “I know it will, too.”
I waded into the spring beside her, and she offered me her hand. I took it, gripping tight as we pressed our foreheads together.
“I’m so proud of you,” she whispered. “You know that, yes.”
“Yes. Just as you know I’m proud of you.”
“Sisters until the end.”
Forever. Always. “Sisters until the end.”
She drew back, eyes blazing. “Steel yourself. I’m taking you straight into battle. Royal soldiers are falling in droves, and without you, all will be lost.”
“I’m ready,” I swore, palming two daggers.
“Then we go.”
Together, we sank into the liquid. The world tilted, and a new landscape locked. Heat kicked the air from my lungs as the battlefield formed around me. A haze of ash and smoke. Violet sky. Screaming earth. A village market.
I gawked, stunned. No stories, no lessons, no sharp warnings had prepared me for this. Nothing could have.
A monstra waited for us, as if he’d known when and where we would land. He didn’t aim for me but my sister. Fire slammed into Elowen’s middle, hurling her across a line of dead, smoking bodies, into a boulder.
“No!” I rushed over to kill the flames and drag her behind the rock.
“I’ll heal,” she rasped and pulled herself upright. “Go. Fight. Kill them all.”
Yes.
“I’ll love you until the end,” I told her, then hurled myself into the fray, an assassin trained from birth. I killed her attacker first.
On and on I fought. For her. For our mother. My father. Even Elowen’s. For Hakeldama. For everyone.
With every swing of my blades, I expected the Ember to fire up. To consume me at long last. To explode with light and crystallize the monstra once and for all. Though I felt its power, an engine running smooth and hot, powering my strength, it did little more than glow.
I didn’t feel my wounds until the last monstra fell. I stood among the carnage, panting, certain the war wasn’t over. It had only begun.
That was when I met Reese. Gentle hands. Soft voice. Kind eyes. He claimed to be a villager and cleaned my wounds. Helped my sister. In the coming days, we became friends.
The Ember never ignited, no matter how many battles I survived. Reese told me I didn’t have to carry the burden alone. I believed him. Trusted him. But he was monstra and at Ian’s command, he slid a blade between my ribs. Slow, precise, intimate.
There in the Ring of Truth, my body convulsed, lungs burning.
Reset. Another life. Different home. Same ache.
Elowen trained me harder this time, her voice clipped, her eyes watchful.
“Do not mistake kindness for safety,” she warned. “There’s always a motive.”
The first battle—again. Elowen avoided injury, but I did not. I met Anders in the marshlands…and he introduced me to his twin, Jasher. Humor like armor, laughter like hope. Jasher fought beside me. Bled for me. Hiding who and what he really was.
I fell for him. And he led me into a trap, ensuring my death.
No pause. No mercy.
One life collapsed into another, too fast, too brutal.
For a string of those lives, I had no contact with Jasher.
Not face to face, at least. Perhaps he’d been among the throngs I slew.
Perhaps not. Then we met again. And again.
Initial contact happened sooner each go-round, as if we were drawn together by a force greater than ourselves.
But always in the end, he did exactly as my dad and Elowen had warned. He betrayed me.
“I’ve begun remembering our past loops,” Elowen told me one day, pacing just like I did when trying to work a puzzle. “A pattern has formed. You meet the one named Jasher. You love him. You die.”
For a few loops, she killed Jasher at every opportunity.
Now, she paced before me, frenzied. “If he dies before you meet him, you follow within a week. If he dies after…we war.”
War. Yes. Sister against sister, life after life. The big bad ruled unchecked. I never dealt with Sin or Malkom. Always they maintained their distance from me, as if afraid and waiting for the right moment to strike.
In a few loops, Elowen oversaw my demise herself, if only to start over again.
More pain ripped through me as I relived death after death. Fire, poison, steel. Screams tore free, and the real me fell, knees buckling.
Hands gripped mine. Jasher, anchoring me. Or attempting to. I resisted.
Every life, I had lost sight of my mission, breaking my vow to my sister.
Every life, I had loved the wrong man.
Every life, I had died with regret.
Finally—finally!—understanding settled heavy in my chest. There would be no more chances. Elowen was right; the final tide of my lives was rising fast, relentless, curling toward its inevitable crash. When next I died, the Ember died with me.
No more chances.
If I failed again, my parents would perish. My sister, too. My niece—the oh, so infuriating Iris—would grow up hunted in a world I should have saved.
“Moriah.” Jasher called to me from the abyss.
The haze burned away, and once again, he came into view. He was both more and less monstra. Bigger wings, longer claws, sharper teeth, but my Jasher’s face. Agony coated his features as he held me close.
A part of me longed to fold myself into his embrace. To soak in his comfort and offer my own. But anger and suspicion erected a concrete wall around my heart.
The elixir I’d fed him at the start of our journey had done exactly as advertised: revealed the truth of who he was. The killer who’d betrayed me over and over without remorse.
Whatever he saw in my eyes hit him like a blow. He released me and stepped back.
He braced, as if preparing for war. “Shall we pit your truth against mine, princess?”
I curled my hands into fists. “We shall, Tinman.”