Chapter 33 Thyra
Chapter Thirty-Three
Thyra
The shapeshifter woman’s claws slash at my throat, and I can’t do anything to avert my death.
But time…
Time is spinning around me. Through me. My mind is splitting into countless pieces, each shard a possible, glinting future.
My mind moves so fast that every heartbeat of real time becomes an age.
A slowing down of everything around me into a near-suspension of movement while I stand in the center of a thousand possibilities.
Countless potential futures.
Each begins from the moment Stellen and I stepped out from the Alak-Teah. Each reveals a dizzying series of attacks and counterattacks, Stellen’s swords flashing, his icy power cascading, his path keeping him at my side, or leading him toward Brunkil, or taking him to Fable.
A myriad of moves and seemingly limitless defenses, but no matter what he does, every variation leads back to the moment in front of me.
Fable, slashing at my throat.
My death.
Nothing stops her from reaching me.
Within the whirling visions, her form grows brighter and brighter until all the shattered futures finally pull together into a single moment in time and then, a vision within a vision—
I’m kneeling beside a fireplace on a tattered rug, the warmth of firelight keeping the chill from my bones. A little girl, maybe only four years old, kneels beside me, her face smudged with soot, her ashen-black hair matted like a bird’s nest.
She’s holding out her arm, resting it on the lap of…
But I can’t make out the other person. Beyond the little girl’s own form, and beyond the fireplace and the rug, everything else is hazy and unformed.
Droplets of white ink appear, dripping from a point above the girl’s arm and landing on her upturned wrist. At first, I think the droplets must be startling to her, as they are to me, but she leans forward, as if in anticipation, and asks, “Mama, what will it be?”
“A feather,” a woman’s soft voice says.
As each slow droplet gathers on the little girl’s wrist, the strange white ink takes shape, forming a feather, just as the woman promised.
“With this feather, you will have wings, my darling,” comes the whisper. “You are a wolf who can fly.”
The woman’s whispers shiver through me as her voice becomes strained. “But if you wish to fly, you must only fly west. Never east. Never into the shadows. Don’t come looking for me, Fable. You must live in the light. Stay away from the darkness in the—”
The image shatters. Time spins and with it, my mind.
I’ve never seen someone’s past before.
I didn’t know my Oracle visions could show me the past but I’m certain that’s what I saw. The woman called the little girl Fable and now she’s here, fully grown.
But, oh, to have felt the touch of my own mother’s hand. To have heard her voice…
Beyond my still-paralyzed body, I’m aware that Fable is coming at me, but this time she’s starting from farther away from me, and now I realize that time is reverting.
Reality is returning.
What’s happening now is happening now, and death is about to come for me.
Fable has just evaded Nara’s defensive swipe, flying through the narrow gap with astonishing skill.
In the background, Stellen streaks toward me, frozen air rushing from his form as he strains to reach me in time. The power gathering around his hands burns ice blue, but if he lets his frost loose, he’ll shatter me too.
Closer to me, Nara is turning, her jaws gnashing toward Fable’s back while Lilis hunches in the snow, the friction of indecision flooding her face.
Lilis doesn’t want to save me. This, I know from her backward twitch and the scorn in her eyes.
All while Brunkil’s unnerving laughter beats across the air.
Fable’s feet hit the snow with a barely audible crunch as she flings herself toward me, her ashen-black hair so matted, it’s clumped to her head, her face smeared with dirt and her claws outstretched. The inked feather is no longer visible on her wrist, but I know what I saw.
And I’m no longer passive.
I can’t move, but I can speak.
Drawing a deep breath, I catch hold of the power of the past I saw in my vision.
A precious moment between a mother and her daughter.
With all the force of my heart, I scream.