Chapter Thirty-Seven #3
“So you bided your time. Waited until you could find a way to force him.”
“I never forced him,” she says, though I’d disagree.
“But yes, I needed a way to get him to see reason and agree. Can’t you see why?
Things could not stay as they were. This realm is flawed, barely sustained, and I have been separated from the one I love for centuries.
Wouldn’t you do the same? Are you not here in the hopes of reuniting with your great love? ”
“I wouldn’t cause harm to do it,” I hiss, though she isn’t wrong.
“Like you, I did what I had to,” she says.
“You will find that time wears patience thin, little by little, and desperation makes fools of us all. Yes, Vastianna, I needed to convince Anton to help me, but I knew he would never agree unless he saw just how broken my realm was firsthand. Furthermore, he would never leave his people—those he loved, and you—to spend time in the Lair of Death.”
“So you took us away. You reframed his past and erased me entirely.”
“You were his weakness in the moment of death,” she said.
“And when you died, I saw my opportunity. He revealed the pendant—which contained one of the missing shards. That meant he had found them and hidden them from me all these years. He had what I needed most, along with the craftsmanship I required.”
I only just stop myself from reaching for the pendant up my sleeve.
“But we made the bargain so quickly, I didn’t think it through. Once again, I let my desperation rule, thinking that if I temporarily cleared his mind, removed any distractions—you especially—he might finally agree to join me.”
“It was twisted and cruel,” I say, my eyes burning.
“And I paid the price for it,” she says, not bothering to refute me.
“By removing love from his life, he slid further into darkness, rejecting the very notion of it. He no longer believed there was even a chance Kastiel loved me—or our kind—enough to spare us from his wrath. Anton might have agreed to come here, but he was even more adamant not to repair the mirror. Furthermore, I found I was bound by my own curse. I could not tell him the truth—just as you couldn’t. ”
In turn, she created the Anton that everyone accused him of being. A careless, hedonistic philanderer.
“Couldn’t you have given him his codex?”
“To do that,” she says, “would be to return to where I started. So I realized the solution wasn’t to undo what I did, but to teach him a lesson.
I needed him to believe in love. Love tempers, heals, and softens even the hardest of hearts.
I looked into your story, Vastianna, felt the weight of your heart, and I knew that you would be the one to prove that to him once and for all.
Only then might he see how love shaped Kastiel. How it could do so again.”
My mind is whirling, except—
“Wait. You—You knew I was here this whole time?” I ask.
“I am the one who brought you here.”
“But Illian…”
“Was a tool,” she says. “I gave him a choice. Either he could help me lure you here, or he could face the Sands. It was no less than he deserved. I don’t even think I needed the threat, though, for him to agree.
The thought of you being with him, facing punishment along with him—it was more than enough.
His obsession where you are concerned has yet to diminish in death, and I suspect it will take many more years yet. But he knew nothing of my plans.”
“You could have used anyone else,” I rasp. My mother, Emilia—wherever she is—but then I think of the innocent souls trapped within the aurora.
“Would you have listened?” Moranya asks. “Or would you have thought it was me? Furthermore, Illian was the only one I knew would even agree to bring you into death’s realm, no questions asked.”
“And so you brought me here in the hopes that…what? Anton would fall in love with me again despite what was done to him?”
“It was my only hope, and I was right. You loved him even as he was, and he, in turn, fell in love with you once more.”
“But he had my codex.”
She shrugs. “I anticipated that he would seek it out once you arrived. I knew he would be curious about you, that he wouldn’t be able to resist. Of course it took him some time to read it,” she says, holding her hand out.
The codex—my codex—appears, parted open near the end.
“Little by little, though, he did just that.”
All those times he seemed to know something I was certain I hadn’t told him. It was how he found out about Illian. No one had told him. He’d read it, likely right before we went to Ansa. The reason for his mood, his rejection…
“Then he read about the bargain,” I say. “He saw himself make it.”
“And came running straight to me, demanding answers. That’s when I finally gave him his codex, to see it for himself. That is the act that restored his memories in full, since a codex is the preservation of one’s life and story.”
Because she refused to do so before his understanding of love had changed.
I slide to my knees. “Where is he now?”
Moranya holds out his codex, as if to cast a spell. “Would you like to see?”