But Aemon didn’t ask again. Nor did he try to take the shard from me by any other means. I was left alone, cared for with regular meals and private baths.
The crystal, made of pure indigo light from the Valalumir, shimmered next to me, right where I’d left it when I fell asleep.
You feel its power, Ereshya, don’t you?he thought.
My fingers curled. “My name is Morgana. I am not Ereshya.”
“You are both.”
“I am n—”
“You are! You’re not just remembering her. You’re dreaming ofbeingher.” His voice was dripping with seduction.
I stilled. It was no secret, and yet I felt utterly naked hearing him say it out loud.
“Come now,” he said. “I’ve known your mind a long time—you can’t hide from me. You never could. Not even back then. Sleeping with the shard as your bedfellow is going to call out to the parts of you that remember. It’s going to awaken Ereshya inside you. I know this, because it’s bringing me back in time, too. Do you think it was just you? It wasn’t. I was also there. I also felt it. Your leg wrapped around my hip. My hands sliding over your ass as the ocean rushed against our feet. My tongue licking the salt of your skin, your moans deep in your throat. Your nipples hard against my chest. You were so wet for me—”
“It was a dream!” I shouted.
“Yes, a dream.” His eyes flashed. “But also a memory.”
“And if I remember? If I forget I am Morgana and become Ereshya again, do you think that matters? Do you think if that happens, that I will then present it to you, and become pliable? That I could ever trust you again?”
“You were not so pliable back then either. As for trusting me again? You will,” he said simply. “We go back millennia, you and I. Lifetimes have bound us together. But I will prove myself to you. And soon. You will not only know what it is like being Morgana. You will know what it is to become Ereshya. You will no longer just know me as Aemon, orhim.But as Moriel, your king. Your consort. More of your memories will come now. More vividly, with more details. They’ll come faster until you don’t know where Morgana ends and Ereshya begins. You will forget which life you are living at times. Soon, there will be days and nights when Morgana will be the part of you that feels like a memory.”
Dread filled me. Gods. I didn’t want that. But something softened inside of me as I met his gaze. “Is that how it is for you?”
He watched me carefully. “Sometimes. I have never not known a time when I didn’t recall my past life as Moriel. I have spent years feeling like I was living between lives, losing moments of my life here and now, disoriented when I’d been transported back. Every year, more memories stirred, woke my soul even further.” His eyes met mine. “Sometimes the most intense memories came when I was inside of you.”
I shook my head. “Don’t.”
“What does it matter in the end? I am who I am. I don’t have to separate myself from one life to the other. Nothing new is ever created. Nor is it destroyed—only changed. It’s all just one continuous, eternal loop. Never-ending. Like a God.”
My throat tightened again, my pulse pounding as I began to truly realize what that meant—the power he could unleash.
The power I could reach for.
“Trust me when I tell you,” he said, “that the past not only mattered back then, but still matters now, matters even more so than before. There was never a time when I wasn’t going to actively finish what was started. There was never a timeline or chance that this war wouldn’t continue. My soul knew it then, and my soul knows it now. It was prophesied ages ago. This war was inevitable.”
I shook my head. “Not all prophecies come true. And you forget, this isn’t my war.”
“Isn’t it?” His aura seemed to pulse, his dark eyes sparkling with amusement. “You’re foolish if you think it’s not.”
“I’m not. And it isn’t,” I said more urgently. “We’re not them anymore. Don’t you see? Memories are memories—they are the past. Irrelevant. They can remain where they belong. Nothing is forcing us to relive what happened! Admitthis is a war that you do not have to fight.” Because it was a war I could not bear. A war that would make my sister my enemy.
“Isn’t it though?” he sneered. “Or did you forget all we’ve learned? Did you forget what the Empire would have done to you if you had been caught with your vorakh? Or Meera? Did you forget what they’ve already done to Jules?” His voice rose. “What they’re still doing to her!”
I flinched.
“Tell me,” he demanded, “how many nights did you search Bamaria, fucking every person you could find for answers? You cannot lie to me. I know you want her free, just as I do. Just as I want every vorakh freed from the enslavement of the Empire. Or is that not what you want? Not what you sacrificed everything for?”
I closed my eyes, my chest tight. Ihadsacrificed everything, before I’d known what I was doing. Before I knew the true cost. “I still want that.” My voice was barely above a whisper.
“But you won’t fight with me,” he said plainly.
“I want to fight the Empire. The Emperor. The Imperators. I want to crush the system that enslaved our kind.” Something inside me began to burn. “I want to hurt the people that took Jules away. That ruined my family. But not this. Not this other fight I know you’re planning. To go against my sisters. To go after more shards of the Valalumir. To reinstate a war that ended centuries ago.That’sthe fight I don’t want.”
“And you think we can take down a thousand-year-old Empire with anything less than full power behind us? Without the power of the shards? Of the whole Valalumir? I need you to remember who you are—who you truly are now. Remember how we came together. Remember that we want the same things. That we have the same goals. Remember that even if I went about things in ways you did not like, it was for the greater good. We are meant to work together.”
