“No. This choice must be yours, and your soul must decide to be either mortal or given up freely,” the Crone goddess answers me. I can’t look at the heirs; I stare at the leaves on the ground like they will have the answer. My monster warned me not to give anything up for the wolves, warned me not to trust them…but I already trusted them long before he warned me.
Trust and giving up three parts of my soul are two very different things. I don’t remember my life before I was eight, and I always knew that when I died, there would be a chance I’d see my parents. If they are dead, they might have been waiting for me, and if I do this, if I save these three, I am giving up that chance. I am giving up my soul for the heirs. She’s asking if I’m going to give my soul up for these three psychotic wolves and link myself to them forever. Or…do I take the other option? I could leave with Tannith and see her turned back into a human. We could have a new life, away from the past horrors, and eventually I might forget the heirs and my monster. We would be free. We could have everything…but I would lose them.
Tannith, forgive me.Please. I can still get her back to being a human, but I know my soul would be destroyed if I left them here and took the goddesses’ first choice. The second choice means I get everyone out alive, and that is all that matters. I’m lying to myself if I ever thought I even considered the first option. I already know what my answer is because it is too late for me. I let them into my heart, and they dug their claws in.They bled for me and, now, my soul is going to bleed for them too.
“I choose them.” I whisper the words, but they hit like a punch in the air. All three of the heirs’ heads rear back like I hit them. Like they didn’t expect me to choose them at all, and Blackfire shakes his head from side to side. I raise my voice and stand up. I will not make this choice on my knees. “I choose them, and I will pay the price for it with my soul. You have gotten what you wanted and created a pack. Now take what it will cost and let us go home.”
The heirs struggle against the binds like they can free themselves from the goddesses, but they can’t. They aren’t more powerful than the goddesses. The gold mark we all received glows on their chests, and it changes, the marking swirling up their necks and leaving a crown in the centre. Each one is different: Orion’s is a crown of vines; Reed’s is a crown of water and ice; and Blackfire’s is a crown of skulls with their heads on fire. I feel my own skin burning with a mark on my neck, and I wonder what mine looks like.
The Crone goddess purrs into my mind, “It is done. You are our champions and we now take what is given and share our power with you, Meredith Crone.” Gold beams of light shoot straight out of each of the goddess statues, and they slam into my chest at the same time. I cry out in agony as the light bursts through my skin, through my bones and blood. I know the moment it finds my soul, I know the moment something is taken from me that I can never get back. Three parts of my soul are torn from my chest, and I cry out again.
My back arches, my feet leave the ground, and all I can see is blinding gold light. The goddesses tear me apart in the forest and fuel me with their power. The power settles into my bones like a binding, and I wail as I resist it, pushing it away from me, but I can’t. I don’t know how much time passes or how long I scream,but my voice eventually gives in, and I pant as I collapse onto the leaves.
The world pauses as I open my eyes, and everything is different. The colours are brighter, I can taste scents in the air, and all the sensory input is overwhelming. I lift my hand, seeing that my skin is paler than before, and my nails are black now. I run my tongue over my teeth, noticing two fangs have appeared from my teeth. Just like my monster. What have they changed me into?
“You tricked us!” the Mother goddess roars in my mind, and I let out a piercing scream.
The Maiden snarls words I can’t understand into my head, but one sentence I get. “Oblivion-touched and cursed. It is impossible! She cannot exist, how did we not see? How did they do it?”
Finally, the Crone goddess speaks, and she isn’t screaming at me like the other two. I can finally focus on what she is saying without feeling like my head is being split in two. “She was protected by love, and she will fall to it in the end. Oblivion will ruin her, and her wolves will tear her fragile heart apart. I see it all, and we need not fear this girl. He will not want the broken. She will still beours.”
“In time,” the Maiden’s voice echoes last.
The world spins in front of my eyes, and the forest disappears, leaving nothing but clear night skies as I kneel in snow on the mountaintop. The bloodstone is right in front of me, and the mountain range stretches for miles in every direction I look, and above is nothing but endless stars and the moon right above me. The silver light makes my skin glow as I stand up, staring at the heirs, who are on their knees a few feet away. They aren’t bound anymore, but they don’t move.
Blackfire’s gaze burns with devotion—raw, absolute, and almost frightening. “We are fucking hopeless, don’t you see? Wehave been from the very start, but Meredith?” He said my name. I didn’t know how desperately I wanted him to say my name. “As long as the stars burn in the sky, you will be mine.”
The wind picks up around us, and I hear a thud in the snow. I turn around and find Tannith convulsing, blood pouring out of her drake mouth. I don’t know what I am now or how I can, but I can hear her heartbeat in her small chest and smell decay and death pouring off her tiny drake body. I know without a shadow of a doubt that my friend is about to die.
Chapter Thirty-One
“Tannith!” I crawl across the snow to her, picking up her small, tiny body with my hands. She feels cold to the touch, and her heart is slowing. She stops convulsing, but blood freely pours from her mouth onto my hands. Even her blood feels cold instead of warm. I look back at the heirs. “REED!” I shout at him when he doesn’t move.
Reed doesn’t rise to his feet, and he doesn’t come to help. He must be able to hear her heart slowing down and see the blood. Why isn’t he moving? Why are none of them helping her? Reed can use his healing kiss thing to fix whatever is hurting her. “Please, Reed, you can heal her!”
“I can’t,” Reed whispers, and my heart seems to crack. “My magic doesn’t work on creatures like her. I can’t heal her for you, little human. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t say that nickname while you tell me you can’t help my best friend!” I shout back, tears streaming down my cheeks. This can’t be happening. I just made a deal to save the heirs and not a promise of Tannith and I having a normal life. She would be fine and human already if I didn’t save them. They aren’t getting up, they are not moving, and even if I didn’t want to see it…they look guilty.
No. This…no. “Blackfire.” I breathlessly pant his name as I try to calm the panic in my chest. There is so much of Tannith’s blood in my lap, pooling in Orion’s shirt. She is running out of time, and they are not fucking helping me. “If you can get your uncle through a portal quickly, he can turn her back, and then she’ll?—”
Blackfire gulps, and it’s the only time I’ve seen him nervous. “Hopeless, she can’t be turned back. My uncle lied to you, and I couldn’t tell you anything before. Something has changed now as I can speak freely, but I was bound to lie to you about Tannith. My uncle didn’t trust me not to tell you. I couldn’t tell you, even if I wanted to, Hopeless, and I did want to tell you. Many times. He bound Reed and Orion too before the Folkland began. When they’re turned, they stay like this. Permanently.” The world stills before my eyes, or at least it does for me. Permanently. “Tannith cannot be changed back into a human. They usually live for at least thirty years. I don’t know why she’s dying so soon, but this was her fate from the moment she was turned. I am so sorry, Meredith. I cannot help you, and I wish I could.”
His betrayal strikes like a knife twisting in my ribs, and I’m shaking as I stare at the heirs I now share my soul with. The heirs who spent months living with me and Tannith, knowing I was fighting in the Folkland to keep her alive and get her turned back into a human. Months…and I don’t care if they were bound not to tell me. They could have done something. Anything. I just gave up the chance for the goddesses to turn her back, to leavethe Folkland and the packs. I gave up everything for them, and my best friend’s going to die because of my selfish choice.
“At least you get to say goodbye.” Orion’s voice is gentle, but something snaps in my chest. How fuckingdarehe? They all begin to stand, and I don’t like it. They should be on their knees, and anger like I’ve never known it takes over, until all I can see is red. Strings burst into the world around me, the air going still, and I smile as I reach for the dark one that’s always called for me. I know its name now. I remember.
“Oblivion,” I whisper gently. “You are my home.”
I clench the string and pull the magic into my hand, letting the world bow tome. Black shadows burst out of my body in every direction, dark grey waves wrapping around the heirs and lifting them up into the sky. Reed screams my name, panic making his voice wild. Blackfire and Orion shout for me too, but I hold them in the sky as my power slams into the ground. The mountain top cracks, and pieces of rock fall, shattering around me. My shadows violently swirl in a tornado around us all, and I embrace the darkness. It was always my home. I was born from oblivion and it is where I will return. But first…
I hold Tannith in the chaos and destruction, and I don’t let it touch my best friend. I don’t care if the storm washes the world away and takes me with it. It can take the heirs too. They deserve to die for what they’ve done. I will never forgive them for it. Never.
I have lost everything in the Folkland.
Tannith looks at me with all the love in the world, with every bit of our friendship in the depths of her eyes, and I sob. Snow flurries around us and mixes with the snakes of shadows and darkness, all of it highlighted by the bright moon above. “We’ve always loved the snow, haven’t we?” she asks. “I’m happy it is snowing and I can feel it on my skin one more time. Winter remakes our imperfect world into something fresh and new.”
Tears pour out of me like something’s broken open, and I know she is taking part of me with her into death. I can’t save her, and I tried so, so hard. It wasn’t enough. I am not enough.
