A tear trailed down her face as she thought of Haldis. She hadn’t had the chance to say goodbye. If she stayed any longer, she would surely hurt Garren or Haldis further, or worse, kill one of them.
Oriana fled to the only place she could, the only place she would be helplessly alone. To her utopia, to the old barley farm.
Oriana collapsed upon the silken, moss-covered earth at her farm, laying in her illusion of euphoria, and she hated it. Hated its beauty, its peacefulness, and the joy it was meant to bring her. She didn’t deserve joy or happiness. She deserved only the cold misery of exile.
She couldn’t look at it any longer, couldn’t bear its beauty. Oriana lifted a hand, fingers splayed wide, before clenching them into a tight fist. The farm around her melted away into darkness. The enchantments shifted, floating into the sky like ash on the wind until no beauty remained. Shriveled, thorny vines replaced the lush, colorful flowers. The quaint cottage collapsed into a pile of stone and rotted wood. The farm finally returned to what it had been all those centuries ago when she first discovered the curse.
She looked at what was left of the old barley farm. There was nothing. It was just a ruin of rust and decay.
But something stark and white caught her eye. It was the edge of her journal sticking out through the rubble of her former rented cottage. She withdrew it from beneath the stone heap, blowing dust and dirt from the cover.
In this journal were the names of Liam and his lovely wife, Alma. The names of Haldis’s family and all the others she had taken from this world. She hugged the book to her chest, letting the tears flow free.
For some time, she stood there, remembering her victims as she so often did, until finally making her way toward the cliffs that had become a comfort over the centuries. To Shipwreck Cove, the resting place of her final fleeting ounce of happiness in this world.
She was grateful then for the reality that she had found true love not once, but twice. For she could say with pure honesty that she loved Garren, and she would treasure their moments together for the rest of eternity.
Some were never lucky enough to find a Darragh or a Garren in their lifetime. It was quite magnificent that she somehow had, and both times in the mortal world. She did something then that she did not often do. Oriana looked up to the sky toward the place that she once called home and placed a hand over her heart. “Thank you, Hylda, mother, for the gift of love twice over. For that small happiness in a dark existence.” She knew that her mother had blessed her with this, for Hylda could not interfere with the curse or her daughter’s fate, but could offer small blessings in other ways.
She often wondered if her friendship with Haldis had also been her mother’s doing, and so she thanked her mother for that as well. For the family, she had found in Haldis, for all the nights spent by the fire, for that human interaction that made the final years of the curse somewhat bearable.
As Oriana stepped to the edge of the cliffs, she lifted her journal into the fresh sea breeze, and she did something she had never done before. She prayed for her victims, for their souls. She apologized for taking their lives too soon, and she wished them peace in the afterlife, wherever it might take them.
The pages broke free on the wind, carrying over the churning waves of the cove, over the wooden spires of ships long forgotten, over the bones of the Storm Seas victims, until they disappeared into the horizon. Their souls set free among the cosmos.
A heavy weight was lifted from her shoulders. She closed her eyes and held her arms out on either side, letting the swift breeze caress her and envelop her in a welcoming embrace of comfort and relief. But all good things must come to an end as that heavy weight was slammed back down upon her shoulders with just one word uttered from a voice of pure evil.
“Daughter.” Oriana spun at the call, her back now to the beauty of the swirling Storm Sea. Anthes stood just at the clearing of the forest, long, white plaited hair whipping around him in the breeze like an angry serpent. A look of rage forever chiseled into a face of stone. She watched as his muscles twitched in anticipation, always ready for a fight.
Oriana’s skin sizzled with fury. She brought her arms back down to her sides, clenching her hands into white-knuckled fists. Steam spewed from her ears like a boiling kettle. This was his doing. He was the reason her bloodlust had reared its ugly head beyond the full moon’s glow. “What have you done?” Oriana snarled.
“The Blood Moon is upon us. Your darkness knows. It strengthens. You have let it be free for centuries and it has tasted what it can have.”
“No, you have let it be free. You cursed it to be so!”
“Did I, daughter?” He took a step toward her, red eyes narrowing on her. “Yes, I did indeed curse your bloodlust to be set free upon this world, but I did not curse you to be weak. If you wanted to, you could control it. That is your greatest flaw. It is why you will never be a true goddess. You are unable to let your gifts coexist. You know not how to balance them. Your hatred for your bloodlust consumes you. It blinds you and it will destroy you. You will stay cursed in this world for eternity.”
“It is evil! It is you!” she spat. “I hate that most of all. You, Anthes, destroyer of worlds. That is all you do–you kill and destroy, wiping out entire races from existence. I wish to be nothing like you. I want no piece of you within me.”
“You misunderstand what it is to be a god, daughter.” His voice was full of contempt. “It is to rule. To ensure the survival of the cosmos. War is inevitable, it is necessary, we are necessary for all things to flow. Without us there would be no cosmos.”
“I do not misunderstand, father. It is the way you rule–the way all the gods rule–that I do not understand. You only wish for glory and power. You have no care for the creatures you rule over. If you did, the cosmos would thrive. It would feel your love. It would not be afraid. It is your interference that causes destruction and war. You put the idea of war in their minds because you thirst for it. You are the cause of their pain and suffering. All of you!”
“You are no daughter of mine,” Anthes growled. And then he was gone, leaving behind only a hot, scorching blast of wind that boiled her blood.
Oriana knew that whether she went back to her rightful place as the goddess overseer of the mortal world or stayed here to inevitably destroy it, Anthes would win.
If she returned, he would make her join him in the destruction of innocents. So, either way, innocents would die.
She had thought hard about this moment for the past centuries. A part of her had always worried that the curse would not end the way she thought. That her goodness would be killed off, and all of her enchantments would disappear with her. But Anthes had just unknowingly confirmed her theory.
He had not cursed her goodness. He had only cursed the bloodlust to rule. It had only required that side to feed. That was why her enchantments no longer worked during the blood moon. It was the curse's way of enacting its will. Her goodness could not die, not truly, and so her enchantments would hold firm.
With the curse ended, there would be nothing the monster could do to unleash itself from the grip of her magic. It would only have control over her body, and she would remain a powerless prisoner within her own mind forever, watching with pleasure as the bloodlust tried and failed to push through her enchantments.
Oriana looked out to the ever-present swirls of the Storm Sea, ready to shred to pieces anything that might draw near to the rocky shore. The sea was no longer traveled, for no ship had ever passed through it without meeting its doom below the cliffside. That made it the perfect place for a monster to be locked away for the rest of eternity.
She only wished she could say one final goodbye, but no, she couldn’t. She shouldn’t.
