‘No,’ Aya rasped.
She couldn’t watch this. She tried to move, but her body was rooted in place, as if someone had anchored her there.
‘Aya … you know that I neverwantto leave you.’
Aya shook her head as her mother’s voice filled the air.
This isn’t real. This isn’t real.
‘That’s what you always say. And yet you always leave.You’re a liar,’ the girl –Aya– spat, her small hands curling into fists.
Aya reached for the girl in a desperate attempt to stop her, to silence the words she knew would fall from her lips.
‘Aya—’ her mother started.
‘I don’t care. Just go!’
‘Aya, please.’
‘Go!’
She saw it then – the wave of persuasion that flew from the girl and enveloped her mother. The look of betrayal and perhaps even fear that flickered across her mother’s face as she took a step back. Then another.
Aya’s fingers curled so tightly she could feel her nails cut into her palms. Her greatest sin, her biggest regret, was playing out before her, and she could do nothing to stop it.
Aya closed her eyes, but it was no better inside. Because there was that endless well, its power churning violently like the Anath Sea.
‘That’s it.’ Somewhere, the voice was speaking to her. ‘Feel it.’
She didn’t want to feel this. This was her pain. Her guilt. Her hatred for all that had become of her. This … this was the very moment darkness tainted her soul thirteen years ago.
‘What does your nature show us, Daughter of Darkness?’
An ear-shattering scream pierced the silence, and Aya’s eyes flew open to see her mother drop to her knees. Aya lurched toward her, but still her feet wouldn’t move. She looked to the Vaguer, who watched calmly, his hands clasped in front of him.
‘What is this?’ Aya snarled, tugging against her invisible bonds.It’s not real. Except her mother was looking at her now, her face twisted in agony. ‘Help her.’ The plea was out of her mouth before she could question the logic of it.
‘Only you have the power to do that,’ the Vaguer replied,his obsidian eyes tracking her mother as she twisted and thrashed on the ground. Aya scanned her surroundings frantically, looking for something, anything, to help. There was nothing but that darkness, and a haze that separated them fromsomething, or perhaps everything.
Gods, help me. I beg you. Help me.
She turned back to her mother, her breath coming in panicked bursts. ‘This isn’t real,’ she said as Eliza twisted and contorted on the ground. Her mother let out another hair-raising wail. ‘Ma,’ Aya rasped. But whatever pain had gripped her mother had her entirely. She thrashed again, her screams doubling in volume. ‘Ma.’ The word was a sob torn from somewhere deep inside of Aya as she watched water pool beneath her mother. Eliza coughed, and water poured out of her mouth.
Drowning. Her mother was drowning.
She looked up at Aya, her blue eyes so bright they almost glowed. ‘See what you’ve done to me?’ Her mother’s voice was no longer blessed by the sun. It was ice and fury and hatred, and it had the hair on the back of Aya’s neck rising. ‘This is the eternity you have damned me to,’ she hissed.
Because her mother’s body … it had never been burned. Her soul …
Trapped. Trapped in the veil, kept from passing into the Beyond.
Aya reached for her power, for that sliver of healing that she’d plunged into her depthless, raging well to find for Will. But all she found was rage, and grief, and a violence that crackled like lightning in her veins.
Her mother couldn’t be trapped within the veil. Her soul had to have gone to rest; she was at peace. Her sweet mother …
The gods wouldn’t allow this. They wouldn’t forsake her like this. Not after everything.
Aya tried to uproot herself, but her body wouldn’t work, wouldn’t move. Eliza screamed again, and the sound cut off abruptly as she gagged on more water.
