“Can’t imagine why,” I mumbled. “I can’t wait there,” I mused. “He’ll sense that I’m nearby.”
“He’s not there yet; his message said he was dealing with the servers invading his land. So we have time to get you inside before he returns, but … you’ll have to wait on the other side of the glass,” she admitted quietly, almost guiltily.
I released my mother’s hand, dropping my forehead into my palms as outrage rose up around me in the form of five burly, protesting gods.
“It’s okay,” I muttered before they could start a fight with their own mother. “She’s right. It’s the only way to do this. But it means that I need to leave right now … and I need to do this alone.”
I raised my eyes, and then stood as their outrage turned on me. It was brief, driven by fear, and it died away slowly to be replaced with grim understanding. Each of them stepped forward, crowding me back until we were in our own little bubble, several steps away from the others.
“I’m not okay with this,” Rome muttered lowly.
“You can’t leave us again,” Coen added, his eyes dark.
“You married us,” Siret said, his hand cupping the side of my face. “You’re not allowed to leave us. I’m pretty sure there was something about that in the vows.”
“We should have added it in,” Yael groused. “No more dying.”
“Willa …” Aros drew my eyes to his. They were golden pain, drenched in apprehension. “Make sure you come back to us, or we will have no choice but to follow you into death and drag you back.”
I threw myself at him, kissing him unashamedly despite the attention of every other god—and likely the eyes of dozens of panteras, though they were keeping themselves hidden away from so much god activity in their cave. Aros passed me to Yael, and I kissed him just as soundly. Siret pulled me from Yael and took his kiss before I could give it to him, some of his fear leaking into the strong grip of his fingers. Coen and Rome were next, and I started to cry again as I kissed them and stepped away, running over to Adeline before I could change my mind. I held my hand out, inviting her to take me from the cave, and my eyes settled on my parents, still on the floor of the cave.
“Come back to us, Willa.” My mother’s voice cracked, as though from life-cycles of not being used. “We’re only beginning.”
I blinked away my tears, nodded, and Adeline grabbed my hand, pulling me through the darkness. We landed in a room that was bare except for a huge, hulking shape covered by an equally large, patterned silk sheet. Adeline’s movements were hurried as she rushed toward the shape, grabbing the silk with both hands and pulling it away in a smooth ripple of movement, allowing it to billow out to the side and pool on the floor. We both stared up at the smooth, glittering black glass. It looked just like the stone of the mortal glass within the panteras cave—though this one was encased in a huge, gilded golden frame.
“Are you sure I’ll be able to come back?” I asked, as Adeline crouched by the frame, her eyes closed and her hands smoothing over the glass. She didn’t answer me for several clicks as she concentrated on her task, and when she rose again, tiny lines of stress had begun to appear around her eyes.
“You will be able to come back unless Staviti prevents you, so be careful, Willa. By stepping through, you are taking your soul with you, though you should remain anchored to this realm through my sons, so the passage shouldn’t be painful for you. For Staviti, it will be incredibly painful, but that is something he is willing to endure to be able to bring himself back to full power.”
“That means he will be weakened when he gets there,” I said in an attempt to bolster my own confidence.
“Go, now,” she muttered hurriedly, and I stepped up to the glass, putting my hand against the surface just as a ripple of power passed through the residence.
Staviti had arrived. I stepped through the frame without hesitation, unable to risk him sensing me there. It felt like falling through darkness, but Adeline was right in her estimation that it would not be painful for me. The experience was almost peaceful, though the landing was anything but. My knees jarred with the impact of my sudden landing in the realm, and I braced myself from falling over, my arms flailing about in the darkness for something to grab a hold of. When my fingers brushed against something, it moved away from my touch. I screamed out a wordless sound, throwing my power blinding out around me … except nothing happened. Just like in the imprisonment realm, my power didn’t exist in this land. I swallowed, sucking in several deep breaths.
“Whoever’s there … I’m not here to harm you,” I attempted to say into the darkness, but the words were difficult to bring to my lips. It was like trying to speak while intoxicated.
I shrank back into myself until my eyes slowly began to adjust to the darkness. There were shapes all around me—formless until they began to separate, moving around me in slow, unsure movements. Souls, I realised. None of them made a sound, and when I stopped panicking, I realised that they seemed as wary of me as I was of them. The darkness transformed, then, from something foreboding into something … peaceful. It felt cold all around me, but not uncomfortably so, and the more I relaxed, the more I began to see. The cold sank into me and it was easy to believe that I would shiver until I dislodged, losing whatever glue held my person together and becoming a formless soul with the rest of them. Tiny sparks of light began to weave through the shadowy forms, and with them, smoky, creeping colours. I gasped, and an odd sense of joy sank into me. I looked down and saw that my body wasn’t solid as it had once been. Now, it was only a remnant, a memory of my once-living form. I could barely make out my arms and my legs, and with every moment more, they faded. A sense of alarm tried to permeate the fog that had descended through my mind, but it never quite reached me.
This place was where I belonged: it was where we all belonged. Peaceful, colourful and light …
Until it wasn’t.
A mass hurled toward us from a huge, glittering dark surface visible in my peripheral, as though it had been hiding. The mass tumbled into our midst from the glittering dark space, and I tried to recall why the face and form were familiar just as we were plunged back into darkness again. The souls had hidden their colour and light, and with the sudden rush of darkness, clarity clawed at me with warm, desperate fingers. Acting quickly, I surged toward the mirror, gripping the frame as I watched the barely visible form that had boasted Staviti’s face begin to lose its proper shape. It warped, struggled, and reached out to the other shadows, who all shied away.
“Not even you can have power here,” I said, my voice struggling again.
His quickly fading form spun, and the wild vision of his eyes bored into me.
“You will be first,” he declared, reaching for me. “The first soul I absorb. Your power never belonged to you. It always belonged to me. I know who you are. Iknow. You’re just like him; the twin that tried to steal my power from me. And just like him … I will take it back. It is mine.”
He reached out, as though to draw my energy into his claw-like grip, but his fingers dissolved into smoke before my eyes, and his attention grew unfocussed. Around us, the souls were beginning their hypnotising dance again.
“I am not dead,” I told Staviti, before my voice could become lost. “You can’t steal my soul, because it was never sent here. This is me—living, breathing, waiting for your desperate hunger for power to finally consume you.”
I was losing him as surely as I was losing myself, the cold calmness and complacency taking its hold on my mind. If I hadn’t gripped the mirror in my fingers, I would have been lost completely. Staviti’s wild eyes wavered, and his lips tried to speak, but he could only form a single, soundless word.
No.
