Gone. She’s gone.
Dead.
And it was all my fault.
I admitted as much to Amelie, and once again, I confess it to myself.
It was all my fault. All my fault. All my fault.
I’m so sorry, Mother.
The pain that drags me down is too much to bear. I can feel it sinking me deeper, deeper toward the ocean floor.
A bullet. Blood. Death.
A bullet. Blood. Death.
Again.
Again.
Mother’s lifeless form sinks into a tub of her own blood—
“Stop!” The voice freezes the scene, crimson water suspended midair in the moment it was about to splash over Mother’s head. Everything else in the image is frozen as well—the guards, the councilmen, the jurors, Mr. Duveau—but all is blurred aside from the tub. “Stop this, Evelyn,” the voice says, and I know who it belongs to. It’s a voice I never thought I’d hear again.
Mother.
I blink at the frozen scene just as movement begins to stir inside the tub. With equal parts joy and terror, I watch as Mother rises from the bloody water. “Why do you always return to this scene?” she asks, eyes pleading as rivulets of scarlet trail down her face.
“Because it haunts me,” I whisper. “It’s the moment I saw the consequences of my choice.”
She shakes her head. “It wasn’t just your choice.” With a flick of her wrist, the image begins to reverse, the blurred shapes of the guards returning to their posts, Mr. Duveau’s gun swinging away from Mother and instead to me. Mother’s arms are outstretched, wrists locked in the iron cuffs. Her expression is defiant.
I recalled this moment in the cell with Amelie. The moment Mother sought her flames when she should have been at her weakest. The moment she wanted me to fight.
The rest of the image returns to stillness, but flames ignite over Mother’s hands, turning her cuffs a molten orange. “I chose to fight here, Evelyn.”
“I know.” My voice comes out with a tremble. “But then…I tried to use the councilman’s true name. Tried and…failed. That’s why he shot you. To punishme.”
“No, my love,” she says. “I chose my death before he pulled that trigger. And I would choose it again and again if it saves your life. If it saves your sister’s life. You cannot take that moment from me, Evelyn. It is mine, not yours.”
Tears stream out of my eyes, but they float from my cheeks like twinkling violet stars floating through a stream. No, an ocean. Part of me remembers where I truly am, knows that I’m drowning, while the rest of me remains in the violet courtroom, eyes locked on Mother’s face.
“I could stay here,” I say, voice small. “With you. This could be the end of all my pain, all the fighting.”
Mother’s face falls, eyes turning down at the corners. “You cannot stay here with me. There’s so much more for you to do. For you to live for. Love for. And yes, fight for.”
Aspen’s face flashes through my mind, then Amelie’s, Foxglove’s, Lorelei’s, and Nyxia’s. I see Franco’s face and Breeda’s. Dune’s face and Marie Coleman’s and Fehr’s, and all the other people and creatures I’m sworn to protect. “But I’m running out of time. I don’t know how to get out of this.”
“You do.” In a flash, Mother’s chains are gone. She exits the tub and comes to me, her steps slow and swaying, trailing water with every move. Just like my tears, the water doesn’t remain in place but lifts into the air in glittering droplets. When she reaches me, her hands come to frame my face. “You are a queen. This element is yours. Even if you weren’t a royal, you would still have access to it. Do you know why?”
I shake my head, eyes glistening as I luxuriate in the feeling of her gentle, familiar touch.
“Because water is the element of emotion. And the most powerful emotion of all is love, which you are no stranger to. All you have to do is open to it. All of it.”
“But it brings so much pain.”
“I know. But you’re stronger than the pain. You are stronger than you know. You’ll never see just how strong you are, though, if you don’t allow yourself to.”
