“I’m going to go soon,” I manage before a cough rattles through my chest. The sound is hollow, like water in a cave. I remember how this body was vibrant and curved, strong. Now my skin clings to my bone like wet parchment, so pale my veins show through like blue rivers on a white scroll. But my eyes … they’ve seen so much. The birth of this world, the birth of the rainbow rings around the sun.
“No, mother.” Carnaxa climbs into bed beside me, her warmth pressing against me. I can feel her heart beating against my side. “The healers will find a way to make you better.”
I kiss her hairline, breathing in the way she always smells of vanilla and coconut. I pull her closer, wrapping my arm around her shoulders.
“I love being here with you and your father.” The words come easier when I think of them, of the family I never thought I would have. “But it’s time to go. You have to know, I will always be watching over you. Don’t forget that. Your destiny is only beginning when my own ends, Naxa. The Goddess has plans for you, my dearest.”
She doesn’t understand. How could she? I’ve kept the truth from her all these years – that I am the very Goddess our people worship, that I crafted the waves they pray to, that I shaped the very sand beneath their feet.
“Are you getting the call from the Goddess? Will you walk into the sea?” Her voice breaks on the question, and I feel her tearssoaking through the thin fabric of my nightdress. The irony of her question stabs my heart.
The calling. The peaceful walking into the waves when one’s time came, after Atlas started death upon this world. A gentle passage back into the element from which all life in Ashonera began. From me. But I cannot return to myself.
“No, Naxa.” Another cough tears through me, and I hold her tighter, afraid to let go. “The Goddess won’t call me home. She can’t.”
Tears slip down my face, landing in her hairline like the first raindrops I watched fall on this soil. Thylas turns away, offering us privacy in these final moments. I watch him – the boy who carries a burden he doesn’t yet understand. The stone I gave him, I know he has hidden for her. One day, he will be the one to stand between my daughter and destruction. One day, however, he will have to choose.
I think of Clennom, my beloved, who still doesn’t know what is happening. He’s somewhere in this castle, but I can’t watch as he tells me goodbye again. Even if he doesn’t remember.
“I love you, my gift,” I whisper, feeling the last of my strength ebbing like a tide pulled by the moon I once hung in the sky.
My breath comes faster now, shallow and ragged. The room around me blurs, the colors running together. I can feel something changing in me … but it’s not the path to Mohasha. Something else. A space between. I close my eyes, unable to bear the sight of my daughter’s face in grief.
“Mother?” Her voice seems to come from far away.
“Ata?”The childhood name pierces through the growing darkness.
I try to respond, but my voice has fled. My lungs no longer fill with air. I feel myself slipping.
Distantly, I hear Carnaxa screaming, and feel her hands shaking my shoulders. I hear Thylas calling for the healers, his voice cracking with emotion despite his soldiers' training.
“NO! Mother! Let me go, Thylas!”
I want to reach for her, to tell her everything will be alright, that this is not the end but just another transformation. That I will wait in this in-between place until she fulfills the prophecy that will free us all. That the rainbow rings are already fading as my life force ebbs, the first sign of what is coming.
But I cannot move. Cannot speak. Cannot comfort my child as she is torn from my body by Thylas’ arms.
The last thing I hear is her sobbing, and his murmured “Shh …” as he tries to soothe her. The last thing I feel is the severing of my connection to the world I created, like an anchor chain snapping in a storm.
And then I am nowhere and everywhere at once, suspending between worlds, watching as the healers enter my chamber with grim faces, as my daughter’s cries echo through the halls of the castle I built once long ago.
I am Drahenå once more. And I must wait.
Epilogue
Carnaxa
Present
The prophecy will come to pass. It has to. I don’t have any control over fate at thispoint, but I can try to have influence, even from the other sidie. But even now, I wish I could do things differently. I didn’t know what else to do, but I wouldn’t have put her in the middle of this if I knew what was to come. But I have faith that when I give Natala, the journal today, she will find the time to give it to my daughter. Then the pieces I’ve laid for her – the mountain and the valley – will lead to everything coming together again. I know one day, all will be well. I love you, Carnaxa.”
Iclose my mother’s journal, tears flowing around me, masked by the surrounding water. The leather-bound tome feels heavy in my hands.
Mother’s words echo in my mind. Her journey. Her love for Thesix. Her confrontation with Khaysus. All of it leading me – us – to this moment.
I trace my fingers over the book, feeling the words pulsing with her magic. My tail flicks instinctively, sending me in a slow spiral through the water. My blue and gold scales catching what little sunlight penetrates this deep.
“Carnaxa?” Siphonie calls, her beautiful pink tail propelling her toward me through a school of luminescent fish that scatter like stars.
