The woman’s whispers shiver through me as her voice becomes strained. “But if you wish to fly, you must only fly west. Never east. Never into the shadows. Don’t come looking for me, Fable. You must live in the light. Stay away from the darkness in the?—”
The image shatters. Time spins and with it, my mind.
I’ve never seen someone’s past before.
I didn’t know my Oracle visions could show me the past but I’m certain that’s what I saw. The woman called the little girlFableand now she’s here, fully grown.
But, oh, to have felt the touch of my own mother’s hand. To have heard her voice…
Beyond my still-paralyzed body, I’m aware that Fable is coming at me, but this time she’s starting from farther away from me, and now I realize that time is reverting.
Reality is returning.
What’s happening now is happening now, and death is about to come for me.
Fable has just evaded Nara’s defensive swipe, flying through the narrow gap with astonishing skill.
In the background, Stellen streaks toward me, frozen air rushing from his form as he strains to reach me in time. The power gathering around his hands burns ice blue, but if he lets his frost loose, he’ll shatter me too.
Closer to me, Nara is turning, her jaws gnashing toward Fable’s back while Lilis hunches in the snow, the friction of indecision flooding her face.
Lilis doesn’t want to save me. This, I know from her backward twitch and the scorn in her eyes.
All while Brunkil’s unnerving laughter beats across the air.
Fable’s feet hit the snow with a barely audiblecrunchas she flings herself toward me, her ashen-black hair so matted, it’s clumped to her head, her face smeared with dirt and her claws outstretched. The inked feather is no longer visible on her wrist, but I know what I saw.
And I’m no longer passive.
I can’t move,but I can speak.
Drawing a deep breath, I catch hold of the power of the past I saw in my vision.
A precious moment between a mother and her daughter.
With all the force of my heart, I scream.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Stellen
Ican’t lose Thyra.
Not when I’ve risked so much already.
Not when she’s finally mine.
Burning ice rages through me, and I convince myself I can shatter Fable without breaking Thyra into pieces, too.
I tell myself I can stop the inevitable.
A fucking illusion as my feet fly and my power burns so fucking uselessly, and then?—
Thyra’s scream slices through the fraught air as powerfully as blades.
“Growls and shrieks!” she screams, her voice rising above the pounding beats of my heart. “Breath of beasts! Feathered fur, fly west, not east.”
Nothing could have prepared me to hear her voice during an Oracle vision. Last night, when she had an Oracle vision in the Alak-Teah, she only spoke after the vision had ended.
