Mariah stood in an endless, ethereal plane. The opalescent ground shimmered, stalks of glowing tendrils swaying on a nonexistent breeze.
“Welcome, Mariah.”
Mariah whirled. Her lungs filled with the strange air of this place, skin prickling with a chaotic, curious energy.
“Qhohena,” Mariah said, relief washing through her. “Zadione. You’re here.”
“Of course, we’re here.” Zadione huffed, tossing her long silver hair over her shoulder. Animal bones clinked, their chime eerie in this bright, breathless place. “This is the only place wecanbe anymore.”
“Sister,” Qhohena scolded. “We agreed. This was always the plan. She is not responsible for the results of our decisions.”
Zadione’s silver eyes gleamed with a strange emotion. “My anger is not for Mariah, Qhohena. It is always for myself.”
“What’s going on?” Mariah’s gaze bounced between the goddesses. “Is this—” She glanced around. “Is this the gods’ plane?”
“That is a simple way to describe it. But yes.” Zadione’s shape shimmered.
Mariah remembered her conversation with Rulene in the goddess’s rainbow-gilded temple. After everything that had happened since, it felt like an age had passed since then. “You’re trapped here. Because of me.”
The goddesses exchanged a glance, their expressions veiled by endless secrets. “We are. But it is not your fault. Not entirely.”
“Then whose? Why did you give me your grace in the first place?” Mariah couldn’t keep the waiver from her voice. “What does this all mean forme?”
“One day,” Zadione said softly, “those questions will be answered for you. But you are not yet ready for them.”
Frustration rumbled through Mariah. “I am ready. Please. I have to know what this all means. I have to know what you meant for me to do?—”
Qhohena lifted a hand, silencing Mariah. Both she and Zadione went rigid, the light haloing their bodies dimming.
“They come,” Qhohena whispered.
Mariah scanned the endless, luminous plane. “Who?”
“We are sorry it has come to this,” Zadione murmured. “Remember your strength, Ginnelevé. You will need it.”
“What—”
The shimmering ground beneath Mariah’s feet was ripped away, sending her plummeting into a dark, consuming void.
She might have screamed. She thought she did. But no sound ripped past her ears, nothing but endless, pulsating silence.
Her body ignited as she was yanked through space and time. Every inch of her mortal flesh burned in agony. She reached out, clawing desperately for something, anything, to halt her descent into this empty, maddening vacuum.
A voice—neither male nor female, neither old nor young—rumbled from the ether.
“See.”
Her eyes—which she hadn’t realized she’d closed—snapped open. She felt like she was falling through nothing, but her vision was no longer empty.
Images sparkled up from the void. Moving pictures, almost like watching a memory that wasn’t hers.
Two teenaged girls—too different in appearance to be blood but holding each other like sisters—stood in a simple hall before a handsome man and a dark-haired boy who could be his son. The man’s expression was grim, and there was something commanding about his presence. Like he was a lord, or even an early king, before time advanced the comforts of the world. Something about them tickled the back of Mariah’s mind, though she was sure she’d never seen either before.
The boy—the prince—stepped forward. The blonde-haired girl bowed low, offering her hand to the prince while the other watched. The boy took the golden girl’s hand, smiling kindly.
Though his eyes strayed to the other.
The image shifted, vanishing into a strange mist before reforming. It was the same prince as before, though it looked like a few years had passed. He stood beneath the boughs of a draping willow tree, a beautifully adoring smile stretched across his face.
