Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 91891 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 368(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91891 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 368(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
Elowen raised her chin, familiar and foreign to me at once. “You think I didn’t try that, in other lives? It never turned out well. In each life, I have learned something new and done something different. Anything to keep our enemies off your trail until you are summoned to Hakeldama.”
Okay, so, she was going to be reasonable. It only made me madder. “Who summoned—summons—me twenty years from now?”
“Iris, at my instruction. She is learning to wield the storms. Though she hasn’t yet mastered the craft, as you experienced. That’s why she sought the monstra in Gerald’s camp. To study its connection to the rain and the wind.”
I remembered my first trip, the chapel I’d taken shelter in, how it went spinning wildly through the sky. Recalled the agony of breaking my wrist. The shock of being in a whole new world. Almost dying on Jasher’s chopping block. No, she hadn’t mastered her craft. And yet, my anger downgraded to irritation. “Go on.”
Elowen closed her eyes, as if gathering her thoughts. “I know many things when you’re born, but you aren’t the only one forced to put the pieces together.” She crossed her long legs in casual repose, yet strain infiltrated her mouth, thinning her lips. “What you’ve gleaned of Morris and Andrea is true. They were married, and I’m their child. He mined in Mount Emerald, and there was a cave-in, trapping him in a cavern with Sin, Malkom, and the shells.”
“Sin hurt your father.” A statement, not a question.
“She used his blood to spawn her first horde. They were my half-brothers, I suppose. Or my half-fathers.” A laugh devoid of humor.
I shuddered, images of the siren ghosting through my head. Eerie and quiet. A mystery promising a multitude of surprises. “I want to hear all about Sin. About Morris and Malkom. After I learn more about our mother.”
Elowen traced a fingertip over a swirling pattern in the mattress. “Andrea—Sandrine—was pregnant with me when she saw her husband in a dream. Saw what Sin was doing to him. Mother set off to find him.”
“I can’t imagine being pregnant on such a journey,” I muttered, only then noticing the similarities between the two names. Take away the S in Sandrine and you get Andrine…Andrea. “She must have loved your father very much.”
“They loved each other, and it was quite nauseating,” the maiden replied with great affection and wry humor. “Took her months, but she found and freed Morris from his prison. In the process, Mother awoke the monstra inside their shells before they were ready. They broke free, flew from the mountain, and destroyed everything in the vicinity.”
I could picture the devastation, and it was gruesome.
“The war lasted years. Toward the end, when I was eight, monstra killed me. Mother saved me. She comes from the same land as Sin. Not Hakeldama, not your Kansas, but another. Our mother hadn’t yet found the Ember, but she knew the power of the shells, an ingredient in serpens-rosa. She risked her life, acquired some, and brought me back.”
So that was why Morris had believed he could revive Andrea. Those oh, so powerful shells. “That means you and Mom are both centuries old.”
“Yes. Under the right circumstances, our kind ages much slower than humans.” She drew a deep breath, as if needing to prepare for the next part of her story. “Mother knew the Ember was the only power able to extinguish Sin and all her creatures. So, she hunted until she found it.”
“And absorbed it?” As I had.
My sister nodded. “The Ember is life in its purest form. Once, a single shell contained it, but it broke upon arrival, scattering shards. The Ember concealed itself. But that’s why the shells function as they do. They carry its essence. Sin gathered the pieces and with Morris’s blood, created other eggs. With those, she produced the monstra.”
“How do I wield the Ember, as Mom did?”
A sad smile. “You must give it your life, Moriah.”
I sputtered for a bit. “I have. Many times, apparently. So did Mom.”
“Perhaps giving your life doesn’t mean death in the sense you assume. I do not know how, exactly, it works; I simply tell you what Mother muttered before she marched into battle for the last time.” My sister’s shoulders rolled in. “I hid in the mountain’s crook when she ascended with water wings. The Ember ignited within her, and in a blink, the monstra crystallized. I thought she ended Sin and Malkom with them, but the two must have slinked off when our mother fell. Morris was there, too, on the battlefield, fighting alongside royal soldiers. He carried Andrea into the mountain and covered her in the shells.”
Elowen closed her eyes, a tear trickling down her cheek. A tear trickled down my cheek. I reached out and placed my hand over hers. How we’d all suffered.