A Court of Light and Melody

PART I - Chapter 1 - Where is My Mind?

PART I

VALKYRIE

Chapter 1

Where Is My Mind?

"Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours."

- John Locke

Song: Where Is My Mind (Piano Cover)

Not for the first time was Gwyneth Berdara the last remaining priestess in the library. Her only companions were the books beside her, and the long shadows cast by the moonlight.

Her eyes burned with exhaustion and the words on the page before her were beginning to blur. But despite her fatigue, she couldn't go to sleep even if she wanted to.

It wasn't the lingering anxiety of attending Nesta's mating ceremony tomorrow that fed her inability to rest for even a few hours. No, rather it was the same haunting idea that had frequented her thoughts ever since she had returned from the Blood Rite.

Not that Gwyn had really " returned."

The idea that she was no longer herself... but a monster. Even more unworthy of that invoking stone than before.

At her core, she knew that she was still Gwyneth Berdara. A female hiding her demons with a smile - haunted and hollow, yet full of hope. But the ghosts that had always plagued her had thickened. New horrors had been intertwined with the nightmares of the attack on Sangravah...

Screams of men being torn apart by beasts accompanying the fleshy sound of Catrin's head being severed from her body.

From what Gwyn had most recently endured, one would think her newly added fears would involve abduction and abandonment. Being stranded and alone and preyed upon.

But these were devils that Gwyn was already well acquainted with. She feared them, but they did not rule her mind as this newfound fear of herself did.

Indeed, what had followed Gwyn out of the Blood Rite and what loomed over her every thought, was the lack of guilt she felt for her kills. Whether they were caused by the creatures she led to the Illyrian's campsite or whether she only aided her allies in joint endeavors to slaughter their opponents, they were still her kills. And she had reveled in defeating her foes. In causing them harm.

Gwyn was competitive by her very nature - just ask the shadowsinger. But what gnawed at her was the absence of remorse and the presence of triumph for the lives she had taken and the wounds she had inflicted during the Blood Rite. It was something dark and vicious. It was disturbing.

Gwyn had always taken comfort in research, in knowing every little detail. Some called it "over-thinking" or "trying to control that which was beyond her." Gwyn called it "preparation." It was a type of fortification for her. Knowledge was power.

To conquer her newly discovered blood-lust, she had to seek out the source of it. So, after years and years of hiding from her past, Gwyn decided to face it. She decided to trace her roots. To find out where Catrin got her webbed fingers. To find out what the other half of her mother had been. To find out what her grandmother had been.

Lining up all of the traits, all of the coincidences, they always led to the same answer.

Gwyn's stinging eyes read over the text once more, as though familiarizing herself with the facts would make them easier to swallow.

The lightsinger is a river-dwelling, lesser-fae. Lightsingers are rumored - though not confirmed - to have ethereal voices that can act as lures (some believe a type of compulsion). They can call upon the sun's rays with their song and absorb the light to appear as a beacon to those who are lost or in distress. The nearer their victim comes, the more the lightsinger's terrible beauty is apparent. Once their victim is secure in their embrace they take their true form. As those who have suffered at the hands of lightsingers often drown or are driven mad, the description of their actual appearance is vague, but it is said to be a horror beyond imagination. Typically, a lightsinger will drown its victims and as they have no need to consume, it is believed they kill only for sport. Even so, hunting lightsingers has been outlawed, not only for the protection of the species, but for the protection of all fae.