Aureate Fates

15

DARE TO MEET ME

—REESE—

Reese could not move. He felt as if his muscles had been seized from him and stored on a shelf ten-thousand years away from him.

And yet he could listen and see. What he saw made him wish for blindness.

He saw a castle in the blue light. It was dark and aching with death.

The vision shifted to a throne room inside the very same castle. Heads of 7 crowned royals seemed to be severed. Each of their pristine heads lay dispatched from their bodies on a golden dais. Their eyes danced with a sort of tortured fire, a gleaming orange. Savage screaming erupted, and Reese wondered if this could have been hell.

The scene was no longer, because a searing light had evaporated it. Five figures occupied the golden dais that had once been a massacre. Reese was horrified to behold himself there, dressed in green.

The curse on a land so pure begins with fourteen pieces.

Stomach's cry for a meal and curl like leeches.

Famine eats like a pack of wolves,

But plague is a god's tool.

Branches once great will shed leaves, and grieve full.

On the horizon lies a matrimony between one man and one woman;

Alike in beauty and ability, a cure lies woken.

There was Marisol in a gown of white, a golden crown rested upon her head. The throne room bowed as she walked her way to greet a man. Reese nearly cursed as he caught sight of what sort of figure awaited her.

Manipulators of blood. Rare and prized,

Together they rise.

Three will flank the union and appease the curse.

The brightest of all and creator of anything

Meets the son of mischief on a field of skeletons.

Alongside them, a ghost lingers.

Firm and soft, she is wonder.

One year and seven days the court is gold.

Deciders of the world; blood is whole.

The blue light quit and Delphinia's eyes were restored to their milky hue. Several breaths were released, and as Reese looked around at his forced companion's, he felt pity.

No one spoke. Delphinia's flask of sand had disappeared, leaving the floor void of anything. She took a tentative step forward. "Understand?"

Beside him, Drew swallowed. "The prophecy of Galvinus is...ancient. You cannot mean for it to reflect us."

Reese was not quite sure how Drew could form coherent thoughts after the visions they were given. He wasn't sure how this could have been his reality anymore.

Ferland stepped forward, desperation in his black eyes. "Our world, your country and mine, require the five of you to fulfill the prophecy. You will be royalty. Our people yearn for you."

Soft rain pelted the glass roof of the greenhouse, it was the only sound that dared to be. With uneasiness, Marisol sliced away the silence. "That prophecy...that lie, is false. I won't do what you ask." In her shimmering black gown, her chest rose and fell.