The Deathsinger: Book 2

Ch. 37: Damned If You Do

I stared at Iona across the fire. She looked so much like my mother; it took my breath away. Except for her lighter skin and lack of shimmer, they could have been twins. Something dangerously close to joy stirred in my chest. Weighted down by the pain and bitterness Yoko's death had instilled in me. It never grew beyond an echo, but I recognized it for what it could be.

In all the years of wishing to come back home, I had rarely let myself dwell on those I'd left behind. Elves like Dante and Iona who had once been so integral to my everyday life. Had I really ever truly believed I might see them again?

Iona watched me back. The kind smile never left her face. While the sight of it warmed me, I didn't quite care for the pity I found behind it. Just as she had when I was a child, she saw too much.

"How did you find us?" I blurted out after several moments of silence. Of all the thoughts I'd sifted through, that was the one I'd settled on. My mother would have been appalled.

Iona's dimples deepened. "My estate is not far from here."

"That's right. Your summer cottage."

"It's a bit bigger than a cottage now. For practical reasons, of course. Not vanity. Vanity has no place in our world now. But you'll see."

"We will?" Dante asked.

She nodded. "We post scouts around Radia. Just along the border, where the magic is strong enough to keep them back. They reported that something had roused the wraiths, and then we felt the magic shift. For the first time in many years, the border grew. I knew it was you, but the others did not believe me, which is why I am out here alone."

"Aunt Iona..."

I desperately wanted to ask her who the others were. Who else from my old life had survived, and how were my people doing? But those things didn't matter right now, and they wouldn't until I relit Vyta. Then I could focus on being the queen they needed.

"Aunt Iona," I began again. "As much as I'd like to visit your home, we don't have the time. We're here to–"

"To relight Vyta? I know."

Dante and I looked at one another. "You do?"

"Yes. There's no other reason to come this way. If you had come to proclaim yourself as queen, you would have gone to the Core."

The Core. How had it not crossed my mind? Long ago, an asteroid struck Estrellum right in its very center, and they built a temple at the bottom of the crater, where every queen of Estrellum has been crowned since then.

First she would pledge to give her life to her people. It was a vow bound in blood. Then the Star Diadem would be placed on her head. Until that moment it was nothing more than a crown made of stone–the same stone as the asteroid–but once it touched the rightful queen's head, it blazed with the same starlight that shimmered through her skin.

"Did my mother know the risks of extinguishing the portals?" I asked, shaking off visions of myself donning the crown.

"She did."

That had always been a possibility, but I hadn't truly believed she would do such a thing if she had known what had happened. I had told Morana that our mothers hadn't understood, and I had clung to that, needing to believe they had not subjected us to this horror knowingly.

"Why? Didn't she know what would happen to this world if souls could not pass through? In Edresh, babes are stillborn because there are no new souls to give them life."

Iona's face fell, and she wrung her hands. "It is the same here. I believe your mother knew the risks."

"And she chose to damn us, anyway."