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Claire shakes her head. “They’re coming for me. It’s over. And you know it.”
No, I think stubbornly. It’s not. Never! I try to smother the flames on Claire’s body, patting her down. It’s not over. It can’t be.
“We all have to face up to reality eventually,” she says.
No, we don’t. We still have a chance of getting out of here. I frown, and I’m about to tell her exactly that, but she beats me to it.
“I can’t keep running forever. I’ve done that for far too long.”
I have no idea what she’s talking about, but it doesn’t matter. She needs to touch the spindle; otherwise, we’ll both die in this hell.
“No, you won’t die here,” she says.
I look at her in surprise. Again? How does she know what I was just …
“…thinking?” she finishes my unspoken sentence. “Because that’s my gift,” she explains, looking me straight in the eye. Her gaze wavers, full of sorrow, pain, but most of all regret. “I’m no goddess. I never was. I can read thoughts. As a child, I didn’t think it was anything special. But it meant that I always knew what was expected of me. I could answer questions that the people around me hadn’t even asked yet. My family realized early on that there was something different about me, but they drew the wrong conclusions. They didn’t know I could read thoughts. They took my unusual empathy, my incredible insight, as a sign that I was a goddess in the making. And when I was old enough to understand … to figure out the truth … it was too late.” Her breathing is becoming more ragged, her speech fainter, tortuous. I know what this means.
“No,” I say. “That can’t be true.”
She nods. “Yes, it is. I was too cowardly to tell them the truth. Too proud. I thought I could see it through. I had bluffed my way through life with my gift so far.”
“No, that’s not true,” I say. “You … you passed the first two tests. Don’t forget that. That was all you. There must be something in you …”
“No,” she interrupts. She slowly reaches out with her charred hand and rests her open fingers against my cheek. “It was you. It was you the whole time. I saw the answers through your eyes. If it weren’t for you, I would have failed right from the start.”
I shake my head and try to step away from her, but Claire clings to me. This … this can’t be true. What’s she talking about? I only knew the answer because the translation was projected on the wall.
“No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t translated. You just assumed that because you could read the language. And you recognized the water too.”
“Yeah, because I’ve been to the lake!” I yell. “And I found the way to the spindle because I can see the threads.”
“The creatures,” she murmurs. “I see them through your eyes.”
They’ve reached Claire now. Their black arms are creeping up her legs, their claws scratching at her charred pants, which are melted into her skin and flesh.
“I can’t even feel them.”
No, I keep thinking. No!
All at once, the fire walls around us pulsate. I watch with horror as the flames move in toward us. They’ll soon engulf this space too. I pull on Claire, but she won’t move.
“You can’t deny what you are. Do you hear me? A life built on a lie is no life at all.” Her fingers brush my cheek again. “Take care of yourself. Your life will be very different from now on.”
She looks at me, and a final smile flickers across her face before the fire reaches us with full force – as if it wants to destroy everything now that the test has failed. The flames reach out toward Claire, consuming her hair, swarming across her face and turning her into a human fireball. Finally, she slumps. I try to hold her, but then I notice my own burning hands. The flames are covering my arms, my legs, my torso. I’m burning.
“Tess!” I hear a voice say through the crackling fire maze. Desperate, agonized, it keeps calling out my name. “Tess!”
“Ayden,” I murmur, and it slowly dawns on me what’s happening here. I’m dying.
“Ayden!” I cry out, putting all of my desperation into that cry. It’s as if the life is streaming out of me, merging with the flames and evaporating into the night. Loss … I’ve lost so much. Claire, Yoru, myself, my love, my life.
One last time, I hear Ayden call out to me. It hurts so much that I can’t see him one last time, hold him in my arms one last time, and tell him how much I love him.
I slump to the ground, exhausted, spraying out a cloud of sparks. They dance through the air like glowing butterflies and then fade to ash, just like the rest of me soon will.
The dark creatures are huddled around Claire’s remains. They turn to me and bow their heads. With the certainty that this conveys, I fling my head back and scream out all my pain and torment into the night. My roar mingles with the sparks and pulls them in, gathers all the flames around me, bundles them, and pulls them up with it. An immeasurable power gathers and is discharged with my scream into the infinite sky. For a moment, the firmament appears as a glowing red inferno that threatens to obliterate the sky itself. For a moment longer, all those flames continue to blaze above me where they’ve flung all my energy. Then they fade, and there’s nothing left but ash.
Tears trickle down my cheeks as I watch the ash swirl around me. Gray snowflakes drifting through the air above this big field where nothing exists anymore. Black dirt, black skin, smoke rising up. I smell my own scorched flesh and feel the hot wind on me, blasting across my raw skin and exposed bones.
But my eyes are on those dark creatures, which are keeping their distance but still staring at me out of their black eye sockets. Not taking their eyes off me, they keep their heads lowered. I knew it. They’re not here to take me away. Quite the opposite. They open their mouths, and little wisps of smoke waft out of them, creep across the ground, wrap themselves around me, and slowly seal my wounds.
No, they won’t hurt me. Not today. They’re not here to carry me to the realm of the dead. They’re here to pay homage to me. Their goddess of death.
