AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Your aunt was there with her when she died. You don’t forget a thing like that, Medra. A dying woman’s last words to her child.”
I felt something stinging in my eyes. Rain most likely.
“What were they?” I demanded, making my voice hard and tough. “Her words? Tell me.”
I wanted them. I was owed them. I should have been given them long ago. The only thing my mother had left me.
Beyond this cruel birthright. My self. This life.
Odessa had begun to walk slowly back in the direction of the castle. She seemed heedless of the pain her arm must have been in. Heedless of the falling rain. The dark. The roots at our feet that might have dragged us down.
“Orcades said you were the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. And she said she loved you.”
“That’s all?” I tried to sound dismissive. But the rain on my face had become a flood.
“‘Who meets their death devoid of love shall surely face their end,’” Odessa murmured. “‘But one who gives their soul away, eternity extends.’”
“What’s that?” I curled my lip. “Some kind of riddle?”
“Morgan said it was something your mother said as she was dying. I’m not entirely sure what it means. But it’s clear she loved you, right from the start.”
“But she didn’t stay.”
“She couldn’t stay,” Odessa corrected. “That doesn’t mean she didn’t want to. She seemed to believe she was giving you something important though. She died giving you life after all.”
“No more than most mothers do,” I muttered, viciously kicking at a tree branch. “Lots of women die in childbirth.”
“That’s true.” Odessa sighed. “My own mother did. Giving birth to Crescent.”
I hadn’t known that. It was something else we shared.
“You must have hated him,” I guessed.
“A little. At first.” I could almost hear her smiling in the dark. “Then I was glad to have him.”
“I don’t have anyone.” The words spilled out. I detested how they sounded. Pathetic. Weak.
Odessa stopped abruptly. Turned to face me.
“Now that’s just not true, Medra.” She moved her arm, the burned one, then grimaced.
“I did that to you,” I said. “You should hate me.”
“But I don’t,” she snapped. “Stop trying to make me. It won’t work.”
I looked away. “It worked with everyone else.”
“Is that what you think? That you succeeded?”
I wouldn’t face her. “They left, didn’t they?”
“Your aunt? Draven? They left to save you, Medra. Not because they didn’t care.”
I frowned. “Save?”
“Perhaps save was the wrong word,” Odessa said quickly. “But to protect. They left to protect you. They left to do something important. Something that will protect not just you but so many people. Everyone in Pendrath. Perhaps everyone in Eskira.”
I didn’t want to hear this. Crescent had given me some version of it before.
