“Oh, my dear.” A familiar feminine voice said with resignation from behind me.
As I spun around, my eyes caught on the blond hair and blue eyes of Katerina, and delight surged in me. Until my growing smile vanished in an instant.
A slam of terror weakened my knees.
If what Nyte and Drystan had seen was true… If their father had succeeded…
The confirmation became clearer the longer I stared at the face of my friend and recognized nothing in her eyes.
“Dawn,” I said through an incredulous breath.
“Have you estranged yourself so far that you would no longer call me mother?”
That term slithered up my spine with cruel intent.
“You don’t deserve that title. You are a merciless, unfeeling god, nothing more.”
“Merciless? Everything I have done is to create a perfect world. I created you, the greatest gift for mankind, and yet you chose to love a plague. It is not I who is merciless, child.”
“What did you do to Katerina?” I asked. My fists balled and trembled, but I had to admit my fear was greater than my courage in this blindsiding confrontation.
“She is still within this vessel for now. Depending how long I have to stay, she will either die or still have enough of her mind to wake when I return to my realm. I guess we could say her life is in your hands.”
“What do you want?”
“In bargaining with Death you severed your ties to us, your parental gods. We cannot allow another creature of darkness to taint the perfect order we have come to set right.”
“You’ve come to kill me?”
“Do you remember—?” she said, avoiding an answer, but a tingling formedover my body and panic rose in my chest. “When you were nothing more than stardust?”
My palms grew warm against my control and I raised them, gasping at the glow of them. Panic seized me when my fingertips started to break away as particles of glittering stardust.
“Stop. Please,” I breathed, blinking hard and hoping it was just a cruel trick. She couldn’t send me back to the stars.
“You only exist because of me and Dusk. You are nothing more than a cosmic energy.”
“You’re wrong,” I croaked.
“You are not human. You are not even a celestial. You are a god and have no place among these beings. I see that now. We chose wrong in placing you here as the pinnacle example of what mankind should aspire to be.”
My hands were gone and my arms kept dissolving; the shimmering dust of me flew toward the night sky and I watched in horror, feeling the pull toward the stars.
I can’t go back. I can’t go back.
This isn’t real.
My eyes scrunched shut, but the shallow burn crawling up my arms didn’t subside.
I tried desperately to reach within and call for Nyte, but as I thought it, my chest exploded with fire and I cried, sinking to my knees.
I will not let her win. I will not let her diminish who and what I am.
“I am more than stardust. More than just cosmic power,” I whispered to myself. My teeth gritted, and I snapped my eyes open to strike Dawn with the heat of my glare. “I am more than what you tried to make me.”
A loud caw rang through the adrenaline beginning to pound in my ears. It was quickly followed by a large raven swooping low, and Dawn shrieked when its claws sliced across her cheek. I tracked the bird with awe. A glistening raven too large to be of nature, and by the way ithelpedme…
It was a Guardian spirit.
