Under almost any other circumstance, the moment might be beautiful. Magickal. Instead, tears of frustration well up, my cheeks quickly turning as wet and salty as the ocean.
Baz and Kirin… Where are you? What’s happening? Am I really so close to death? How could Mom not have told me about this?
“Can I stop it?” I whisper. Despite their confusing presentation, my mother’s visions have never been wrong. But I have to believe that Lala wouldn’t be sharing this if there wasn’t a chance, however dim, that I could alter my fate.
Her gaze turns soft, her black hair shimmering in the moonlight. “That is a question I cannot answer.”
“Then why are you telling me this at all? For the rest of my life, however long or short it is, I’ll have this shadow hanging over me. What’s the point? Why not just let me live my life in relative peace?”
She takes a deep breath, gazing out at the shifting phosphorescent waters. “Sometimes thereispeace in knowing what lies ahead. Acceptance. When that moment is finally upon you, my hope is that you will not fear death, but embrace it.”
The image from the Death card flickers in my mind, and I picture the old woman knocking on my door, offering up that skull as if it were a tuna casserole.
“Oh, yes,” I say. “Let me just invite her in for a mug of calming lavender vanilla tea and a chocolate scone.”
“Actually, I’ve heard she quite enjoys a nice smoked gouda.” Lala winks. It takes me a few beats to realize she just made a joke.
We both laugh, but the tide is coming in quickly, the water now soaking the dress up to my knees. I try unsuccessfully to fight off a shiver.
“I’m telling you this,” she continues, “so you can prepare those who will continue in your stead. This war does not end with your death, nor does your legacy.”
“My legacy?” I look down at my hands, empty and plain. The soaked wedding gown hangs limp, a cruel hint of something that was never meant to be.
“Starla, you have to understand. Your mother—”
“It’s Dark Judgment, right?” I ask. “He’s going to incinerate me, just like in the visions.”
Lala shakes her head.
“How does it happen, then?” I ask. “In battle? An act of magick? A sneak attack?” I glance out across the ocean. “Here in the dream realm, another Dark Arcana enemy hiding in the shadows?”
“In this war,” she says, “you will suffer great losses—a terrible fate for which nothing can prepare you. The unbearable pain will drive the prophecy to its completion. By your mother’s own accounting, it is said, ‘Thus her ache shall find no ease, so shall the daughter of The World surrender to the emptiness, to the void within and without. By her own hand, of her own volition, The Star shall fall. Henceforth she shall take her eternal breath in utter darkness.’”
Deep inside me, a spark of anger ignites, an ember that quickly becomes a flame, a flame that becomes a fire, burning through the last of my fear and confusion.
By my own hand? My final breath in darkness?
Is she fuckingseriousright now?
I turn toward her, eyes blazing, heart pounding so hard it’s like I’ve just run a five-minute mile. “So after all this spirit-blessed, Star Arcana, super-special snowflake-ness,that’smy destiny? To kill myself?”
“It is foretold.”
“I don’t think so, Lala.”
“I know it’s hard to imagine now, but your mother divined—”
“No. I don’t accept it. I would never do that.”
“You wouldn’t do that right now,” she says. “Inthismoment. But you can’t know what you’ll do in the next moment, or the one after that.”
“But my mother knew?Youknew?”
“That’s how prophecy works.”
“This one is wrong, Lala. I’m telling you. There has to be a loophole.”
Lala shoots me a dubious look, but I press on.
