Page 95 of Anomalies

“There is ALWAYS a choice!” I flinch when her voice carries, and all the shadows on the wall stiffen. “And you chose wrong, Lune Sylra.” Sable straightens, clasping her hands in front of her golden robes, every bit the former Dame of the Sol. “You don’t know who you are dealing with when it comes to him.”

“Then tell me.” I dare a step forward, and her eyes dart to my feet as if she knows that’s where my protection lies. “Help me understand.”

“I can’t,” she hisses. “I’d be defying fate, just as you are right now. He should never have given this to you.”

The Eldral.

“I need to talk to him.”

“No!” The walls rattle, and the ghosts around us cower. “It is not the will of the Matrons to communicate with the dead. He abides by his own rules, but he’s wrong, impatient, and impulsive. I know he’s been reaching out to you, forcing his memories through the bond when it isn’t time yet for you to see them. He’s throwing you into something you aren’t ready for. You must trust me on that and stay away.”

“But why?” I muster the courage to ask, and Sable’s eyes flare in anger. “He’s sworn to protect me, just as you are. He can’t hurt me⁠—”

“He can and he will.” My stomach knots, my throat swelling shut. “He thinks he is protecting you, child. That’s the problem.”

A beat of silence passes before I brave another question, and the anger in her face simmers to a boil the second the words leave my lips. “Who is he?”

“A bad man, Lune Sylra,” she whispers, and a shiver skitters up my spine. “Very bad.” The shadows on the wall move—no, they tremble. “If he hadn’t sworn himself to you, he’d be rotting in hell.”

My hands flex at my sides, curling inwards then back out again⁠—

“Your mother used to do that too.”

I freeze, looking down at my hands, then back up at Sable. A glossy sheen has come up and over her eyes, shimmering like the surface of calm water.

“When she was afraid,” she says softly, chin falling to my open palms. “She’d do that with her hands. Are you afraid, child?”

Yes. “Should I be?”

“Perhaps.” Her stare lingers on my curled fingers. “But if you knew the extent of what saturates your blood, you’d never be afraid again.”

“I have what used to belong to you,” I reply. “That’s what I inherited, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” Sable blinks, then readjusts her clasped hands. “That which belonged to me and all the women before me,” she recites.

“And my father?”

“Is irrelevant.” Her tone is sharp and violent, slicing through the room. “You shouldn’t have come here, Lune Sylra. You need to leave.”

“I’m not ready to leave,” I fire back. “I don’t have what I came here for.”

“You came here for answers, did you not?” Sable moves forward, iridescent robes rippling in her wake. “Ask me something else you seek. If I can answer, I will, but then you must leave.”

“Is my mother a traitor?” I blurt, as if the question was loaded on my tongue before Sable had even prompted it.

“No. Not my Esme.”

Goosebumps break out over my skin. “What happened to her?”

The shimmer in Sable’s skin blanches, her lips flattening out, and her brown eyes dimming.

“Is she dead?” My voice comes out strained.

Sable nods, and that tiny part of me, the smallest little glimmer of fool’s hope…shatters.

“So, she’s here?” I breathe, whipping around to study the shadow-soaked walls, my heart heavy as I look for her. “Don’t all souls go⁠—”

When I turn back, Sable has gone rigid. “Her soul doesn’t exist anymore, Lucina, not as it was. Esme chose a death that would destroy her completely. It ripped apart the fabric of her being until she was unrecognizable—something else entirely. In doing so, she forfeited her place in the afterlife. She’s never stepped foot in the Twilight Passage.” Her voice gets quiet then, and tears prick the backs of my eyes. “I begged her not to do it.”