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“Rock and boulder!” The earth shook between the force of the tornado and the thrusting up of some giant behemoth—and then I saw it was no monster, but a huge boulder propelling itself to the surface. Heather ducked behind it as the twister raged over her. Any normal magic-born or yummanii would have died from the force of my attack, but she belonged to the Indigo Court. She held on to the rock, her fingers exerting incredible strength to keep herself from being sucked into the vortex.
As the tornado shrieked off, I felt a tremor from my fan—it raced through my body and I wasn’t sure what was happening but I had no time to figure it out now. I grabbed my stake—this could end only one way—and headed over toward Heather.
But Rhiannon was in front of me. She’d broken free of Chatter, and stake raised, she raced to her mother. Her other hand was a ball of flame that coalesced around her fingers, shifting fire that seemed to barely faze her. Heather was just managing to stand again, when Rhiannon reached out and sent the ball of flame singing off her palm, straight into Heather’s face.
Heather screamed as the fire caught her hair and sparked it to life, her red locks becoming a mane of flame. Once again she dropped to the ground, rolling, but as she did so, Rhiannon leaped on her, catching her on her back. She straddled Heather, bringing the stake up above her head with a wild-eyed, glassy look.
“You would kill your own mother?” Heather’s voice was soft, so much like it had been before she’d been captured. Her face a mass of burned flesh, she reached up for Rhiannon’s neck and grabbed her.
Rhiannon began to choke as she struggled against Heather’s grasp. In a raspy voice, she gasped out, “You are not my mother. You are not my mother.” Tears raced down her cheeks and fell onto Heather’s face, sizzling against the burned flesh.
And then, in a silent moment, Heather paused. Her hands fell away from Rhiannon’s neck, and she spread them wide to her sides, waiting. Rhiannon wavered, staring down at Heather.
“You have seconds, only seconds, my love,” Heather whispered. “Please, just do it. Release me. I can only keep hold of my sanity for a few seconds at a time. I love you. Don’t let me hurt you, don’t make me fight to the death or you will surely die. I am too strong, I can bend the earth to swallow us up. Rhiannon, my baby, you must let me go.” Heather’s voice was tender, like I remembered from childhood.
“Mother…I can save you—I can…” And then Rhia stopped and shook her head. “I can’t save you. There’s no coming back for you, is there?”
Heather began to weep through the burned flesh that scarred her face. “Unlike Grieve, I died. I will never live again. And I choose not to live in this state, controlled by a monster, turning into a monster. I have done horrid things since she took me. I cannot live with them on my conscience. Either I become the horror she plans, or I die. Bless me with the gift of death, Rhia. Please, please, don’t make me live like this.”
Bloody tears poured down her face. Rhia began to sob and so did I. But we had no choice. We had moments, perhaps seconds, before Heather faded back into the freak that Myst had created. I slowly knelt beside them and reached down, kissing Heather on the forehead.
“I’m so sorry I didn’t get here in time to save you, I’m so sorry I was too late,” I whispered, pressing my hand to her cheek.
Heather’s starry darkened eyes glimmered and I could feel the rush of fury coming on her again. I turned to Rhia. “Quickly. It has to be now. Do you want me to do it?”
“Help me. I have to do it, but help me, Cicely. I need you.” Rhia gave me a horrified look and I put my hands on hers, holding the stake above Heather’s chest.
Heather smiled, then, in one last moment of clarity. “I loved you as my own daughter, Cicely. Know that. And Rhiannon—you will know your father in time. Trust me. You will know.” She closed her eyes and a snarl came to her lips. “Now, before I retreat—now, it must be now!” Her voice was frantic.
I held tight to Rhia’s hands. She was gripping the stake with an uncanny strength, but she was frozen. I came to her rescue and began to drive the stake down toward Heather’s chest. Rhia dropped her head back, a silent scream on her face, and she ripped the stake from my hands and plunged it into Heather’s chest by herself. A spray of blood fountained up, spattering us both, leaving a dappling of crimson against the snow.
Heather let out a low scream that echoed along the slipstream, and then a rush of wind passed by, and Ulean was there, cloaking us. My aunt lay still, a bloody symbol of what we’d been driven to.
Rhia stared at her, a look of horror on her face. And then Chatter and Grieve were there, lifting us up, away from Heather’s body. As they led us away, Kaylin went in and what he did, I could not see, but when we turned, the body was no longer there, just a spreading crimson stain, freezing to the snow as the flurries raged around us. A small pile of dust whipped up and away, into the wind.
I let out a shudder, then a sigh, and pressed my face into Grieve’s shoulder. He kissed me softly on the cheek, then on the lips, demanding and fierce, and I lost myself in the feel of his lips against mine, of his skin against mine, of his body entwined around me. We stood, like two silent trees, rooted to the spot, tongues barely touching, softly dancing under the falling snow, until the exquisite pain of losing my aunt, of watching her die at our hands, was forced back into a corner, and blessed numbness swept over me.
Turning, I caught a glimpse of Chatter and Rhiannon. He was doing the same, comforting my cousin, kissing her, holding her, and she had lost herself in his embrace. My heart skipped a beat. This was the way it was supposed to be. Rhiannon and Chatter. Grieve and me. It felt right. It felt true.
Another moment passed, then Kaylin cleared his throat. “We should be off. I know it’s hard, but we have to reach Grandfather Cedar. We aren’t far. Let’s go.”
I broke away from Grieve. “You’re right. And on we go.” As we took up our march again, my heart was both heavy and yet—inexplicably light. We’d just killed the one woman in the world I thought of as my real mother, and yet we’d freed her. Torn her from Myst’s grasp. We’d given Heather the final gift, that of release.
I hung back, reaching for Rhiannon’s hand. We walked awhile, trudging through the snow, hand in hand. She seemed oddly calm, but I understood what she was feeling. The numbness was a blessing.
And whatever lay ahead of us, we would meet the challenge and do our best, no matter the outcome.
Another twenty minutes and Grieve said something to Chatter. Across a little clearing, we could see the cedar from my dreams—the cedar Lainule had indicated as the entrance to the tunnels leading to her heartstone.
“Grandfather Cedar,” Grieve whispered, a reverence in his voice. And indeed, the tree was taller than most any tree in the forest. It towered dark against the sky, a sentinel guarding the forest, with a trunk wide enough to build a home in. “We must find the tunnel.”
Chatter parted a swath of ferns. He knelt and blew on the surface of the snow, a faint flame whispering from his lips to melt the snow. After a moment, the glimmering outline of a door with a brass handle atop it came into view. The door in my dreams.
“Can anyone else see this?” I asked, hoping that we’d leave no trace once we climbed into the tunnel.
“Only those of Cambyra blood,” Grieve said.
Kaylin nodded. “He’s right. I can’t see it.”
