Page 83 of The Ember and the Emerald

“You were a child,” I reminded her.

“Perhaps, but a falling rock killed him. He bled all over Mother. That’s when she awoke.”

Poor Elowen. Horror after horror. Saving one parent by killing another.

“We tried…” she swallowed hard. “We tried everything to revive him with the shells, but they don’t have the same effect on humans as water maidens. Flesh can be mended, but not revived. And the rocks kept falling. I knew we would die, too, if we stayed. We barely escaped through the water.”

I dragged in air, processing everything. In order to live, they’d had to abandon husband and father. How they both must have suffered.

“She was…not right after that.” Elowen shuddered as memories overtook her. “We lived deep in the sea for many years, and she was crazed for every one of them. A woman driven mad by visions. All that time she slept in the shells, she dreamed the future on repeat. Watched her husband die again and again. Saw the monstra rise the second time. Saw a daughter she was to have with another man. One who carried the Ember and saved the kingdom. Or destroyed it.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, simply breathing. In. Out. In. Out. As if oxygen alone could keep me from splintering beneath the weight of it all. So many secrets. So many lives braided through mine before I’d drawn my first breath. The question I’d carried like a stone in my pocket. What happened to my mother?

When I opened my eyes again, the world looked subtly altered, as though a veil had been pulled back, and I was seeing the bones beneath the skin of things. The prophecy. The Ember. Andrea. Morris. Elowen. Ian. Sin. Malkom. None of it had begun with me, but all of it had been waiting for me.

“You’ve protected me from others and even myself,” I said slowly, my voice steadier than I felt. “Protected our future.”

Elowen’s lips parted, surprise flickering across her features.

“And you’ve paid for it.” My chest ached, an old, familiar ache, now finally given shape. “With loneliness. With guilt. Watching me stumble through truths you already knew but couldn’t dare share.”

My sister inhaled. “I regret nothing. How can I? One day, Andrea came to me. Told me we could win the war. All we must do?” Bitter irony infused her tone. “Erase her memory, ensure she meets Ahav, and keep you out of Hakeldama for twenty years.”

“Oh, that’s all?” I quipped just as drily, then closed my eyes for a beat. “And the time loop? How did Mom start it?”

Confusion lit Elowen’s scarlet eyes. “She didn’t. You did. Or rather, the Ember in you. Though snuffed out in her, you absorbed it. Whenever you die, it resets time, and our memories, at your conception. Though I’ve noticed it’s dimmer every time we start again.”

I frowned. “Ian claims Sin blames our mother for the loops.”

She shook her head. “Sin isn’t all powerful. She sees outcomes, not origins, and she often mistakes influence for authorship. But none of us know everything. I didn’t become aware of the loops until I had visions of a future that had already taken place. But every time we started over, realization came sooner, allowing me to prepare new visions with instructions for myself. Ways to intervene and plan for the next go-round.”

Always living for the next life.

“You contain the Ember at birth,” Elowen explained, tracing a fingertip along a scar on her arm, as if remembering the blow responsible, “but it remains dormant until the stones provide kindling. Now, you alone can unleash the blaze.”

By giving it my life.

I looked at my sister, this woman forged in tragedy, who had loved me fiercely from afar, choosing restraint when every instinct must have screamed to warn me. “Do you know what happens to Mom when she disappears from Kansas?”

“I do not. I believe Sin is responsible. She’s obsessed with our mother, and therefore us.”

Sin needed to be taken down. Malkom too. Ian, yes. “I don’t know how to give the Ember my life,” I admitted. “But I’m certain of this.” I reached for Elowen’s hand again, gripping it tight, grounding us both. “I won’t run from what I am anymore. I won’t let your sacrifices or theirs be for nothing. And I won’t let you carry this alone.”

Elowen’s breath hitched. Her fingers tightened around mine.

For the first time since I’d met her, the burden in her eyes eased. Not because it was gone, but because we shared it.

Deep inside me, the Ember stirred. Not as a threat. As a promise. As if it wasn’t just smeared over my skin but branded in bone.

In my mind, portions of Ahav’s journal stood at attention. I muttered, “Shabur shwin.” The words Sandrine—Andrea—spoke while unconscious, before meeting Ahav. Then I couldn’t stop repeating the words, faster with every echo. “Shabur shwin. Shabur shwin, shabur shewins. She burns—” My eyes widened, and it hit me all at once. “She burns, she wins.”

Elowen smiled again, this one steeped in pride. “Before I hid her memory, Andrea chanted those words often.” All grace and elegance, she stood. “I know you intend to enter the Ring of Truth to learn the mistakes and triumphs from your other lives. When you do…I hope you’ll forgive me. Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for the good of us all.” One step, two toward the water.

I stood too, my wounds immediately protesting. “I don’t want you to go.” We’d spent too much time apart.

“Sin and Malkom must be neutralized. They have stolen you in the past, and I won’t let them do so now. You focus on Ian. Consider him practice for the big bad. He and the clones are infected with Sin’s darkness,” she said, not masking her regret. She entered the tub and sank into the water, as if there was no foundation under her feet. “Burn and win, sister.”

Her statement hung in the air as she disappeared beneath the water’s surface.