Page 5 of Tell Them That I’m Coming

“Lucian and Damien saw what our daughter would do thousands of years before she was born to do it. We could have centuries before the second prophecy comes to pass.”

I blink. At my feet, Binx lets out a soft mewing sound, checking to make sure that I’m all right.

But I’m not all right.

Second prophecy? What?

Mom shudders out a breath. “Sierra’s girl found her mate. Oh, Malphas, don’t look at me like that. Everyone in Nuit knows it’s only a matter of time before Corbin has Stevie’s name etched in his chest. And we all know that Kennedy’s son is trying. How much longer until Alana goes searching and Damien’s words catch up to her?”

“Fiore mi…”

“You heard what he said. If she goes to Noctavara…” Mom pauses, and when she speaks again, it’s obvious she’s reciting something. “‘Her broken wings will only end the curse when her own heart stops’.”

“My flower, you remember the prophecy so easily?”

“Of course I do! When a seer looks at your baby and tells you that there’s a second prophecy about her, as a mother, you remember that shit, babe. Especially when it talks about her heart stopping to break someone else’s curse.”

“It could mean something else,” Dad says calmly. Like always.

“Does it matter? They see Alana leaving Sombra. They see her dying.” Mom’s voice breaks. And, yes, that’s not unusual, either. “We can’t let her go to Noctavara.”

I lift up just enough to peek through the window in time to see Dad enveloping Mom in a big hug. Her pale yellow hair stands out against his deep red chest as he strokes the strands.

“Alana is your daughter, my Shannon. Do you think we could ever stop her?”

If I never hear the word ‘prophecy’ again, it’ll be too soon.

I can’t. I just… I can’t.

Mere moments ago, I was bemoaning how stagnant my immortal life felt. I figured that was something that happens to young demons as they mature. The idea of a never-ending forever is daunting, especially for a halfling. My mom is in her seventh decade. Dad’s seen more than ten centuries. That gap is almost incomprehensible to me when I’m barely a quarter of one century.

I’d get over it. I was just whining, an unappreciative spawn who was bored. Then I was too nervous to face Rafe’s mother. By the time I was ready to get over myself, I heard something I wasn’t supposed to, and now I don’t know what to do.

A second prophecy. You have got to be kidding me!

Part of me wanted to march into our home, confront my parents, and demand they tell me what they were talking about. I couldn’t, though. The moment Mom mentioned the doppelseers, then Dad pointed out that I can be as hardheaded and stubborn and contrary as Mom… I was already dashing away, clutching my skirts, Binx scampering right behind me as I beat a quick retreat.

It’s been years since I was in the company of the doppelseers. The only twin demons in all of Sombra, they make the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stick on end. They not only have the power to see the future and utter prophecies, but they’re the oldest demons in our realm.

They’re the seers that saw my birth, who saw that Duke Haures would one day be bonded to a human female, and that after Duchess Susanna cast the matefinder spell that cracked open the rift between Earth and Sombra, there would be many more human women who would follow… and the first one who gave birth to a half human, half demon spawn would bring into the world the child destined to save it.

It was Damien who said the fateful words more than two millennia ago:

a child born of two worlds,

belonging in both, belonging in none,

will bring with them the rain,

and the fires of Sombra will be forever done.

For my entire existence, I’ve felt the weight of the first two lines of the prophecy. By being both Sombran and human, I was born of two worlds, but I don’t really feel like I belong in either. Sombra is my home, of course, but each of us halflings have never been able to forget that we’re different than the full-blooded demons in our village, despite how much they’ve welcomed us and our human mothers.

And I did bring the rain. When I was only four months old, I cried as most spawn do, and the rain came. Water falling from the sky, something that’s commonplace in my mother’s world but unheard of in my father’s, it nearly snuffed out Sombra’s fires—until I was captured by King Yelios.

I didn’t do anything. I survived him. It was Mom who found me and confronted the mad king, and Duke Haures—who, along with being the ruler of Sombra, is also a bondmaster—is the one that used the ashbalm flower to sever any ties that I might’ve had with Queen Alana’s mate.

That’s it. I didn’t die. I made the rain fall with my tears, and when King Yelios finally was defeated, I became a symbol for a new age in Sombra. Even Mom admits that the first prophecy was more about the first halfling spawn setting off King Yelios’s madness and his desire to take Sombra down with him, but I’ve gotten all the credit since.