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“What should we do?” I whisper.
He places his finger to his lips and pulls out his gun again. I do the same, and we creep out into the hallway toward the stairs. As we slowly move, the distant steps pound louder and louder against the pathway and soon the stairs leading down into the windmill. We halt where we are, a few dozen feet from the end of the hall, the path before us bright from the distant sun casting its light through the windows above us. This lets me know that what I am seeing is real as another ghost from my past rushes up the stairs and emerges from around the corner. My once dead sister Cassandra.
“Kaela!” she cries out, ignoring Astor’s pointed gun.
I can’t move, even as she rushes toward me. Is this real, or another trick like what the Necromancer did before? She wraps her arms around me, squeezing tightly, but I am limp and lifeless. That is until her warmth begins to envelop me, freeing me to embrace her as I burst into joyous tears.
We stay like that for a long while. She eventually starts to pull away, like she is ready to move on, but I am not. I’m only starting to truly grasp the moment. I have never felt so utterly happy in all my life, and I don’t want it to end quite yet. I tightly pull her in once more and squeeze as hard as I can. She laughs through more tears. How I missed it, her smile. But if she’s alive, if this is real, then it shouldn’t be just her.
“Where’s Helena?” I ask.
Her smile disappears, and I brace for sad news.
“She was taken.”
“By who?” I ask stunned.
The noise of several more people sound behind her before she is able to answer the question, and we all turn that way.
“Princess, you can’t just…” a dark-skinned man says irritated, cutting himself off at the sight of us.
“You saw the light from the beach,” she snaps back. “We’ve been waiting so long for this. I wasn’t going to risk something or someone else getting to them first.”
“Why have you been waiting for me?” I puzzle.
She hesitates as she turns toward me, and I find myself unexpectedly bothered, like I sense she still sees me as someone too young or immature to handle the straight truth.
“Wait,” I jump in just as she’s finally about to answer me. “Eliana is Helena, isn’t she?”
Cassandra nods hesitantly, and I quickly become agitated, this time not at her, but at my father. For years I have been expected to live under the impression that my sisters were dead. My heart ruptured when he, in apparently feigned sorrow, told me. At any point, he could have ended my misery and revealed the truth, but he didn’t. It has all been kept from me, like I wasn’t prepared to know. Like I’ll always be a child.
“Kaela,” she says, placing her arms around me.
I resist at first, but it’s too hard to be stubborn in this moment. My sisters have come back to life. I can’t focus on what was, only what is. And I have missed them too much to let myself be anything but happy right now.
“Mariam had to believe we were dead,” Cassa
ndra continues after another long moment. “I promise I’ll tell you everything when we have time. That all of your heartache had a purpose. That your pain wasn’t for nothing.”
Looking up into her wet eyes, I feel her love and my heart is freed of all resentment. Her attention then turns to Astor.
“Things went according to plan?” she asks.
“More or less,” he answers slyly. “There were a few bumps in the road, but we arrived all the same.”
“The world stone is with your mother then?”
The answer he gives her shocks me.
“Yes.”
He looks at me, but I don’t know how to react. I search my mind for why he would lie to her like that. Based on my conversation with Julienne, almost nothing has gone to plan so far. We are only here thanks to a powerful and mysterious being who for all his efforts to portray himself as possessing the purest of intentions could very well be plotting a treacherous demise for all of us.
I am tempted to reveal the truth to Cassandra, but as I turn to her, I change my mind and glance back at Astor. His childish frame notwithstanding, he is older and in many ways wiser than the rest of us combined. He must be doing this for a reason I will simply have to get from him later. For now, our focus must be on Helena. There will be time for confessions once we get her back.
“We should return to the shelter,” the dark man says, stepping toward us.
He is tall and built so strongly that
