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And then, as if they’d physically been tugging for her attention, Isla snapped her head around to the dagger, diadem, and the artwork of the woman behind them. Looking at her moon-white hair and violet eyes made Isla’s heart stutter. She waited for that tapping, for her voice to slip into her mind, into her thoughts. But…nothing.
What? Nothing to say now?
“So, what’s your theory?” Isla called across the room, nearly moaning at the pleasant, nutty aroma fluttering around her.
Jonah pulled out two mugs and began pouring. “She may be a priestess.”
“A priestess?” Isla spread her hands over the table and gazed down at the artwork, tracing over the crown she wore that wasn’t a perfect match to the item they possessed like the dagger was.
“It’s a ceremonial blade.” Jonah carried over the two cups, and Isla took one with a cheery thanks. “And the crown in the painting may just be an extravagant version of the adornments priestesses wear today. She could’ve been one from Ares. I feel like there was much more value put on the deities and those who had a connection to them back in the day.”
“Way back,” Isla mused. She was at least a thousand years old since that was when the split occurred and Ares ceased to exist.
She sipped from her brew, mulling over the words while her gaze darted between the three items. Though she understood his logic, a priestess didn’t feel right.
“Do you still feel drawn to them?” Jonah asked, cutting into her attention.
The liquid burned going down her throat as she forced a swallow. “A bit more now than before.” Taking a breath, she dropped her hand to the table to run her fingers over the blade’s hilt. A dull, broken pulse shot through her fingers, and she yanked her arm back.
That was new.
“Are you okay?” Jonah leaned closer, his arm outstretched.
Isla nodded, placing her mug down as she moved for the blade again. She weathered the feeling this time, gripping the weapon tightly. Lifting it towards her face, her eyes glided over the silver-toned metal freckled with the tiniest bits of gold, the ivory pommel, and its dark crystal accents. The samelookas the blade she’d cut her hand with for the coronation, but the feeling…
“It feels broken.”
“What?”
Isla shook her head, confusion knitting her brow as she swiped the knife through the air. She pointed the tip towards the three fragments of the crown. “In a way, it feels broken.”
Jonah’s assessing gaze traveled over her and their wares. “But it’s a dagger. It’s in one piece, and it looks intact.”
“I’m just telling you what I feel.” Isla’s eyes slid to the artwork of the unnamed woman. “Did Kai tell you I dreamt of her?”
An exasperated look contorted Jonah’s features as he leaned against the table. “No, he did not.” He reached across the wood to snatch his leather-bound, well-loved notebook from the corner of the desk, the rich brown cover scuffed. He sifted through pages upon pages of notes and translations before he found a blank sheet at the end. “Please enlighten me.”
Isla lightly dropped the tip of the blade to the woman’s picture. “She really loves to call me Warrior Heart, for one,” she jeered before her features fell. “All around, before she showed up, the dream was weird. Or I call it a dream, but it was more like a nightmare. I remember seeing myself, and then it was just…war.”So much blood. So much death.“I was stuck in this battle who knew where, and then I was falling, and I felt something pulling me. Then there was music.”
That music, the haunting melody, and that violin that nagged at her. Had she heard it anywhere before?
“Then I couldn’t move. I was stuck in this…storm.” Realization colored her voice. “I could barely see, and then she appeared. First, looking like Daisy and then as she does here. She said everything that she’d told me before about ‘trying harder’ and ‘stopping him’ and it’s ‘only been us.’ But then, something was different.” Her hands shook slightly as Isla lifted her mug to her lips.
Jonah paused his scribbling notes. “What?”
“She pressed a blade,this blade,” Isla shivered as she stared at the weapon in her hand, swearing it hummed its own melody, “against my throat and then my heart and said, ‘If you fail, then they all fall.’”
Even repeating it, it didn’t make much sense.
“Who’s they?”
Isla scoffed. “Who’s falling? What’s failing?” she countered, then sighed. “She’s not very into specifics—never has been.” She pulled out a chair at the table and slumped into it. She placed the dagger at arms-length away and plucked up a piece of the diadem. “I don’t know what to make of it. Any of it.” She peered into the crystals as if the solutions lay within the cut of the gems. “Is she…me in a past life or something? It sounds ridiculous, but anything could be possible at this point, and I will take any answer just to knock this problem off our list.”
“Do you believe in reincarnation?”
“Not really.”
In her mind, all of them had been crafted uniquely by the Goddess; then Fate decided who were mates and wove them together before ripping them apart, leaving behind the smallest fragment of their other half within them so their souls could find each other again through life. She was no one else but herself; she felt and fully believed that.
