The Sunderlands by Anastasia King

Author:Anastasia King [King, Anastasia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780578560090
Publisher: Anastasia King Books, L.L.C.
Published: 2019-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

18. THE ORACLE

Whatsoever is in His hand, is still in ours.

For He is in all and all are His.

All must pass from Life to Death,

from our dear Enithura to her beloved Mrithyn.

So we let go at the time He calls,

To rejoin those lost when He’s claimed us all.

Instead of jumping headlong into that paradisaical bed, I sit on the carpeted floor of the closet, tortured with infernal memories, staring at the damning evidence that I never knew my mother: Her shoes.

I’ve got torn parcel paper in a fist, its red string tied around my wrist. Three handwritten letters stare up at me from the floor. One written in my mother’s hand, giving me away to Silas. The note from Hero. And the third given to me by Indiro.

Candlelight dances in the reflection of the shoes. The bouquet anoints the room with a strong but sweet fragrance that is beginning to irritate my nose. I look haggard; exhausted to a new level. But the memories won’t subside. I allow them to pass before my vision and play out on the mirrored surface of the shoes. They throw themselves at me, glinting with candlelight and hurting my tired eyes. I remember and remember and remember. And then the memories stop, a startlingly finite list of things I can recall. I can count them all on two hands:

Her beauty: eyes, green like mine, and her hair, golden as the sun.

Her voice, soft as rain, telling me not to worry my little raven-haired head about what Liriene was doing running off into the forest with Silas and their friends. Assuring me I didn’t need to go along.

Taking me for walks through the gardens to pick lemons and tomatoes.

Sheltering me.

Singing to me.

Dying for me…

Swimming with her and Liri in the River.

Drowning in that river and trying to get to her— to save her from that evil Human she wept for forgiveness from.

Her bowing before Mrithyn, begging Him to take her instead, to allow me to walk back into Life. Giving me to Him, telling him to make me His servant so that I might have another chance at life. A life dedicated to Him.

The memories end there. My chance of ever truly knowing the woman who gave her life for me is dead— stone cold and irrevocable. I was so young when my life ended, and when it began again. Her sacrifice made me into a lone guardian, fated to walk the shoreline between the world of life and the waters of death. To ford the river time and time again. To leave her behind every fucking time.

Mrithyn’s fingers brushed my long black hair behind my ear,

turning each strand white as the full moon.

His hands wandered along my arms, strengthening my muscles.

lengthening my bones, setting fires in my veins.

His hands covered my mouth, my eyes, my ears,

changing all my senses to those of a predator.

He placed a seed of darkness on my tongue,

a mite of his power,

and I swallowed it.

I wiped a streak of blood from my mouth with the back of my hand.

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