Resonance: An Echo Trilogy Novella (Echo Trilogy, #1.5) by Lindsey Fairleigh

Author:Lindsey Fairleigh [Fairleigh, Lindsey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lindsey Fairleigh
Published: 2015-03-23T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIVE

Flesh & Stone

All of the mentions of impossibility and coincidence, all of the wide-eyed looks and raised eyebrows, Vali’s “makes more sense now” comment—it was all suddenly so clear.

La Donna Triste looked exactly like me.

She was sitting on her hip, her hand planted beside her, propping her up, and her lazily curled legs extended to one side. She was dangling her other hand over something, the same something she was gazing into; water, I thought, though to me it just looked like she was staring at the blood-soaked floor. A symbol had been carved into her chest, clearly not part of the original design.

And her name, La Donna Triste—the sad woman—truly befit her; she emanated sadness and heartbreak and eons of loss. I couldn’t imagine what she’d gone through to look so incredibly sad. I couldn’t imagine what I would have to go through to look so sad.

I blinked and shook my head as I took slow steps toward her. This wasn’t a depiction of me . . . it was not. I had to get that through my thick skull. La Donna Triste was not a sculpture of me. She was a woman Marcus must have known centuries ago, or maybe just some stranger Michelangelo had used as a model, but she wasn’t me; I was only twenty-four, and I’d certainly never met Michelangelo. Which made the whole situation so much more disturbing.

A coincidenza, Marcus had called it. A coincidence. A disturbing, mesmerizing, nauseating coincidence.

I sat on her pedestal and leaned in until my face was inches from hers. Subtle things were different—the arch of her right eyebrow, and the part in her hair—which made me feel a little better. At first. That momentary relief evaporated as I realized that she would look more right, more like me, if she were reflected. Because as she was now, it was like looking at a duplicate, at an exact, colorless copy, when what I was so used to looking at was a reflection of myself in a mirror.

Lowering my eyes to the symbol etched into her chest—a dog-like animal with pointy ears, sitting on its haunches, its forked tail held upright behind it—I felt unexpected rage burn within my veins. It was Set’s symbol, the Set-animal. His people did this to her, because she looked like me. They did this to Marcus, because she looked like me. It was almost like this was Set’s way to put a claim on me, through her.

“Sandra,” I heard Marcus say, “please text Dom and tell him to bring a change of clothes for Lex as well. Ah, Vali, there you are . . .”

Frowning, I glanced down at myself, not understanding what was wrong with my current attire. It was when I shifted on the marble pedestal, moving away from the sad woman’s face, that I felt the sticky wetness seeping through the back of my skirt. I was sitting in blood.

I managed to care for all of six seconds, until my attention touched on La Donna Triste’s necklace, just above the engraving of the Set-animal on her chest.

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