I rush toward my mother, but her magic crashes into me before I even get close.
It is like hitting a brick wall. My head ricochets back and then I am being lifted, carried through the wind and straight into the waters of the Endless Sea.
Moments from shore, the shallows of water shackle me like chains.
My mother stands over me.
“It is your destiny to be by my side,” she says.
I shake my head.
Destiny isn’t about chance, it’s about choice. Choosing to be who you want to be, because that’s who you’re supposed to be.
My mother has let herself become a monster and I won’t choose to become one alongside her.
She slips to a crouch and slides her hands around my throat, digging her nails in deep. “Do not make me do this. Surrender.”
My fingers tear into the sand that hides under the water.
“Never,” I say.
I bring my head up, crashing it against hers.
My mother stumbles backward.
I don’t wait before I push out my hands and siphon the power of the wind, thrusting it into my mother’s chest.
“Foolish child,” she croaks.
She curls her hands into fists and I’m brought to my knees. Her knuckles whiten as she clenches harder, and in an instant, I feel as though I’m being crushed.
Something pulls from inside me, trying to tear my insides out. Then a sudden wave of wind knocks into me and I careen across the beach.
I hit the sand hard.
The thud rattles through me, but I push myself back up, not thinking about the pain. The time for that will come, but it’s not now.
My mother rushes to me and I flip myself back onto my feet. She reaches out a hand, her claws ready to tear me apart.
I don’t give her the advantage.
Swiftly, I grab her by the hair and bring her face down hard on my knee.
“There it is,” Theola says. She licks the blood that drips down from her nose and onto her lip. “The darkness inside that you have been fighting all this time.”
“It isn’t darkness,” I tell her, thinking of Asden. Of Eldara and Asclepina. “Not all power, not all strength and magic, have to be so—so cursed.”
Eldara died because she had faith in me and the light I could bring to the world. Our goddess blessed me with her strength because she believed I could right our family’s wrongs.
Why can my mother not do the same?
“Why are you doing this?” I ask, breathless. “What happened to you?”
“To me?” she says, aghast. Her cloak sweeps behind her as she takes a step toward me. “All of this is your doing. You’re the one who has chosen that boy over me.”
She nods toward the battlefield, where armies fall in blood. The sound of their blades ricochets over to me, louder than the noise of any others that surround us.
My heart races.
Nox, I scream inside myself.
I can’t see him at the edges of the battle where he is supposed to be.
“You would betray me for him,” Theola says.
I whip my head back to her.
She’s wrong.
This isn’t about Nox or how much I care for him. It’s about choice: needing it, demanding it. Finally having it for the first time.
It’s about making amends for all the evil our family has helped inflict upon the world for so long.
“You’ll never understand,” I tell her. “The blood oath has corrupted you.”
“I’m not corrupted, Selestra.” My mother speaks in a sigh. “The blood oath keeps me loyal to the king, but it doesn’t change who I am.”
I swallow, and finally I ask the question I’ve been wanting to know since I was a child.
“Then who are you?”
“I’m a survivor,” she says. “And I do what I must to live this life.”
I cannot fathom the woman before me, talking of survival when all I have seen is her reveling in the glory of being by the king’s side.
“You destroy enough lives and you become numb to it,” she continues. “I don’t have a choice, and so was I expected to be miserable forever? To cry and mourn for all those souls? I cannot live my life that way.”
My mother hardens her jaw, shaking away any sign of mourning.
“This is who I am,” she says firmly. “It’s who we both must be.”
I shake my head, because I know that’s not true. Perhaps once I would have believed it, but now I’ve journeyed across the Six Isles and I’ve seen beauty in people and the world.
In myself.
I’m not a monster unless I let myself become one.
“I’m nothing like you,” I tell my mother. “I could never be.”
Theola nods like she knows this to be true.
“That’s why I spent all these years trying to protect you. I knew you couldn’t stomach what had to be done and that one day Seryth would find out and have me kill you and birth a new heir.”
Her yellow eyes go dark.
“I didn’t want it to come to this,” she says. “I would have never chosen this for you.”
She grits her teeth and her magic seeps through me like quick poison, stealing my very breath from the air.
I gasp and fall to the sand as she siphons it from me.
Every pant and sigh is ripped straight from my lungs. It whips across my lips and I clutch at my chest, willing my heart, my lungs, to work, fight, stop her.
Selestra, get up! I scream to myself.
But I can only heave as she chokes the breath from me.
“It is a terrible thing to kill one’s daughter,” my mother says mournfully. “Be glad you’ll never have to.”