Page 132 of Shardless

“You must, dear,” Breena replied, pushing a stray lock of hair out of Taly’s eyes. “Even if weworked together, we wouldn’t stand a chance against him. You have no aether left, and me? I still have a few tricks, but I’m just a shadow of what I was when I was still alive. I can’t kill him, but I can make sure that you stay safe. That is my duty—both as your mother and as a Crystal Guardian.”

“No, I…” Taly fumbled for the right words. This couldn’t be the end. Not yet. There were so many questions she wanted to ask Breena. So many things she wanted to tell her. But now, with Vaughn raging in the background and the wisps already tugging at her clothing, she felt paralyzed. “Will I see you again?” was all she managed to ask. The orbs were pulling at her more insistently now, but she resisted.

Breena shook her head sadly. “No. Now that the spells have been broken, there’s nothing left to bind me here. I’m already starting to fade.” She held up a hand. Faint wisps of smoke were starting to mix with the violet glow of her magic.

“Then come with me,” Taly insisted, waving away one of the fairies. “If you want me to go along with these things peacefully, come with me. I won’t go without you.”

“Still bargaining, I see,” Breena murmured with a small smile. “It’s nice to see that not everything has changed.” Bringing both hands up to cup Taly’s face, her mother whispered, “I’m sorry, dear. Where you’re going, I can’t follow. So, since this is the last time…” Her voice broke slightly, but she kept talking through the tears that were now streaming freely from her eyes. “I love you, my darling daughter. I have always loved you, and I will continue to love you even after I finally pass through the gates of Moriah. Never doubt that. And no matter what, always be proud of what you are—what you can do. I was, and your father will be too. I’m sure of it. Now go!” With that, Breena gave Taly a gentle shove.

Thrown off-balance, Taly stumbled. She grabbed for the swinging metal gates as her knee once again buckled beneath her weight, but the wisps pulled her off her feet before she could find her equilibrium. The spirits cushioned her fall even as they began dragging her past the fence line.

The next time Taly found her mother’s eyes, the sadness had melted away, softness replaced with steel as she prepared to face Vaughn. A warrior—her mother had been a warrior. “Farewell, child. When you see your father, tell him I’m sorry I never got the chance to say goodbye.”

Vaughn was almost through the line of Mechanica. There was only one remaining soldier, but the shadow mage had already brought the hulking metal warrior to its knees. “You can’t keep her from me!” he howled as he crushed its helm beneath his boot. “You can’t keep her from my master! He will find her!”

Breena turned away from Taly and assumed a defensive stance, her sword at the ready. Taly tried to push herself to her feet, but the orbs of fairy fire had started to coalesce around her—the cloud thickening and expanding with each passing moment. She struggled to remain upright as a torrent of unfamiliar magic slammed into her. “No!” she screamed desperately. “Mom! Please, not again!”

The wisps had formed themselves into a swirling vortex. They obscured her vision andfilled her ears with the rush of wind. Taly reached out a hand, desperately clawing her way back towards the gate. “Please!” No one else could die because of her. Even if her mother could never come back, even if she was already dead, that shadow mage could still hurt her. Fey souls were made of aether, after all.

A wave of shadow magic engulfed Breena’s form, and the ground around her erupted in a spray of gravel. Vaughn ducked to one knee, raising a single arm as he bore the brunt of the blast head-on. He was bruised and bleeding now, and his shirt was little more than a few tatters of silk that hung from his burly shoulders. His lips moved as he stepped through the shattered barrier that used to surround the palace, and he eyed Breena in irritation. She widened her stance, ready to face him, but instead of turning to fight, he attempted to sidestep her and run for the gates. For Taly. As he passed, Breena lunged, bringing down the edge of her spectral blade across the back of his knees and forcing him to the ground.

Her bloodied sword still in hand, Breena turned to Taly one final time. She was almost gone now. Her body was already beginning to break apart and disintegrate even as she sent out blast after blast of shadow magic at Vaughn, who was attempting to regain his feet. The older woman’s mouth moved as she tried to say something, and although Taly could no longer hear her mother’s words over the deafening roar of the magical vortex that threatened to consume her, there was pride mixed with another, unmistakable emotion in the woman’s eyes.

That was enough to convey her final parting message.

Her mother loved her.

The ground was trembling now. A great rumbling, almost like an extended peal of thunder, sounded from deep beneath the surface, and the gates squealed as they chaotically swayed on their hinges. Cracks and fissures, small at first but then large and gaping, wedged open, spiraling out from her body in a chaotic web and shining with a golden light that illuminated the night sky.

“No!” Taly was still reaching, struggling to see through the vortex of swirling magic that was starting to pull her down. Not yet. After all these years, it couldn’t end like this.

“Mom!” she screamed, praying her mother could still hear her. “I love you too! This is not goodbye! You have my word—this is not goodbye!”

The ground finally gave way just as Vaughn managed a step past the gates, but Taly had already disappeared, the world growing black around her and finally fading entirely from view.

Epilogue

Taly could feel an uncomfortable crick forming in her neck, and even in her languid state, she could tell that she was resting against something hard. None of that mattered, though. She was having the loveliest dream, and she wasn’t nearly ready to return to the waking world.

She was back at the cottage in Vale, but for the first time in her life, there was no fire. She barely would’ve recognized the place had it not been for that strange vision in the woods. The sun felt warm on her face as she lay on the ground, staring up at the sky through the leaves of an old oak tree. If she strained her ears, she could just make out the sounds of birds chirping in the woods outside the garden wall. It was the kind of summer day that poets might’ve described as idyllic.

A woman sat next to her. The same woman she had seen night after night in her dreams ever since she was a child—her mother. The older woman’s clothes were plain but well made, and her golden hair spilled down her back in long waves.She leaned against the trunk of the tree, humming to herself as she wiped down the blade of a black rapier. The sweepings of the hilt, crafted to look like the tentacles of a kraken, gleamed so brightly in the afternoon light that Taly couldn’t help but reach out and run a finger along the lustrous metal.

“Your father gave me this,” the woman said, smiling as she ran a hand through Taly’s hair. Taly leaned into her touch, clinging to that feeling even as the dream started to fade around her. “On the day I passed the rites to become his Guardian. I told him it was too expensive, but the man never would listen to reason.”

“When will I meet him? Father?” Taly asked. Her voice sounded childlike and far away.

The woman shook her head. “Not for a while yet, I’m afraid. Not until the Aion Gate opens.”

Taly fiddled with a stray leaf, holding it up so she could see the light shining through, illuminating the intricate pattern of veins. “Do you think he’ll like me?”

“Of course, my darling girl,” the woman replied simply. “In fact, I have it on very good authority that he’s going to love you. Now then,” she said, standing and shaking the grass and dust off her trousers. “I should go check on the stew before I burn it.” She grimaced slightly as she turned to walk away. “Again.”

As Taly watched the woman disappear behind the blue door of the little cottage, she felt a twinge of sadness. The dream was ending. She was about to wake up. But even with the landscape crumbling around her, she couldn’t help but smile. For as long as she could remember, she’d always felt an inexplicable sense of loss for a womanwhose name she couldn’t recall. It had plagued her, more easily dismissed as she made the transition from child to adult, but never completely gone.

As she tipped over that edge that would plunge her into wakefulness, she knew that a part of that wound had somehow mended itself. Something inside her, something that she hadn’t even realized was empty, had finally been filled.

Because now, no matter what, she would always know, would never again forget, that her mother had loved her—and that her name had been Breena.

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