Page 96 of Of Skulls Of Shackles

Despite the agony of the mother in my arms, I could not think of her or anyone for a full minute. Such was the fear that I had experienced.

I cannot enter you again.

I did not speak the words aloud, for ancestral mothers were present and would surely disagree and disapprove. But I could not. I would never return there.

The bubble of panic was popped, and I blinked a few times.

I peered down at the mother in my arms. “Mother, where are you hurt?”

“My leg, daughter.” She panted, pale from loss of blood and pain.

I carried her to the tower, then rested her on dirt. “Your leg is quite torn away and dangling. Who did this to you?”

“A creature in the fog.” She wailed, then lost the tension from her body all at once.Unconscious.

Mothers stopped their chant to pass around her words.A creature in the fog.

My mouth dried. A creature in the fog. This must be what pressed on my mind and heart. This must be my fear. Surely a queen was meant to defeat a creature in the haze. Why else would she feel such terror?

While she was unconscious, I severed the dangling and shredding remains of her leg, then scalded the wound with my magic to cauterize the vessels and flesh. The mother would forgive me. She was forgiveness itself.

I carried her to the circle, then stitched her in place, and afterward, I stared at her for a time.

“She will be well,” said my mother.

Cassandra.“She cannot die of her wounds. Her safety is in her stitch upon your body.”

My stitches were my power. They were the sacrifice of my mothers. Still, this injured mother could still have screamed for eternity while lost in the haze. Until perhaps a creature feasted upon her. Surely a stitch could not protect a mother from everything.

“You send me a message, do you?” I tore my gaze from the shaking, unconscious mother, and peered out at the haze. “Is that why you did not wholly feast upon her? You wish me to know that you are there.”

That we will meet.

“That one of us will win,” I whispered.

I returned to the mother’s leg and picked it up. I was very strong now. A mere twitch of my arm saw the mother’s leg hurtle away and disappear into the haze.

“A snack,” I called to the creature. “You will need your strength to face me.”

“She prepares for war,” hissed Cassandra.

Her words were taken up, of course, in various ways. “She readies herself!”

“She tarries no longer.”

“She will fight.”

“She will conquer.”

“Shewill do nothing until this circle of mothers is complete,” I announced. “Shewill not be forced to anything, not even by the line of mothers who came before her.”

The mother who had tried to damage my tower laughed. “Now you understand, o’ powerful queen.Nowyou understand what it is to be me. You never could have done what fifty of us did foryou, and I wish you every bit of strength in resisting your fate. I wish that you might resist fate now and until your long, endless ruin.”

She was right, and I was in no mood for such insight.

I strode to the grave and soon the rustle of hellebores stole away her cold laughter. Though not from my mind where terror of a haze and creature lurked in the form of dread and fear even stronger than the last time I had come here.

ChapterTwenty-One

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