Page 78 of The Legacy of Ophelia
A voice called through my mind. So distinct that I didn’t even have a moment of thought before the reading claimed me. My face snapped toward the heavens, and in my mind’s eye, starfire burst to life, this time assuming the vague outline of a male’s bodily form. It burned with a viscous deep-purple rage.
The Fate of Wrath and Redemption.
“Fatecatcher,” Arenothos whispered again, his voice hissing along the white flame. “The god’s wrath has piqued,” he foretold. “And with it comes falling fortunes.”
Then, within the heart of starfire trailing along a concentration of shooting stars, Echnid came to life. He pulled threads as if they were puppets and he their cruel, wrathful master.
Six strings curled around his fist. The god raised a pale hand, equipped with a jewel-encrusted blade that flashed with gold and silver lightning. Without a beat of remorse, he sliced through the threads.
And in my mind, in the heart of the whistling flames, the lives of thousands screamed as ties were severed.
The entire world turned over as they withered, like a backward dreamscape where one walked on oceans and swam through the clouds. Air became ash and fire froze to ice. I stood in the center of a lake that shone with luminescent moonlight, the entire surface swirling with whispers of wishes and nightmares. The water poured over my frame, but I focused on the cries of those puppeted strings.
And a jaw snapped shut around an entire realm, lives silencing.
“When?” I gasped to Arenothos.
“The foretold is racing to the surface,” the Fate said.
With a rush of burning starfire and panting breaths, I snapped from the reading. The seeing chamber materialized around me. I stumbled to the alabaster column, resting my forehead against the cool stone.
“Vale?” Harlen exclaimed, rushing over to me.
“I’m fine,” I assured him. Physically, I was, if a little dizzy from the sudden reading. But icy horror sluiced through my gut. “We need to write to Xenovia.”
“What happened?” Harlen stepped in front of me so the other searchers present wouldn’t hear.
“It’s Echnid,” I whispered, and Harlen’s eyes widened in panic that was nowhere near humorous as before. “He’s getting closer to an answer. To banishing all the gods and their magic from Ambrisk for good.”
My eyes fell to the blades forged and lined with opalescent minerals. And I couldn’t help but think their gleam looked like water crafted of moonlight, like tides rich with fortunes, consuming my frozen frame until nothing was left.
And I feared what this future meant for me.
Fatecatcher.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Ophelia
My body is my own.
That was the mantra I repeated to myself as I woke up in Meridat’s manor after sleeping off the escape from Damenal for what felt like days.
My mind is my own.
I echoed as I slipped out of bed and found clothing. Not a gilded, armored dress, but a pair of leathers. Lightweight, Soulguider fashion with pants that would hug my thighs in a comforting embrace and a halter top that dipped low on my back and buckled along my spine. Perfect to slip around wings.
As I peeled the sweat-soaked slip Erista had helped me into down my body, I stared at myself in the mirror. At the scars across my midriff and arms—so many marks earned through the sacrifices I’d made for my warriors. I replayed each in my head.
The searing pain of thelupine daimonsclaws slicing into me on the tundra during the Undertaking.
The small nick to my collarbone Lucidius had left after we found out his truth.
The agony of Kakias’s poisoned blade tearing up my forearm and the way her dark magic had writhed within me afterward.
I relived the wounds that couldn’t be seen—the scars across my spirit from losing my father in an explosion, from Lyria taking a blade in my honor, from Tolek unconscious in an infirmary bed. I memorized the way they felt and how their aching imprints beat in time with my withered heart, the claw marks of those losses and breakings worn deeply into the hollows.
I forced myself to feel every knife and claw and ripping loss because these scars were who I was. Who I fought to be. And as I stood before the mirror, they grounded me. The reasoning behind them—the pride—all reshaped me.
