Page 85 of Claim the Twilight
Aster laughs, a high, tinkling sound that raises my hackles. “You stupid, lovesick fool. You can’t get your power back, not unless you return to Moringa what she believed that you took. Her lover. Her heart, and you cannot do that because he is long gone, and in a moment, what little remains of Moringa will be gone also.”
“That’s all I needed to know,” Harald says. He flicks his wrist, and flames appear in the box, eating away at the contents.
“No…” Aster stares at the flames, wide-eyed with horror, then up at the ball of energy that’s rapidly diminishing. “NO!” She reaches for the power, but it winks out.
My fingers come unstuck from the box, and I stagger back. Harald grabs my arms and pulls me to his chest.
“No…” Aster stands, holding the blackened box.
“It’s over,” Harald says. “You can never fully claim Moringa’s power now.”
She looks up at us, her mouth turning down, cheeks sagging as her eyes sink into sockets. “And you will rot on this Isle…no way out…not now…”
The box clatters to the ground as she disintegrates, falling into a pile of ash and bone.
“Fuck. What the fuck?”
“Whatever spell was allowing her to cheat death was incinerated with the contents of the box,” Harald says coolly.
“And now we’re stuck here? No. I have to get off this Isle. I have to get back to my friends and help them stop Loviator.”
I run out of the pavilion back toward the cottage and around it, into the front yard. “We can take the carriage back to the waypoint and take it from there. We’re on mageri business. They have to let us back into the city.”
I reach for the gate, and a shock of power slams into me, throwing me into the air. I land on my ass, pain lancing up my tailbone. “What the fuck?”
“Just as I suspected,” Harald says. “It wasn’t you that opened the gate, it was Aster. You never had the power to get us in, and you don’t have the power to get us out.”
Oh god…I pull myself to my feet. “We have to find a way. Loviator needs to be stopped. I need to get back and help.”
“There is no stopping Loviator. Not without my power,” Harald says.
He’d said he knew how to stop her, not that he could do it himself. I blink up at him. “Youhave the power to stop Loviator?”
He lifts his chin, looking down his nose at me. “Hadthe power, until Moringa stole it from me and handed it to the spirit of The Wilds.”
“But how? How can you have the power to stop a goddess?” My scalp pricks. “Harald…who…Whatare you?”
He stops and turns to face me. “I’m a god, and Loviator is my mother.”
Chapter 34
PADMA
Harald’s words ring inside my head, the implications of what he’s saying slowly settling into my mind as I watch him make a fresh pot of tea, hopefully not the herbal crap Aster made earlier. Outside our unwanted haven, the sun makes its descent, ready to sleep.
“My name is Encantor,” Harald says, setting a cup in front of me then adding milk and two sugars just the way I like it.
I take a scalding sip. It’s good tea. I take another, allowing it to clear my head. “So it’s true, Loviator did have a tenth child.”
“No. She had eleven in total. Me and my twin sister, Elanthra Our father was…chosen by Mother, not beget on her by force. What became of him is a mystery.” He settles in the seat opposite me and picks up his own cup. “Elanthra and I were kept imprisoned by our mother for centuries.” He sips. “Kept apart because together our power was greater than hers. She knew that we could hurt her. Maybe even kill her, and so she kept us cloistered, but we were able to meet in our dreams. We built avista. A whole world where we could be together. Play, grow, and dream.
“One day, our siblings came for us in an uprising. They freed me from my prison but were unable to get to Elanthra.” He set his cup down, finger tapping on the handle. “I tried to fight Mother’s minions, to get to my sister’s cage, but I was weak from my imprisonment. I was severely wounded before my siblings were able to get me out, and then the white wings asserted their power and locked my mother away along with her minions and my sister.”
His story aligns with what we know—what Kaster told us.
“I planned to find a way to get Elanthra out of the prison world that the white wings had trapped her in once I healed and regained my strength, but I was captured by a Lantana, bound, and well…the rest you know.”
He is the key. “So you and your sister can kill Loviator?”
