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Chapter Seventy

Annora

Mist swirls around me as my thoughts scatter like leaves caught in an autumn wind.

Wasn’t I just...

Didn’t I...

Where’s Jasce…

I need Jasce!

A figure emerges from the haze, raven-haired with a tattoo beneath her mouth.

Mazaline.

Jasce’s mother.

“You’re not finished,” she says, her voice echoing, as if she’s standing in a cave. Maybe she is. Maybe we both are.

I try to focus, but everything keeps shifting, blurring at the edges like a watercolor painting left out in the rain.

“I don’t understand. I stabbed myself. I remember the dagger, the blood...” My hand drifts to my chest, fingers searching for the wound, but I feel nothing. No tear in my flesh. No searing pain.

Her form wavers like a mirage in the desert heat. “Your path continues. The thread hasn’t been cut.”

“What thread? I don’t...” The words tangle in my throat as spots dance across my vision.

Her gaze drops to the turquoise ring on my finger. “You’re wearing my ring.”

I stare down at the stone. “Zerah gave it to me.”

“The ring chooses,” Mazaline says. “It always has. It always will. And it chooses to bring you back.”

My head spins as the mist thickens into an impenetrable fog.

Up becomes down. Light becomes shadow.

Mazaline’s form dissolves into smoke, but her words linger, swirling through my mind like the ever-shifting mist.

Not finished…

Not done…

The ring chooses life…