Page 75 of Lady of the Drowned Empire

“By reading a journal?”

“I not pull these out. Someone else. Someone did this when I away.” Ramia smoothed out her dress and stood, clearing her throat as she fixed her necklace. “You making big mistake not finding him first.”

My heart was pounding too loudly for my chest, and I inched back, partly fearful she’d come for me and retrieve the scroll.

I turned the scroll in my hand, my grip tightening over the leather ties as I pulled it to my chest. “If you see the ambassador,” I said, “tell him I’m looking for him.”

“And he see you first,” she said, her tone full of disapproval, “tell him I did same. And tell him I tell you not to read journal.”

I narrowed my eyes, placed the scroll in the bag attached to my belt, and walked silently out of the library, past Markan, and back into my seraphim carriage, barely daring to breathe as we took flight over the pyramids.

Back in my apartment, I opened the scroll slowly, checking the tag against the note I still kept in my arm cuff, confirming the numbers were a match despite having memorized them. I unraveled the scroll on my kitchen table and gingerly ran my finger over the scripted text. My mother’s handwriting stared back at me, elegant and full of lean loops. I’d only ever seen it before on signed documents framed in Cresthaven.

Shaking, I touched the parchment again. She had touched this. She had written these words. I wanted to run my hand over all of it, but I didn’t want to ruin the ink or damage the text. I didn’t have a glass reader or gloves in my apartment, so I grabbed a golden reading stick and secured the scroll’s end under a clip.

Sitting back and taking another deep breath, I began to read. The scroll opened with my mother describing her first day as High Lady and the feel of the weight of the Laurel of the Arkasva on her head. She described how much heavier it weighed than her diadem, which she had put aside for her first daughter.

Meera’s diadem. I saw it swinging in Arianna’s hand. Melting into the fire. Gone forever. I turned the scroll, sliding more of it through the clip, my reading stick moving quickly over the words. Hours passed as I read of my mother’s day-to-day tasks: sitting in Council meetings; visiting the city; and having conversations with my father, some of which I didn’t need to know about it. Finally, buried within the daily moments of her life as a ruler, I came upon this:

Our first daughter is here. Meera. She is so beautiful and precious. I didn’t know I could love like this before. Harren did. But I feel full to bursting. She is special. I know it. Not in the way all mothers believe their babies special. But I wouldn’t be surprised if upon her Revelation…a deep power is revealed.

I can’t stop looking at her. Poor Gianna. My Second has been working overtime to run Bamaria while I lay here with my girl. She should be on bedrest, too. She’s nearly ready to give birth as well. We sure timed this poorly, didn’t we?

I froze. My aunt Gianna. She had been my mother’s Second. I’d never known that. I bit back tears. My mother was talking about when Aunt Gianna had been pregnant with Jules.

If only she’d known.

I swallowed roughly, reading on about Meera’s first days, which consisted mostly of sleeping and eating. The notes grew sparser over the first year of her motherhood. There were more pages about ruling Bamaria: attending Council meetings; becoming pregnant again, this time with Morgana; and detailing her visions for the future of the country as well as a reoccurring dream she experienced in her third trimester.

I had the dream, she wrote. It’s come again, so I suppose that means I ought to write it down. I stand on mountains, sharp and craggy, full of snow—the same mountains every time. A goddess lies at my feet. She’s so still I’m unsure if she’s dead or simply sleeping. Even when I sense I’ve seen this before, I always remain unsure of her condition. What I am certain of is that she’s beautiful, her hair a vibrant, fiery red, and somehow, she seems familiar to me in some inexplicable way. I know it sounds farther than Lethea, but I never have the sensation that so often occurs when we look at the gods and goddesses—we see them powerful and mighty. Above us. Like mothers, fathers, rulers. Absolute power.

Not in my dream. There I watch the sleeping goddess, her hair full of fire, red like mine. Batavia red. And each time, I think to myself, daughter. My daughter.

I don’t want to worship her. I fiercely want to protect her.

A goddess with red hair sleeping on a craggy, snowy mountain. Meera’s vision.

My heart pounded as I read on, the sun setting early and wind howling outside my window, banging against the glass.

Morgana was born, and my mother had been disappointed for a second when she’d seen the shock of her raven hair.

Nine months I’ve been imagining my red-haired babe. I’m not sure where Morgana came from—almost as if she swooped in and took her sister’s place. I already feel certain there is another daughter coming to me. But I love her. So much. It doesn’t matter her hair color. It’s only…I had thought the dream a symbol or sign.

During Morgana’s first months, the dreams stopped. But once my mother was pregnant with me, the dream came again and again. More intense. More vivid. The same goddess, always asleep. The same feeling of motherly tenderness.

Then she wrote:

I’m in labor. Contractions have started. She’ll arrive quickly, I am sure. Before sunrise I expect. Auriel’s Feast Day.

I let out a shaky breath. My mother had been writing about me. My birth. I’d never heard anything about it before. I’d never even known what time I’d been born. All talk had always been of her death not long after. Of my father coming into power. I squeezed my eyes shut, inhaling through my nose, and continued.

I think we will find the day to be fitting, if all I believe is correct. The pains…but I must write this down first. The dream that’s come to me so many times now, came again. But this time was different. I saw her sleeping at my feet, snow beneath us. I wanted to reach down and stroke her hair. I knew she was glowing, full of warmth and light. But naturally, as a mother, I worried she was cold. And for the first time ever, her eyes opened. Beautiful. Hazel. A little bit of green and sparks of gold. She looked right at me, a knowing in her eyes, and then she vanished.

She reappeared, standing before me, full of so much light, glowing and vibrating with warmth and power. Beautiful.

I never had to describe awe before, but I felt it looking at her, and I knew.

Asherah.