Page 68 of Of Stars and Lightning (Sun and Shadows #1)
Fifty One
FATE OF FIRE
SOL THOUGHT IT would be painful, but she felt nothing. Only a pinching and stinging around her chest as the talons sliced through her body, then nothing. She was in total darkness. Conscious only of the fact she was surrounded by night, in an abyss.
No.
As she focused on her blindness with increased attention, she realized she wasn’t anywhere, or everywhere, but instead floating within a sea of Shadows. She looked down at her hand, stark white against the tiny particles. She could see her feet, her legs, and her hair flowing down her chest.
Sol’s body was only thinly covered by a veil of mist, hanging around her like a loose dress. She touched the translucent fabric with her fingers, but she couldn’t feel it. It was as if an additional layer of air prevented her from touching, seeing, or smelling.
Back in the in-between?
A ruffling sounded from behind her, making her tense. She focused on steady breaths as she turned toward the sound.
Sol stepped forward, entranced by the figure that shimmered before her. Then, as if in a daze, took another step.
“Sol.” The figure rippled as it came into view, forming from the Shadows themselves.
Sol fell to her knees. “Mom?”
Irene smiled tenderly, a smile Sol treasured and had kept at the front line of her thoughts for difficult days.
Her mother looked beautiful, just as she always had.
Her black hair was loosely braided into a knot held up by an ivory bandana.
She wore a beige dress, spotty with paint and ash.
Her sapphire eyes shone like beacons in the dark as Sol darted forward, nearly crawling toward her.
Irene met her halfway, enveloping her in an embrace. Instantly, Sol began to sob.
She hadn’t been able to recall what her mother’s hug had felt like.
After her murder, she had tried to remember, but nothing comforted her the same.
Not keeping Irene’s old, unwashed aprons, not tending to her thyme, mint, and lavender gardens so she’d smell like her.
Nothing had filled the hole her Mother’s death had blasted through her.
But, at least at this moment, Sol felt whole.
“Mom,” she whimpered, grabbing the fabric of her Mother’s dress. Again, she couldn’t quite grasp it, couldn’t quite feel everything as fully as she wanted to.
Her mother stroked the back of her head. “You shouldn’t be here, Sol.”
Sol tightened her grip. “I don’t care.”
“We don’t have much time, Sunshine.” Irene pulled away slightly, grabbing Sol’s face and caressing her cheeks. She smiled sadly. “You look so much like your father.”
“Mom, where am I? Am I dead?” Sol wiped at her face with the back of her hands, trying to clear the tears.
Irene wiped them for her with the edge of her dress. “Nearly. You’re somewhere in between.” She dropped the dress and grasped Sol’s hands. “I don’t have much time, Sol. I can’t be here. But when I felt you, I—”
The air around them spiked in temperature, and Sol’s cold skin protested at the sudden heat. Her lungs, it seemed, disliked the change as well.
Sol coughed. “I don’t understand—”
“Sol, listen to me.” Irene shook Sol slightly by the shoulders, positioning her so they met eyes.
Through painful breaths, Sol looked at her.
“I can only assume you being here means they found you,” Irene continued.
“You can trust them. Mavka’s Jinn. The memories they show you will be true, they will not lie to you, they owe you and all Yarrows truth.
” Her mother scanned Sol’s face and body.
“Where are you? Are you in Yavenharrow?”
Sol shook her head, for a moment struggling to remember where she was.
“I’m in Rimemere,” Sol said finally. Irene’s face relaxed. “With your Court?” Sol nodded.
She saw their faces in her mind. Did they know she was probably about to die at the hands of a Mind Slayer? She was so sick of near-death experiences. Sol didn’t think she’d be as lucky this time.
“Sol, you can trust them. You must remain with your Court, do you understand?” Irene shook her slightly. “Only together will you all be able to defeat this.”
Sol shook her head, an icy-hot numbness beginning to take hold of her. “Defeat what? The Jinn gate? Mom, in your letter—"
“I’m so sorry, Sunshine. I’m sorry I couldn’t help you with your magic, I tried.” Her mother looked behind her, panic suddenly gripping her features. “We are running out of time. I must go.”
Sol gripped her harder. “Please don’t. Mom, I can’t do this. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Slowly, her Mother stood and smiled down as she gently pulled her up.
“No one ever knows what they are doing. You will make a far better Queen than I ever did, Sunshine.” Irene pressed a kiss to Sol’s forehead. “I made mistakes. As a Queen, as a Mother, as a woman. And I’m sorry those mistakes seem to have followed you.”
Her Mother pressed a hand to her chest, then the other to Sol’s. As heat threatened to swallow them, her hand was a cool embrace.
“But you have the right combination of power to end things. None of us before did.”
Sol shook her head. She didn’t understand anything. She just wanted this moment forever. But she could feel the end nearing, anxiety and dread pooling in her stomach as her Mother’s image faltered. Tears swelled in Sol’s eyes.
“Mom—”
“Stay with your Court, Sol. Those three are your strongest allies.”
Sol blinked as panic engulfed her, as the air around them heated “Three?”
“The answers are in Yavenharrow, Sol. Remember that.”
Irene’s image shook and faltered, but Sol still watched her sapphire eyes gleam one last time. “I love you so much, Sunshine. You’re everything I could’ve hoped for.”
Sol sobbed. “I love you, Mom.”
Irene faded and Sol was once again thrust into overwhelming darkness. Except this time, the darkness slammed into her like a stone wall. Not a wall, she realized as her cheek throbbed with pain. But a floor.
Sol winced as her body flattened on what seemed to be a smooth, gray floor. She attempted to sit up but resorted to slowly lifting herself with her hands as her body trembled with protests. She rubbed her forehead and looked around her. And instantly froze.
No.
The house was dim, all candles and lights unlit. Sol could smell the mint and thyme, could see her mother’s studio through the ever-familiar door that was slightly ajar. She was on the floor at the foot of the stairs, stairs she had run down and up, fallen from, and danced through as a child.
Sol braced a hand on the spiral, smooth railing, and stood.
She knew what night this was.
She knew what memory she was in.
The booming music flowing in through the open windows gave away it was the annual Yaven Port Celebration, a town-made holiday for sailors trademarked by dances and drinks in the Yavenharrow town square, which is where Sol had been that night.
The fact her mother stood with her back against the front door, facing the back door, made Sol realize this wasn’t a memory at all.
This is what happened after Sol ran.
After her mother had pushed her out the door when she returned for the night, locked it, and yelled at her to find Lora. Sol backed away toward the wall in horror, realizing she would witness what had truly transpired all those years ago. Her chest felt like it may burst with terror.
Was this what Mind Slayers did? Would she be stuck in this scene forever? Was it her purgatory?
Hot tears burned behind her eyes.
“You are breaching a sacred blood oath by being here,” her mother said. Her black hair was in knots around her face, as if she had been running. It blew wildly with each of her heavy breaths, and her blue eyes were dimmed with fear as she beheld something past the staircase, past Sol.
As Sol turned, she trembled.
“Too bad we don’t answer to blood, unlike you, Wielder filth.”
The Mind Slayer was absolutely horrid. It made the ones Sol had seen pleasant.
The one that towered toward Irene was giant, at least eight feet tall, and a doorframe wide.
Unlike the ones that crept behind it, the leader had orange, crackling skin still attached to protruding bones around its limbs.
The flesh melted off of it like candle wax, and its talons were an unearthly shade of green.
It stomped forward, its eyes flashing white then black, like a lighthouse beckoning its sailors.
It had long, stringy black hair that twisted into the gaping holes within its skin.
Sol turned away, suppressing the compulsion to vomit.
Behind it were Lower Jinn, not that it made things any better. The blue-gray, decaying piles of rot were just as paralyzing.
“Mavka won’t stand for this,” her mother said. She leaned over to her right, fumbling with something behind the wall. She withdrew a sword, angled and ready for a fight.
“I don’t answer to Loumallet or his whore,” the orange Mind Slayer announced, its hollow voice booming through the house.
Sol stared at the sword as it became engulfed in a kaleidoscope of colors, almost as if doused in an oily flame.
“We answer to the mighty Lorkin,” the Jinn on the right added, cackling. This one had a white, festering wound on its forehead.
Irene gave them an unamused laugh. “You all are taking council from that nasty thing?” Her mother eyed the orange creature.
“Gods help you.”
“Enough banter, Irene,” the colossal Mind Slayer growled, getting down on all fours. “Now, where is she?”
The cold smile dissipated from her Mother’s beautiful face. “You’ll never find her,” she whispered.
“Oh, we will. After we take care of you," the creature behind the orange one said, dropping to the floor like a snake. It slithered forward, taking its place at the front, protecting the odd one out.
Sol wanted to scream. To run to her mother, to launch herself in front of her like she should’ve done all those wretched years ago.
Her mother had been everything. Everything good in the world.