She skidded to a halt outside a cell which stood open, a curse escaping her as she frowned, trying to force a vision into existence.
“How are you hiding from me?” she hissed, her frustration clear as she worked to get a vision which would lead her to the man who had escaped the royal dungeon.
Her head snapped up suddenly and she took a pinch of stardust from her pocket, tossing it over her head and yanking me along with her through the stars as she was whipped away through them.
I sucked in a surprised breath as we landed in the exact forest that I had been fighting in alongside my friends just a short while ago.
I followed my mom as she crept through the trees towards the pyramid shaped temple in the heart of the forest where she spotted Vard hurrying towards it, words pouring from his lips which she couldn’t understand any better than I could and a draining dagger in his hand which hummed with the dark power I’d come to know all too well.
A shriek approached as Vard closed in on the temple and two Nymphs appeared at the top of the steps we’d not long destroyed, making Vard jerk to a halt in alarm.
He turned to run but four more of the creatures had appeared at his back and he found himself surrounded.
“I’ve come to beg mercy of the Shadow Princess,” he called loudly. “I’ve felt her presence in my work with this blade and I wish to offer myself up as her humble servant. I have the gift of The Sight and was a member of the Savage King’s court until he did this to me.”
Vard trembled as the Nymphs closed in on him and I glanced at my mom, finding her ready with a pinch of stardust between her fingers, but she stayed where she was, watching, waiting.
A man strode out of the temple next, my blood chilling as I recognised Diego’s uncle Alejandro with his black curling hair, thin moustache and dark, forbidding aura.
“Wait," he called, raising a hand as the Nymphs closed in on Vard and causing them to fall still. “The Shadow Princess has use for him.”
Alejandro beckoned Vard forward with a single finger and the Nymphs at his back all corralled him up the steps, sending him scuttling forward with a whimper of fear that made me think he might have been second guessing this decision to come here.
I waited in the dark with my mom as they disappeared inside, turning my attention on her and slowly circling her as I drank in the sight of her face. Looking at her opened up an ache in me which I had long since fought to ignore, but it was impossible to do so while I was here, staring at the woman who had loved me and Darcy so much that she allowed her own life to be forfeited for the chance to keep us safe.
There was a lot of her in the two of us, and my heart pounded at each small similarity I found between her face and ours or Gabriel’s. She was a memory of a life we should have been gifted the chance to live, but it had been stolen from us and the hurt I felt over that would never truly go away.
Lionel Acrux had a hell of a lot to answer for.
Merissa’s gaze shifted suddenly and I found her eyes on mine, a gasp escaping her as she looked at me and a soft ‘oh,’ leaving her lips as she reached out as if to touch my cheek.
“Can you see me?” I asked shakily as the ghost of her hand skimmed the line of my jaw and I felt the faintest echo of that touch.
“You need to see this, don’t you?” she asked and I wasn’t certain she could hear me or even that she was really talking to me, but as my brow pinched she took off, passing straight through me as if I wasn’t there at all and making the fragile pieces of my heart shatter with the love I ached to feel from her.
I turned to watch as she ran towards the temple, drawing the darkness tight around herself and hiding so thoroughly that I couldn’t even see her myself, only knowing where she was headed through pure instinct.
I took off after her, hounding her up the steps and into the temple where screams echoed out to us and my mom followed the sound of them, slipping down dark corridors and stone steps until she reached a room where the screams were so loud that they made my skull rattle.
She hesitated by the doorway, looking in to offer me the opportunity to see this too, knowing she couldn’t get a vision about this place while the shadows clung so closely to it and instead viewing it with her own eyes so that she could offer up this memory.
The sounds of agony coming from that room made me want to turn away, but I didn’t, understanding the risk she’d taken to witness this for us. Whatever she saw in there had to be important and I needed to know what it was.
I stepped forward, moving to stand in the doorway and falling still as I spotted Vard, stripped to the waist and chained to a stone table as he begged and panted. Alejandro stood over him with a bloody blade in hand and my stomach writhed as he shifted to one side, revealing the bleeding mess of Vard’s face and I couldn’t help but wince as he tossed a destroyed eyeball aside, letting it hit the floor with a wet slap.