“I am so, so sorry,” I managed, feeling their pain like a throbbing pulse in the pit of my stomach. No mother would ever want to bury a child, and for Sofia, this was her worst nightmare come true. She’d already lost Ben once. I, too, had experienced such agony before, because of Cyrus.
This time, she’d lost Grace, Caia, and Vita, as well. Derek had lost his brother. Aiden, his wife. River had it the worst of them all. She could barely move, as Lawrence and Field tried to comfort her as best as they could. But she was limp, her eyes glassy and blank. When would all these troubles end, I thought, while my gaze wandered past them and around the grand hall. Moonlight poured through the tall windows, dressing everything in a pale, pearly white. The glass table in the middle glistened quietly. The only sounds I could hear were the muted sobs of those present.
Yes, the ritual had been stopped. But at what cost?
Millions of fae were dead, gone forever. We knew Taeral and his crew had killed Brendel, but we were in the dark regarding the Spirit Bender and Death, how it had all been stopped. There was no news of the rebel Hermessi, either. Everything had come to a sudden halt, in a way we’d never asked for.
This kind of pain would never simmer down. It would burn through us forever. At least we still had a future to look forward to, as empty as it was without our fae friends and loved ones.
“We’ll have to open the portal soon,” Derek said after a long pause, stroking Sofia’s hair with one hand in a bid to comfort her. “We’ll need to go out there and assess the damage. The agents who stayed behind are already at the sanctuaries.”
“How did it manifest?” I asked, trying to get their minds away from Ben and the others, at least for a little while.
“The ritual?” Derek replied. Dark shadows had settled under his blue eyes, brushstrokes of grief that would take forever to fade. Sofia wiped her tears and raised her head, trying to get back into the conversation.
“They said the sanctuaries lit up all white,” she said. “We only got this account from a couple of local agents. The rest had already gone into hiding, but due to the matching details, it’s safe to assume it unfolded identically across the In-Between and the Supernatural Dimension. It went on like that for a while, then a pulse—the pulse we felt as well—rippled across the skies, and… that was it. The light faded. The air sort of cleared. The sanctuaries came back down and… silence, ever since.”
“Like it didn’t even happen,” Rose added, joining us. Behind her, River raised her head, wanting to say something. But no words came out, so she gave up and rested her head on Field’s shoulder—her son… the only one she had left. The poor soul. If anyone understood her pain, it was me. Granted, I’d gotten lucky. I’d been able to see my Sherus. River had found herself kicked out of the sanctuary with everybody else when the Hermessi had first begun the weaponizing stage.
“What news of Taeral?” Corrine asked. “Has he said anything?”
I shook my head, feeling my brows pull into a deep frown. “He’ll get in touch when he can,” I said, though I wasn’t entirely convinced. His silence worried me, especially after what had just happened.
This was a bitter victory, to say the least.
“Have you tried reaching out to him?” Ibrahim replied. “If his comms are down, you still have your Telluris link, don’t you?”
Pressing my lips into a thin line, I closed my eyes for a moment.
“Nuriya?” Vivienne asked, noticing my expression shift, though I wasn’t entirely sure what I was displaying. I’d been working so hard to keep my composure, but I had grown tired. I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I was falling apart at the seams, and it was happening before their eyes. “Are you okay?”
I broke down crying, and Aisha and Horatio rushed over from across the room, having heard my voice louder than usual. It wasn’t in my nature to bawl, yet I couldn’t control it. I cried so hard, my whole body shuddered. They held me tight, and I surrendered to everything that had been poking and stabbing me for the past couple of days.
My husband. The Novaks. Fierce little Vesta. Kailyn. Lucas. Every single fae that had been dragged into this hot mess. I cried for all of them, finding no comfort in an embrace but still feeling thankful that I wasn’t alone in this. I’d held it all in for too long, not wanting to show much to Sherus regarding my inner self, given his condition. I’d been so careful not to worry him or my son that I’d completely neglected myself.
And now, it was all coming down, brick by brick.
“I’m sorry, Nuriya,” Vivienne said, and I felt her arms come around Aisha and Horatio. I was in the middle of a group hug, as Derek, Sofia, Rose, Caleb, Xavier, and even Corrine and Ibrahim piled on. Soon enough, the others joined, and we turned into a mass of brokenhearted people who’d lost loved ones in this elemental nightmare.
We all cried and felt sorry for one another. We whispered words of comfort to each other. We embraced the pain and allowed it to flow through us, to liberate us from the pressure that had been gathering. Strangely, I could breathe a little easier now. Crying did help.
“Mom?”
My son’s voice came through like a faint crackle. So faint, in fact, that I had barely noticed it. For a moment, I didn’t even realize he was calling out to me.
“Mom, are you there?”
I sucked in a breath. It was Taeral, I could hear him clearly in my head. Oh, such music to my ears!
Quickly but politely, I pulled myself away from the group, my eyes wide and scratchy. The others watched me carefully, while I felt a smile tug at the corners of my mouth. My lips were cracked, and they stung a little as they stretched, but I didn’t care.
“Taeral?” I called out. Our Telluris link was activated. I could feel my baby deep in my soul, pulling the invisible string that connected our hearts. All of a sudden, the world was no longer as grim or as defective as I’d seen it. It was slightly better, because my son was back in the picture. “Honey, what happened? Are you okay?”
Looking around, everyone’s breaths had been cut off. They were all quiet, their gazes fixed on me as I waited for a reply.
“Mom, we did it. We stopped it,” Taeral said.
And just like that, I slid down the emotional spectrum, from grief and despair to an indescribable sense of relief, having finally received the confirmation that my Taeral and his friends had prevailed. My heart swelled, threatening to break out of my ribcage, and a different kind of tears trickled down my cheeks. Tears of joy and pride.
“You saved us,” I whispered. “You saved us…”
“We…” Taeral paused for a moment. “The fae, Mom… We didn’t get to Death in time.”
“Tae, my darling. You saved billions. Entire worlds. Please, do not sell yourself short. Not after everything you’ve been through,” I replied.
“Mom, there’s more,” he said.
I stared at Sofia and Derek, though blankly, with no particular purpose. They were the most solid figures in my field of vision. “What is it?” I asked, my voice dropping.
“It wasn’t Death who used Thieron to stop the ritual. It was me,” he said. “And I stopped it for good, this time. It will never happen again. I guess, in a sense, I broke the cycle.”
My mind went blank. The information was so foreign, so shocking, that I didn’t even understand it at first. It didn’t click. I was missing something, for sure.
“Honey, you need to explain that to me, bit by bit,” I said at last.
“I will, soon. I promise.”
“Where are you?”
