Breaker (Ondine Quartet Book 4) (59 page)

It was difficult. The silencing spell’s current had grown stronger, power jittering inside me with no where to go.

I could no longer avoid the inevitable.

I took a few deep breaths then headed for the Governing House.
 

Julian, Cam, Alex, and the other chevaliers were with Gabe at the Training Center, finalizing tomorrow’s formations.

I needed to speak to Aub and Chloe before heading to my final appointment at the cove.

A lithe figure emerged on to the garden path, moving with precise elegance.
 

I smiled. “Thought you had to pow-wow with your father this afternoon.”

“I had a little time before he arrived and wanted to see you.”

He kissed me. I leaned into him, breathing in his familiar smell and taking comfort in the hard strength of his body.

Those who stayed behind to fight had bigger things to worry about than our relationship.

Since Haverleau’s evacuation last week, he and I had been able to openly share moments like this and they had become some of my most treasured memories.

Magic writhed in my veins. I dropped my forehead against his chest, tensing against the discomfort.

“The spell is worsening.”

“It’ll get better once…” Pain spiraled up my arm. I exhaled. “It’ll get better.”

Worry had cut a deep groove between his brows over the past week. Every moment between us had acquired a bittersweet urgency.
 

He didn’t say anything, but I saw the question reflected in his eyes every time we tumbled back on the sheets, bodies sweaty and satiated.

He sensed the desperation, the edge with which I clung to him. It added to his fear, to his helplessness but there was nothing I could do.

With each touch, each brush of his mouth against mine, I felt the cracks in my heart widen.

“Are you heading back?”

I shook my head. “I have a few more things to take care of tonight.”

“You’ve double-checked and triple-checked. Don’t push yourself too hard.”

I attempted a smile. “Careful. Don’t want the gardinels hearing the Warrior Prince advocate unpreparedness.”

“Everyone is as ready as they can be.” His palm cupped my face. “We’ll get through this.”

I could almost believe him.

Dark eyes scanned my face, searching for answers I couldn’t provide. Finally, he leaned in and pressed his mouth against my forehead.
 

“I’ll see you tonight.” His thumb brushed my cheekbone. “I love you.”

He walked away, his tall form soon disappearing among the garden’s lush hedges.
 

It felt as if my chest were being sliced to ribbons and it had nothing to do with magic.

“Don’t,” I whispered.

The plea drifted, a silent sigh absorbed by the blooms and leaves.
 

I drove through empty streets, my car’s squeaks an eerie screech in the silence.

My Council Chamber appeal had only resulted in a dozen more ondines and demillirs.

Everyone else fled as soon as evacuation began.

I parked in a charming cul-de-sac on the northern edge of Haverleau. The Moreaux house sat along the curve, a stately mansion with classical, Corinthian columns, painted white and black with red accents.

After graduation two weeks ago, Aubrey and Chloe had moved into the house Chloe had inherited from her parents.
 

I marched up the steps and knocked sharply.

“It’s open.”

I walked in.
 

Aubrey sat on the floor, surrounded by crossbow bolts and
kouperets
. Chloe sprawled on the sofa behind her, platinum hair spilling across the beige material like liquid sunlight.

Just a year ago, they’d both joked about traveling and leaving Haverleau once they graduated. Now they sat amid a pile of lethal weapons, preparing for battle.

Chloe smiled. “Thought you’d show up sooner or later. You ready, ass-kicker?”

My throat tightened.
 

I wanted it to stay like this. Just like this. Forever.

Aub raised her brow. “You look like you just saw one of Alex’s new sweatshirts.”

I managed a smile. “I did. It’s horrific.”

“Are you double-checking everything?” Chloe straightened. “I’m meeting with Michael and the others in an hour to get a sense of lighting at our assigned positions.”

I nodded. “This isn’t about that.”

Sweat dotted my forehead. Magic churned, screaming to get out, to set into place the decision burning through me.

But there were two more things left to do.

This first.

Aubrey gently swiped a
kouperet
blade with a soft cloth. “What is it?”

“I spoke to Jourdain,” I said, hesitant.

They stilled.
 

“I wanted to see if she could change the recall process. Reverse it.”

Chloe leaned in. “And?”

I shook my head. “The only way to reverse the recall process is if someone chooses to return to an ondine life.”

“You mean after they’ve returned to the waters as a dessondine?” Aubrey asked.

I nodded.

“That’s impossible.” Chloe’s face fell. “You told us Renee didn’t remember anything. How can you choose something you don’t remember?”

“I know. But maybe there’s a way.”
 

Things were progressing as smoothly as could be expected. In recent weeks, the greatest surprise had been the ondine training program.

I liked teaching. I liked seeing them improve day by day, how their eyes lit up when they surpassed their own expectations.

Maybe because it reminded of why I was fighting.

Why I had to make an impossible choice.
 

I took a deep breath. “If you taught ondines that the way out would be by making a choice once you got down there, wouldn’t that change things? They might not remember who they are or their life up here —“

“But there’s a chance they will.” Aubrey’s eyes darkened with something I hadn’t seen in a long time. “If they hold on to that knowledge, cling to it during the recall process —“

“There’s a possibility they’ll still remember once they get down there,” Chloe finished. “And they’ll choose to return.”

I nodded. “It’s a shot.”

And a far better one than any ondine ever had.

“Why are you telling us this?” Chloe asked.
 

“Because if she doesn’t make it she wants to make sure we know,” Aubrey said shrewdly. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

“Aub —“

“I promise.” She met my eyes. “I promise it won’t go to waste.”

Chloe’s mouth tightened, but a moment later, she nodded.
 

It wouldn’t be for me and Tristan. It wouldn’t be for countless other ondines.

But it only took one.

The smallest ripples have the power to create a tidal wave.

I stood and gestured. “Can I borrow one of those?”

Surprised, Aubrey handed over the
kouperet
. “Sure. What happened to your blade?”

“It’s just for an experiment.” I headed for the door. “I’ll give it back tomorrow.”

“Kendra.”

I turned.

Chloe’s face was somber. “Be careful.”

You, too
.

A sudden lump rose in my throat. I nodded and quickly exited.

The sun dipped west and the wind picked up, stirring the tides.
 

A restlessness had settled over Haverleau as if the ocean and sky knew we balanced on the cusp.

With each step up the rocky bluff, the brand on my chest grew warmer.

The windows of Nexa’s cottage remained shuttered. Since our meeting the previous week, I hadn’t seen her. Maybe she’d already evacuated to one of the other communities.

A brief pang of sadness echoed in my chest. It would’ve been nice to see her before she left.

The brand pulsed as I headed down the stairs carved into the rocky cliff.

He waited for me along the water, a startling figure on the exposed beach. The golden grains and turquoise waters were a far cry from the lush foliage and cool darkness of his home.

“I expected you sooner.”

“Time is nothing more than a mirage dancing upon waters. It is never what one expects it to be.”

Enormous bear claws dug into the sand. Waning light cast pink and lavender hues across his silvery scales.

“You called me to you,
sondaleur
. Why?”

I looked at him. “The first prophecy.”

No pain, no unbearable ache.
 

I knew it.

“You created the silencing spell. It’s your magic.”

I’d recognized it when I collapsed in the cottage. It was the same touch of magic I’d felt when I touched Brigette and Nexa.

I’d also sensed it with Rhian, right before she died.

First…and…last

She’d tried to tell me.

“I don’t understand why.”

If I hadn’t figured it out, Nexa and countless others would’ve continued dying without being able to tell me the truth.
 

Why prevent others from sharing knowledge? Why deliberately hinder our understanding and ability to reach the end?

“I am not of light or dark. I am neutral, independent of time, of the constraints of elementals and their world.” He ruffled his wings. “Prophecies are both a gift and a curse. The magic Jourdain has endowed ondines with has the power to heal and harm. It is my duty to make sure it doesn’t tip either way. When the first prophecy was made, the war had already begun. The Shadow had corrupted the blade I once created for him.”

His voice rumbled with irritation.

“The prophecy was made and it altered the landscape of war because it predicted the win would come from an ondine. But what if in an attempt to end the war, the prophecy was forced to become true? If someone manipulated events into a certain sequence, or forced an ondine to become something she is not?”

“The future changes.”

A murmur of agreement. “Jourdain came to me. She believed in her ondines. She believed one of her children would end the war. He did not feel the same.”

I’ll bet.

“What they did agree upon was their desire for the war to be ended fairly. It could only be completed by a match of equals. I agreed.”

I shut my eyes. We were pawns among three immortal beings in a game that had played out over centuries.

“I cast the spell so that the prophecy could only be fulfilled by its natural course. And the end would be written only when a true balance, a true equal had emerged and the war was ready to come to a close.”

It had taken countless generations to reach this point. How many people had sacrificed their lives, their families, for this?

I opened my eyes. Beastly topaz eyes were focused on me. “You have yet to write the ending.”

“An end cannot be written without understanding the beginning,” I said softly.

“A wise decision.”

“That depends on who I choose. The Shadow told me the truth I seek is in who I am.”

He didn’t reply.

I removed the
kouperet
I’d taken from Aubrey and held it with my left hand. With my right, I removed my dagger.

Empath pulsed.

My Virtue flooded the blade until it glowed with the same light blazing around the
kouperet
.

The two blades were identical. The only difference lay in the handle.
 

The
koupert’s
ivory handle gleamed with a pearly sheen. My blade’s black handle glimmered with possibilities.

Two paths. Two results.

“My dagger’s hilt is onyx. It conducts energy doesn’t it?”

Adrian first mentioned it in the Selkie Kingdom. It was why I could channel my Virtue through the handle into the blade.

Valeil simply dipped his head in response. A terrible awareness settled in.
 

“Was that why my father came to see you?” My voice trembled. “Did he know?”

“Your father belonged to a long line of weapons makers.”
 

“So he knew —“

Valeil swooped forward, his jaw hinging open to reveal a coiled flaming tongue nestled within rows of serrated teeth. Heat razed my skin.
 

“He believed there was another way,” he growled.

The last piece of the puzzle clicked into place.

The truth I’d spent a lifetime running from and had dug into my mother’s grave to find.
 

Now bared and exposed, so blindingly obvious, that I wondered why I had never seen it from the start.

The choice is not in the what. The choice is in the why.

Tristan’s words from a previous moment echoed and I suddenly understood.

My parents had each held a piece of the puzzle.

My mother had believed in one path. My father, another.

She’d known what it would take for it to be done. And he’d known how.

I stood, between the memory of both, faced with an impossible choice.

“Do you know,
sondaleur
?” Valeil peered at me. “Do you know who you are?”

I did.

And because I would need his help, I told him who I was, the truth I would inscribe into the book belonging to ondines past, present, and future.

For long moments, he stood there, his hideous face starkly illuminated in the setting sun, every grotesque detail and revolting feature blatantly visible.

I remembered the pristine perfection of the sky and sand of Fontesceau shining over the lost and forgotten.

The gilded marble of the Governing House and Council Chamber housing petty insecurities and cowardly self-absorption.

Perfect beauty could be so ugly.

But his mish-mashed face and monstrous body was not.

It was a miracle from every part of this earth, an immortal flying endlessly along the horizon, a silver sun always in search for its one moment of freedom.
 

He was beautiful.

Day began its final descent to the sea. Another moment, another snapshot.

Time was the greatest immortal of all. It stretched infinitely into the horizon, uncontrollable, and serving no master.
 

So many have tried to bend its will, but have stood helpless as it continued its relentless march forward.