Silence: Part Two of Echoes & Silence (52 page)

The whispering voices grew louder then and I closed my eyes for a second, opening them again to a great valley, wide and golden with the setting sun. I could feel the bark of a tree at my back, my heart leaping when a cold hand touched my belly, and the bright, innocent face of Eve appeared beside me.

“The apple is the key,” she said, her ghostly voice echoing like a memory. “Wake up.”

As my eyes flicked open again to the darkness of predawn, my hands against the gristly rock, I drew a long breath, shaking off the memory. “The apple is the key.”

“Soul bound by blood? Or blood to bind a soul?” Lilith said softly, appearing in her pink, ethereal form at the cross section of the clearing, one hand wrapped comfortably across her chest, supporting the elbow of the other. In her hand, she held a pale yellow apple, looking it over with thought as she said, “The apple is the key, you say. Intriguing.”

“What does it mean?” I asked, dusting my knees off as I stood up. “I don’t understand.”

“My dear, I come not to answer your question. I have come here, on this dark new day, to welcome you.”

“Welcome me?”

“You have faced your final trial—brought life into this world, and as you became a mother, one of God’s most holy creatures, you awakened to your birthright. Your name is now forged among the stars.”

My nose crinkled. “What does that mean?”

“It means, simply, that you are ready now to take your position among those who protect this Realm and the Next.”

A memory of a previous conversation hit me as the word ‘awakened’ sunk in. “As the Mother of Eternal Life?”

“The Freer of the Damned, The Light, The Seeker of the Lost, The Guardian of Immortal Souls. You will have many names, all of which mean one thing.”

“I walk the Fog of Purgatory—retrieving the lost immortal souls, and bring them back to the River of Life to be reborn.”

“Then you remember?”

“I do,” I said with a nod. “But… I can’t. I mean, my baby—” I motioned over my shoulder—back in the direction of the manor. “I need to—”

Lilith smiled softly at me, a slight sympathetic quirk to the corner of her lip. “I understand perfectly what is at stake right now. After all, this child is my great-great granddaughter.”

I was about to correct her, and say that both me and my baby were far more removed than that. But we weren’t. Lilith was, in fact, Drake’s grandmother—my great grandmother. We were a lot closer than I realised. “How come you never told me he was my father—after all the time we spent talking?”

“It would have put you in danger to know and, at that time, you were not ready to hear it.”

The tension in my shoulders trickled out with a hard breath. She was right. If they’d told me back then, I might have tried to murder Drake, and I certainly would have yelled it from the rooftops—told everyone just how awful it was that he was my real father. And then, as news spread, Safia would have learned, and I would have been in danger. So, too, would my baby. And my father.

“One day, you will come to realise that everything I do, everything I have done, is for the greater good of my bloodline—both those of the past, and those that will inherit the earth,” she explained. “I know there have been times when you did not trust me, perhaps even hated me, and there are times I’ve given you cause to hate me—” she looked at my ring finger, where I still bore the Mark, “—but you must know that I only ever mean well.”

“For the bloodline,” I stated crassly. “Even if that means killing me—or the child Anandene.”

“Even then. And I am sorry. Had the child been the evil witch instead of a soulless vessel, I would have taken her life—”

I turned away.

“And I do not hold it against my son for trying to do the same. She is still a threat, even with her new soul. However,” she added when I huffed, “his betrayal—his role in seeing you harmed and seeing your innocent child meet this world before her time—is unforgivable. And—” Her deep, echoing voice trembled, “—for the first time in his entire life, I am ashamed of him.”

I moved over and took her hand to comfort her, feeling the solidity in a different way to what I was used to. It felt warmer, somehow more real, like seeing the landscape scenery a picture was based on for the first time. “David will want to kill Lord Eden when he finds out.”

“And I would not blame him if he did.” Her fingers warmed slightly then and curled around mine. “Now—” She patted the back of my hand. “I have something for you.”

“What is it?”

She held up the pale yellow apple again, moving it toward me. “A promise I must keep.”

“The apple.” I looked from its matte surface, glowing slightly pink within her light, to her deep-set eyes. “Is that what my dreams meant—the apple is the key?”

“Not this apple, my dear Seeker.” She turned my hand over and laid the warm fruit against my palm. “This apple is Knowledge.”

I considered it sceptically. “And this will show me how to save my daughter?”

“It will show you a great many things, Seeker. If you ask the right question.”

Before she could say another word to convince me, I swept the apple to my lips and bit down. The juice popped from the flesh and spilled over my lip, wet and syrupy against my dry tongue.

As I swallowed it down, my head grew and shrunk back in quickly, the world spinning fast around me.

“What’s happening?”

“Sleep, Seeker.” Lilith’s voice echoed. “And when you wake, it will be with the knowledge of the gods.”

My eyes flung open then, wide and fixed on the dawn sky. I pushed up from the ground I was suddenly lying on and moved my gaze to Lilith. “I know what to do.”

She walked toward me, one foot laid gently in front of the other, and offered her long, elvish hand. “Then you must begin. Time grows short.”

I took hold of it, noting in the second we touched how cool her skin was now. “I know. But…” I hesitated. “It showed me something else—something I was…
born
to do.”

“And you must do this now?”

“I need to.” My eyes absently moved toward the Stone of Truth. “The apple—the Fruit of Life—it will restore power to a dying Crux.”

“A dying Crux,” she said, smiling, her voice carrying all the knowledge she’d clearly just pieced together from that one sentence. “The apple holds the key.”

“Yes.” I grinned.

Lilith’s eyes moved slowly to the Stone as well. “Do you remember what lies beneath that stone prison?”

I nodded. “I do.”

She turned her whole body to face it, as if seeing a godly creature for the first time. “The fruit of that tree is the purest, most unadulterated element of Nature. One bite and a man should live a thousand years. One sip of its juice and a dying man can return from the brink of his end.”

“One drop of its juice on a dying Crux, and the spirit bound to it can walk back along a spell from the Fog of Purgatory, and return to the earth.”

“And I could not imagine a more fitting or more perfect little soul for your daughter than my precious Eve.”

We both smiled, but as I turned my heel toward the Stone, Lilith reached out and grabbed my wrist.

“Wait,” she said, her voice short with a sense of urgency. “I see a path for her—shaping, moulding, even now as we speak.”

“What is it?”

“Unlike your soul being bound to your body—a gift from one living being to another—Eve will be brought back into this world by unnatural means, bound only by that object. Her soul is not connected by both your blood and that of the child’s father—”

“But neither is mine,” I cut in. “I have a Spirit Crux.”

“No. Your soul
is
connected. The crux is there purely to guide your soul when it becomes disconnected. And it shields you; to any other being, or creature, it looks as though your soul was born to your body. We cannot see the difference in your aura.”

“So that’s how you can tell? The aura?”

“Yes. And your daughter will, as far as Nature is concerned, be an abomination—an unnatural occurrence—and it is my duty as the Mother of Nature, of all Life—to warn you that she will be
seen
, and she will be hunted—crux or none.”

“Hunted?”

“An immortal soul becomes a singular entity when they are submerged within the Fog of Purgatory; they are ripped from their soulmates. Do you remember when I told you that they scream for their mates?”

I nodded.

“Eve’s mate has moved on—reincarnated. When you create a new pathway, as you intend to do—giving her soul to a body that is not her own, or not connected by blood—she will not pass through the Rivers of Life and connect with another soul. She will not have a mate, as you do—a likeness—and therefore, she will be an anomaly, upsetting the balance of all Life. Two parts to everything.” She joined both hands in demonstration. “Two sides to every coin. Where there is good there is bad, and so on.”

“So she’ll be hunted? All her life?” I recalled then what Lord Eden said to me just weeks ago—about the Soul Takers.

“Yes.”

“But there’s a way to protect her—hide her from them, isn’t there?” I asked, my eyes narrowed at Lilith as I stepped toward her. “You wouldn’t have told me this if there wasn’t.”

“There is a way.” She smiled softly, her cold eyes showing more warmth than I’d seen in a very long time.

“How?”

“Choose a mate for her. Choose a soul already bound to this earth—one that crossed by natural means. And bind her to that soul.”

“Bind her? You mean… you want me to choose who her soulmate will be?”

“Yes.”

“But, isn’t that wrong—writing her fate? Choosing her destiny? And what about the mate that other soul might already have?”

“It will, from that moment on, have two soulmates—as you do.”

“But that doesn’t seem fair. What if that soul is happy with their mate, and my decision—”

“You will only choose the soul that will ground her to the earth. The rest will be determined the moment she takes her first true breath of life. From that point, if she is to love this soul or simply connect with them, it is out of your hands.”

“But… who would I choose?”

“I cannot tell you whom to choose. But choose wisely, whomever it may be. For this soul will not just be her Guardian—shield her from the Soul Takers—it will also influence her.”

“How so?”

“If you choose a good, kind soul, she will feel love radiate from that being like a reflection—she will liken herself to this. But if you choose a cold, bitter soul, she will be tainted by that. She will eternally feel incomplete.”

Making a choice to fight for her life had been the easy part. Choosing who she would one day possibly love was impossible. And unfair.

Were she not his niece, Jason would have been the easy choice—he was kind and good and I knew he would take care of her.

Then there was Mike. Again, kind, and a good solid foundation for any girl to love. But he was my best friend and there was too much history there.

So many friends had come into my life in the past few years and so many were good and kind. So few worthy of my daughter. So few I hadn’t actually loved at some point.

Except for one.

“I know who to choose.” I looked up from my distant memories into Lilith’s deep wells of ancient knowledge again. “Now what?”

“When you bring her soul back to this Realm, speak the name of her new mate into the words of the incantation—picture him, feel him in your heart—and his fate will be written in the light of that power, coiled around hers. The child will be bound to Eve by the crux; Eve’s soul will be bound to the crux by the blood that already flows through it, and the soulmate will be bound to the soul by Light.”

“And she’ll be safe?” I asked. “My daughter will be safe then?”

“Being that the soulmate is bound to the soul, not the body, she will need to wear her Spirit Crux. Always. But, yes, she will be safe.”

“Right.” I nodded. It wasn’t perfect, but it would have to do—for now. “Then I guess I had better figure out how to free the magic beneath that Stone.”

“Lay your hands upon it,” Lilith offered, moving away. “And the rest will become clear.”

My uncertainty mixed with the hope I felt from the ground beneath my feet, as if all Life moved through the veins of the earth, carrying with it the wish of the power that lay beneath.

I settled back down onto my knees, my hands against the Stone of Truth, and searched within my heart for a way to set it free.

The Stone felt warmer than usual, maybe even hot, the temperature building under my fingertips, forcing beads of sweat out onto my palms. But I didn’t want to let go—to move away. I could feel it shifting, feel the rock changing beneath my hands, and by some call of instinct or maybe something more intrinsic, I did actually know what I needed to do, even if I didn’t outwardly know it. It felt like playing a song I’d played a hundred times: I didn’t need to think about what to do; I just needed to do it.

I could hear a voice in my mind—maybe a distant memory. I focused on it, smiling as I saw myself by Winter Falls, with Jase: