Chapter Sixteen

Immensely tall, billowing smoke, my mom's dragon form stands tall amongst the destruction she brought during the change. Her pointed, horned snout lets loose a beam of fire into the sky, and her powerful wings launch her into the air. She's huge, vicious, and pissed off beyond all belief, her mind shattered and broken by what she had to do, by what she lost.

In that moment, she's nothing more than an animal, and it takes years for her to recover even a small shred of herself.

I blink, and suddenly I'm back at the edge of the crater. It's like I never went down to the undercroft, never stepped foot in its darkness or saw any of those memories. The undercroft's door is gone, nothing but pulverized earth below.

I have to lean on the wall to keep myself upright. My mind races with what I learned. Krotas was pregnant with me when she and the other empresses took a stand against Invictis. They kept him under wraps, hoping that, by separating him, the woes would stop and they would save Laconia.

They were wrong. They were so, so wrong, and now what's left of the kingdom is a shadow of what it used to be.

And my mom… she did love me. She didn't want to send me away, but it was the only thing she could think of to do. She didn't know my dad would die and I'd be left to basically fend for myself. She didn't know I'd be alone.

Krotas never wanted me to be here, in Laconia. It should've been impossible for Invictis to bring us here. But Invictis is stronger than the empresses, that much is plain, so even with her severing the threads that connect our worlds, it wasn't enough to keep him away.

Empress Krotas is my mom. She's the freaking dragon that's saved me twice now. The first time we met, when that shadowstorm raged, she mustn't have believed her eyes. Maybe she sensed Invictis and thought he took over.

The more I think about it, the more heartbreaking it is, and I don't know how I'm supposed to handle this information.

The memories. The feelings. I felt what Krotas felt in those moments. I know exactly what she was feeling when she said goodbye to me. I spent my whole life thinking my mom abandoned me, that she didn't love me and pawned me off on my dad without a second thought… but I was wrong.

I was so, so wrong.

All I can say is, "Oh, my God." It's all too much for me. I need a moment to think, to lay down, to… to accept the truth.

I'm an empress's daughter, but that doesn't make me an empress. That shouldn't automatically mean I have magic and can inherit all of the empresses' powers. It still doesn't make sense.

The sound of a dragon's cry splits the sky like thunder. It is not the snarl of an animal in the midst of an attack. The opposite: the sound of a creature giving up—and it sounds as if it came from the front of the castle, where she portaled me here.

I push off the wall and retrace my steps through the broken castle, walking as fast as I can with the wound in my gut. The world around me spins; it's growing more and more difficult to push forward, to act like I'm fine. My hands are cold. I'm… I think I'm losing too much blood. My stomach is on fire, and at the same time it's like I'm slowly getting submerged into ice.

It's not hard to retrace my steps thanks to the blood that dripped off me and fell onto the floor. I follow my trail back to the entrance of the castle, and the moment I step out of its massive front doors, I see a sight that nearly stops my heart cold.

Krotas lays in what, at one time, must've been a well-kept garden. Her wings are tucked tightly against her body, her massive frame slouched to the side. She's bleeding all over, dark blood, a stark contrast to the greenery around her. The sound she makes when her angular, slit eyes spot me is a sound that brings tears to my eyes, a low, dull whine of a sigh that tells me just how tired she is.

She caught Invictis off-guard once. She wasn't so lucky this time.

I hurry over to her, stumbling as I walk, needing to be there. Wanting to help her. I barely make it to her reptilian face before I fall to my knees near her shimmery eye. I swear, in my mind, I hear Krotas say, " Aurelia. I'm sorry. "

What can I say to that? What can I say besides, "Mom?" The word feels strange on my tongue. Anytime I ever said that word, it was to curse the imaginary woman who abandoned me. But here I am, kneeling beside Krotas—my mom—seeing her for who she is for the first time.

Invictis's monstrously deep voice fills the sky above us as his golden form appears, his six-winged figure blocking out the sun's rays, "How touching. A family reunion. I truly did wonder when you would figure it out. Took you long enough, truly."

I can't tear my eyes away from the dragon, from my mom. Still feels weird to call her that. All I can focus on is the way her slit, metallic eye stares back at me.

It's inside. I can feel it: the withering away, the slowing of her breath. I know what's coming, and that's why I can't stop myself from leaning over her snout, tears beginning to fall from my eyes. I hold onto her even though the position hurts my stomach. The grip I have on her is a vice, a death grip, and I don't want to let her go.

"You'll get better," I say, although I'm not sure who I'm trying to convince. "You can't leave. There's so much I want to talk to you about, so much I—" My voice cracks, and I shut my eyes.

"Rey." It's my mom's voice, but it doesn't sound like it's coming from the dragon.

I open my eyes to find I'm no longer hunched over the dragon's head. I'm on my own two feet, staring directly into Krotas's eyes. Her human eyes. The world around us has stopped; even Invictis in the sky hovers without a single movement. To my right, I see the body of a dragon and the body of a girl hugging the beast's scaled face.

Us. That's us, which means this must be in my head. A vision or something. Maybe one last show of magic on my mom's behalf.

When I bring my stare back to Krotas, I whisper, "Mom." The word still feels wrong, like I shouldn't be saying it. All my life I thought the woman who was my mom didn't deserve to be called a mother; how could you be a mother when you forsake your child?

But she didn't. She was doing what she had to. She thought she was keeping me safe.

Krotas wears the same flowing robes I've seen her in before, though her figure is much smaller inside them—you know, since she's not pregnant with me anymore. Metal plates are fixed to her shoulders with straps. In the sunlight, her hair is more of an auburn color, a light, warm brown graced with red, long enough to fall well past her shoulders. She wears no added jewelry, no crown.

She smiles at me, and I can hardly breathe. Krotas lifts a hand, her bare fingertips brushing along my cheek and then tucking my hair behind my ear. She studies me like it's the first time she's ever seen me.

"My Aurelia," she whispers, her voice luminous and faint, like she's halfway gone already. "You are more beautiful than I ever imagined." Her hand falls away from my face as she sighs. "If only fate would have been kinder to us."

There is so much I want to say. So much I want to talk to her about, but I don't, because I know we don't have much time. As I look at her, I can see her figure fading, becoming less tangible and less solid.

"My sisters and I could not win this war. We did what we could. It is up to you now." Krotas's lips tug in a faint smile, and she leans in to me and presses her mouth on my forehead, giving me her blessing and what's left of her love. As Krotas fades away before my eyes, the last thing I hear her say is, "I love you. You are so much stronger than you know."

And then she's gone, and when I blink again, I'm back inside my body, with a bloody wound on my gut and nothing but an empty space in front of me, where my mom's dragon body used to be.

"No," I whisper, falling forward, barely catching myself on my hands once I realize she's gone. My bloody hands curl. There's nothing but mashed-down grass and dark blood where she used to be. I got my mom back only to lose her right away.

I'm alone, more alone than ever.

Although, that's not entirely true. I can feel her inside me, just like I can feel Gladus and Morimento. Their magic in me combines, twists, and collides to form something new.

But together they stood no chance against Invictis. What hope do I have? I'm mostly dead already—and besides that, I'm so fucking tired. More tired than I've ever been in my life. I just want to close my eyes and…

Invictis lands on the ground, a few feet in front of me, but I'm too busy wrestling with inner demons to pay him any attention. "All the empresses of Laconia are now dead," he tells me, his voice deep enough to give me goosebumps. He waits a moment before saying, "Is this the part where you say, They might be dead, but I'm not and I'm going to beat your golden ass ?" He mocks me, pretending to be me with gusto, but I still can't look at him.

My body is bent over, my head down. It hurts so much. I can't… I just can't.

He chuckles. "Well? If you want to be the hero, Rey, you must get up and face me. Let us finish this! By killing you, I will be one step closer toward fulfilling my purpose here. You will die knowing those fools in Laconia will meet their end with no champion in sight to protect them."

Everyone wants me to fight. They expect it. The empresses, my mom… fuck, I've been fighting my whole life, and I've never gotten a break before. I've never just sat down and given up.

That's what I feel like doing now. I'm cold. I hurt all over. I have a literal hole in my gut. I just found out who my mom is, and then I lost her. How much can be pushed upon one person before that person decides they had enough? How much can one person take?

I roll onto my side, facing away from Invictis. I don't apply any more pressure to my stomach. Everything I pushed my body to do since getting stabbed is weighing on me now, and it's getting hard to breathe. Nothing like the weight of the world to make you feel more helpless than ever.

If three empresses could not defeat him, what hope do I really have? How many times did I say I'm no fucking hero, that I don't want to be one? I'm not. I haven't changed. I'm still the same me, just with more scars.

"Get up," Invictis growls out. "Stand and face me." He wants a fight. He's a weapon, so that's not surprising. Getting up and facing him, trying my hardest to fight him and win; it's what everyone else wants me to do, too.

But I never asked for any of this. I don't want that kind of responsibility.

"No." The word leaves me with a soft groan as I roll onto my back. Through slits, I can see the blue sky. I suppose there are worse things to see during your final moments alive. "Just finish it already."

How can I get up and fight him when the weariness is in my bones? When my body is cold all over and I feel like sleeping for an eternity? How can I fight him when I know it in my soul: I've given up?

I hear the crackle of magic to my left, and though I can't see what he's doing, I assume he's summoned some blinding ball or spear of magic to end this thing.

What did everyone expect? I'm not a trained fighter. I don't know how to use magic. It's a miracle I got this far. It doesn't matter that I'm the daughter of an empress; I saw what happened to Morimento's son. Sometimes the fight is useless. Sometimes there's nothing you can do when the odds are stacked against you. Winning is impossible.

What is it Invictis always said? He is the inevitable. I always thought he was wrong, that he was too haughty, but look at us now. I guess he really is the inevitable destruction of everything… even me.

Invictis grunts when he slams whatever it is down, and I close my eyes in anticipation of how it'll hurt. Or, hell, maybe it won't because I'm already halfway through death's door.

But it doesn't hurt. Not even a little, so I open my eyes and roll my head to the left, where a sizzling blade of light sticks into the dirt a few inches away from my face. My gaze is sluggish in traveling up the blade—something very similar to what he stabbed me with back in Acadia—and rising to his golden, faceless head.

All I see is a halo, and I smile up at my angel of ruin. "You missed."

As the blade of light fades into nothing, Invictis flexes his metallic hands. Whether that's because he's barely holding back or because he's imagining ripping me into half a dozen pieces, who can say?

The last thing I see before my eyelids become stone is Invictis's tall frame kneeling beside me.