14. The Prince

14

THE PRINCE

H e was dreaming, his mind a swirling maelstrom of fragmented images and half-formed thoughts he couldn't grasp the threads of, but one image pierced through the fog of confusion, clear as if it was seared into his mind's eye—luminous eyes staring into his as if their owner knew him, knew who he was while he did not.

Could she tell him his name?

Was she the Mother of All Life?

Oh, that was a cohesive thought. A memory. He remembered the Mother. All was not lost.

Had the Mother come to escort him to the fields of the brave?

No. He did not deserve entry.

He had failed.

At what?

He could not remember but felt the failure like a crushing weight on his chest.

If she was the Mother, she came to escort him to the valley of the shamed.

But if she was not the Mother, who was she?

The question echoed through his mind like a relentless drumbeat. It drowned out all other thought fragments.

Who was she?

Who was she?

Who was he?

He had no name, no sense of who or what he had been before the awakening inside a dream. The very concept of identity seemed to slip through his grasp like water through his fingers, leaving him adrift in a sea of uncertainty.

Perhaps he was dead and no longer possessing a separate identity. Maybe he was a part of a larger whole.

Voices murmured around him, hushed and urgent, but their words were little more than a garbled hum to his ears.

Did hearing spoken language mean that he was not dead? In the afterlife, talking was unnecessary because everyone was connected, and thoughts floated on the ether like sparks of light.

Where had that idea and the imagery come from?

A memory tickled his mind, but it was like trying to hold on to a tendril of smoke.

It was no use.

He did not know.

He strained to make out the meaning of the words spoken next to him, to latch on to some scrap of context that might help him piece together the shattered fragments of his reality, but it was no use. The harder he tried to focus, the more the sounds seemed to slip away, fading into the distance like a half-remembered dream.

He tried to open his eyes, to force his way back to the waking world and the answers that surely awaited him there, but his eyelids refused to move. He felt as if they were weighted down by some invisible force that he lacked the strength to overcome.

Panic began to rise in his chest, a clawing, desperate thing that threatened to consume the precarious connection to his consciousness.

Concentrating, he tried to feel anything, but even though his mind did not register any sensations, he still felt a connection to a physical form. Was it an illusion? Or was he trapped, a prisoner in his own unresponsive body?

As fear threatened to overwhelm him, the sense of failure from before reemerged, forcing the fear for himself to a secondary position in his barely functioning mind. It wasn't for himself that he feared but for another.

For her.

Sister .

The realization hit him like a bolt of lightning, a sudden, blinding flash of clarity that cut through the haze of confusion like a knife. He had a sister whose face he could not conjure and whose name danced just beyond the reach of his fractured memory. But he knew with a certainty that defied explanation that he had failed her.

He had vowed to keep her safe, but his promise had been worthless. It had shattered like glass upon the ground.

He had a sacred duty that superseded all others, and he had failed. He failed her, himself, and whoever had entrusted him with his sister's safety.

He wanted to scream, to plead with the Mother to give him another chance to fulfill his duty, but his voice remained locked within his chest, a silent, impotent cry of anguish that echoed only in the confines of his mind.

Despair washed over him in waves, a cold, numbing tide that sapped what little strength he had and left him feeling hollow and utterly alone. He had no idea where he was, no concept of how much time had passed since he had last drawn breath. All he knew was the pain of the all-consuming guilt that gnawed at his soul.

As consciousness began to fade again, he clung to the one scrap of memory that remained, the one thing that tethered him to a world he no longer understood. A pair of intense golden eyes staring into his own with hope and some other emotion he couldn't decipher.

Whoever she was, that female was his lifeline, his beacon in the dark.