48

Amelia was lying with her back pressed to the floor, in one of the many rooms she now inhabited. Her mind was creating scenes to keep herself occupied, and her senses happily played to its command.

It was November. The small two-storey house, built with so much effort and will, refused to bend under the force of the heavy snowfall. The weather forecasters had it wrong. Heaps of snow blocked the village, so Amelia’s parents couldn’t come to pick her up. She would stay a few days longer with her grandmother.

Heaven! Every night, her grandmother would take her to the most comfortable bed in the house – an old and squeaky blue metal frame with a hard mattress – and tell her a story about bravery. After that, Amelia would fall asleep and have the same dream.

The Lonely Prince, she called him. He was proud, with a noble bearing. He lived in a magnificent castle and owned everything a prince could ever desire, but his bright green eyes, speckled with yellow crescents, were always gloomy and pensive. Sometimes, as he stared out into the night through the tall window in his tower, their colour would intensify and turn golden.

The first time she saw them shift, Amelia woke up screaming. Eventually, she got used to their changes. And with time, she grew so attached to him that she couldn’t wait to fall asleep and see him again, longing to touch him and ask him about the reason for his sorrow. But he could never hear her. That was when she made a promise to herself. When she was old enough, she would travel the world until she found the Lonely Prince’s castle and saved him.

A soft, low chuckle escaped her throat. She couldn’t believe she had forgotten him, after all the times she’d dreamt of him as a child.

She wondered if it was another memory of hers that she had suppressed in order to dump the pain. Because she had ached for him. And the more she hadn’t been able to reach him, the more torture it had caused to her soul. Yet, subconsciously she had always been searching for him.

Finally, Amelia understood why the Oracle had given her all the dreams of Mikhail – to answer her questions about him. Sadly, the understanding came too late. She couldn’t save him, because he didn’t want to be saved.

Suddenly, her vision blurred into whiteness. Amelia stretched an arm out to touch it with the other one. Her skin was ice-cold, even though she was on fire.

She struggled to find her footing in the white fog. Where am I?

“At the crossroads,” a thick male voice replied, causing her entire being to fill with warmth.

This was not a familiar voice, yet the billions of particles inside her crashed into each other with joy. She lost sensation, with no idea if she was sitting or lying, flying or falling.

“Who are you?” Amelia asked and she was that child once again, impatient for the next fairy tale her grandmother would share with her, the next dream about the Lonely Prince.

The voice spoke again, seeping through to every fibre in her body. “The Creator.”

“Creator of what?”

“Everything.”

A smile spread across Amelia’s face. She wanted to laugh from the happiness she felt. “Why am I so joyful?” she asked, suspicious of the positive emotions that had swooped over her like unexpected summer rain.

“I lifted the curtain that was burdening you,” the voice explained, “but now I shall return it.”

A flood of memories crashed into her. Relatives she barely knew, tapping her on the shoulder at her family’s funeral. The realisation that she would never see her grandmother again whenever she felt heartbroken struck her. Mikhail’s face, filled with loathing.

“Please, take them back. I don’t want them,” she cried.

“I cannot do that, Amelia,” the voice said in a fatherly tone, its deep rumblings similar to her own father’s calming voice.

“Why? All they bring is suffering.”

“Because without them, you are nothing.”

“Let me be nothing, then.” She wanted to stay here forever, wherever here was, with that inexplicable feeling of happiness, without a trace of her past.

“You cannot accomplish everything I have destined you to do without those memories. They have made you who you are,” the voice said sternly. She wondered how she could convince him to let her be nothing. “Despite that, I will offer you a choice. I always do.”

Hope churned inside her.

“Amelia, do you want to live or not?”

What kind of question was that? “Well…”

“If you decide that your work is done, as soon as our conversation ends, the aneurysm in your head will burst and, a few hours later, somebody will discover your dead body. Following this, all of your memories will be erased and you will remain in a state of constant happiness. I have to warn you, however, that constant happiness offers no room for improvement and it is very likely for you to get bored.”

“I have a brain aneurysm?” She shivered. “And who will find me?” She imagined that it would be Mikhail.

The Creator laughed. “What difference does it make?”

“None, actually…”

Faced with that choice, death suddenly didn’t seem as beautiful and freeing, as she had envisioned it to be for her dying patients.

“If you decide that you wish to live, you will accept life as it was designed for you. With the memory of everything that happened in your past and alacrity for all that is to come. And yes, your aneurysm will disappear.”

Amelia took a deep breath. “Am I allowed to ask a question?”

“I would expect nothing less.”

“Why did my family die?”

“So you could know pain and suffering. They will be essential to your journey.”

That’s it? Amelia could not believe it. “So… they died for me?” If that was true, she had no desire to live anymore. Not at their expense.

“I can sense what you are getting at, thus I will rephrase – they volunteered for you. If it had not been for you, they would also never have existed.”

She stared into the thick white fog. ‘ Patience, little seeker. Sometimes you just need to sit back and observe quietly.’ This was not one of those times.

“Why am I having visions of other people’s memories? Did the Oracle give them to me?”

“Some of them, she did.”

“Those of Mikhail?”

“Ah, yes, Mikhail… Something about him calls to you, does it not?” There was a pause, but before Amelia could decide what to make of his words, the Creator’s tone became stern once more. “Amelia, the clock is ticking. You are at a crossroads and you have to choose your path, because now it is time for your answer. Tell me, Amelia, do you want to live, or do you wish to die?”

“I’ll live.”

I’ll live!

“Then I have a task for you.”

The words echoed in her ears. The white disappeared.

She was regaining sensation in her body, floating in the air… She would fall as soon as Katherine let go of her hand.

“I will wait for you!” Katherine yelled. Her face twisted with dread when their hands untangled.

Then Amelia fell. She knew already that when she met the ground, she wouldn’t die, but burst into a billion pieces, held together only by her skin. And it would hurt a lot.

The seconds before the end were the most exciting moments in her life. Why, as she neared her death, did she feel reborn?

I thought I chose to live…

Three hundred and twenty, three hundred and ten, three… Counting. Counting kept her sane. It wasn’t that different from anything else in her life. No different from an exam coming up, her next goal, another challenge.

Her body hit the ground. The scream that burst out of her soul halted before it could be heard. There was nothing left inside her body to release it. She had crashed into pieces. Only, very soon, she would put herself together once more.

Someone stood above her. A beautiful face, a pronounced jaw, ice-cold eyes. Danger.

This time, however, he wasn’t here to kidnap her. He was here to save her.

Her. Amelia.

But also…the Oracle.

In the reality of her room, Amelia was vaguely aware of something changing in the air. A realisation floated in her mind. I’m seeing the Oracle’s memories… But right as it did, another flash hit her.

She didn’t know how long she had lain on the ground. When she regained her vision, darkness surrounded her. No, not just darkness – the abyss.

Then she sensed the end was close when she woke up in a Hospital room, hooked to machines. The clacking of a pair of heels counted down her last seconds. When the noise stopped, her time was over. The poison spread through her arteries, blessing her cells with the longed-for death.

Gea.

That was the name her parents had given her, and the name with which she would meet her end.

Gea died.

Amelia opened her eyes wide. The crisp scent of winter pierced through her senses. She jumped to her feet and walked to the window, eager to glimpse the mountain with her new sight.

But the blizzard outside concealed the view.

***

Zacharia pulled out a heavy chain holding a cluster of keys. Mikhail had tossed them at him, ordering, “Go and bring Amelia some food.”

Zacharia didn’t enjoy shoving his nose in other people’s business, and even less so when someone tried to drag him into theirs – especially if that someone was Mikhail Korovin, whom he had been serving loyally for years. He didn’t need a supernatural sense of smell, nor hyperintelligence, to recognise that the case had come to exceed the manticore’s aspiration for life-saving.

“I have an urgent meeting with the Council. I can’t go now… And I suspect Amelia has a health problem. You are the only one I trust,” Mikhail had explained, passing him a box of food along with the keys. As if he couldn’t have postponed the Council meeting by fifteen minutes.

But Korovin was avoiding the human, which meant that whatever was going on between them, had headed south. Which led Zacharia to believe that the woman would be upset. And he hated dealing with crying women…

Well, a job is a job.

The last floor resembled a fortress. The lift required a chip to unlock it, and the door could only be opened by entering a ten-digit code on a digital panel. Multiple locked latches concealed the staircase that began in the lobby and extended to the heart of the tower. Padlocks secured both ends of the wing where Amelia resided. A metal bar and an additional lock obstructed access to the opposite wing.

Zacharia struggled with inserting the keys into the double door. Succeeding on the fourth try, he marched down the hallway. A noise guided him to a slightly ajar door. When he walked through it, Amelia was staring out through the only window, her back to him.

“I’ve been expecting you,” she said, still not facing him.

She probably thinks I’m Mikhail.

“I came to check on you, Miss Amelia.”

“I was informed someone will come.”

Probably Mikhail informed her? Zacharia inspected her blonde hair, her back. Something was different. The air was heavy with a new smell.

Amelia turned to him, and his nostrils finally deciphered a familiar scent. He sniffed again and narrowed his eyes. “You carry the energy and scent of the Oracle, but you’re not the Oracle. Who are you?”

Amelia’s lips curled. “I am the Oracle, but I prefer you still call me Amelia.”

Zacharia stared into her deep blue eyes. For the first time in a long while, he couldn’t decide on a plan of action. Whoever the woman before him was, she was not human any more.

He would have almost preferred a crying woman over this dilemma. Scratching his temple, he debated what to do, while the silence between them stretched…and stretched.

Does Korovin know about this?

“I know you saved the Oracle from her death,” Amelia said. “You’ve always been special to her.”

Her words seemed strange. The Oracle, the previous one, had never even spoken to him, not before or after he’d found her half-dead, all those years ago.

“Zacharia, I need to go to the Council meeting…”

He hesitated. “Let me warn Mikhail.” The manticore probably didn’t know anything about what was happening, because he would have warned Zacharia. It was… huge , after all!

Amelia held up a hand, shaking her head. “He wouldn’t understand.”

“I think you underestimate him. I’m convinced that he’ll be very understanding,” Zacharia said, and took out his phone. No, he really won’t. Mikhail would freak out when he heard about this.

But what could he do? Just take Amelia to the great hall and introduce her as the new Oracle?

“Zacharia…”

He lifted his gaze to Amelia and met her silver-white eyes. The Oracle’s irises.

She spoke smoothly, “If you call Mikhail now, he will dismiss the meeting and rush up here, prohibiting me from telling the creatures what I am allowed to. The chosen ones will not complete their missions. The defeated will stay forever lost and the corrupt will prevail.”

Zacharia put his phone back in his pocket. Like it or not, she sounded very convincing…

A thousand fucking devils!