Breaker (Ondine Quartet Book 4) (54 page)

The history ondines were taught about the necessity of mating and binding were lies, buried beneath more lies.

Like the waters deepening around me, it was growing progressively difficult to believe in what elementals were fighting for.

The waters gradually darkened, the blue transforming to an inky black. I approached the bottom of the ocean, following the trail of magic.
 

The first dessondines emerged from the boulders, their ghostly visages haunting against the dark. Thick hair drifted around them like kelp, the webbing beneath the fingers and toes appearing almost alien.

Jourdain rose from a bed of sand and coral, magic radiating around her in a visible aura of immortal power.

I stopped a few feet away. The last time we’d met like this in the Selkie Kingdom, she’d nearly drowned me.

My skin prickled as her intrusive magic prodded inside me. I used the same technique from the confirmation ceremony and carefully lowered an armor around me, keeping her out.

Her head jerked slightly. “
Sondaleur
. Is there a reason for this visit?”

I have questions. Do you and the Shadow bind together at the end of the war?

“Yes.”

I shook my head.
Why?

“As light above, so dark below. The balance shall be restored.”

The words Original Magic told me during my trial for Governorship.
 

It was like knowing the last page of the story, but not knowing how to get there.

The Shadow would be returned to the sea. He would be bound to someone he’d vowed to destroy.

Why?

Realization dawned. Because I couldn’t kill him.

Destroying him was impossible; but another immortal, his equal and opposite, could hold him.

“Binding is a means of restoring order. I hold him here so he may never rise again.”

But if you are the one that holds him, why not do that now? Why do I have to end the war?
 

“I do not have the power to bring him to me.”

And the sondaleur does.

No response.
 

I tried another tactic.
You told me my mother came to see you while I was still inside her. She wished to know whether I was the sondaleur. Did she also ask how this war would end?

“Yes.”

And what did you tell her?

“I told her I did not know. The end was not yet written.”

Nexa had said the same thing.

And now?

Black, unblinking eyes bored into me. “That is an answer only you can provide.”

Then I choose to tell elementals the truth.

“About what?”

Everything. The origins of this war, what happens after it’s done. They deserve to know the truth.

“Truth is inconsequential.”

According to whom? To you?

She drew herself up. “You are a child. Choice is nothing but a meaningless speck in time.”

The words sparked anger.
 

I wasn’t a child. I hadn’t been one in a long time.
 

I was no longer the powerless child who stood alone in a gym, exhausted and afraid, training until her entire body was numb because it was all she could do.

I’d once believed myself small and powerless before her. Not anymore.

You know who also said that?
I moved closer.
He did. He said choice was nothing more than an illusion. Maybe you two aren’t that different after all—

A wave of magic punched into me sending searing pain radiating through my bones.
 

Anger flashed hot.
Go ahead! Burn me. Kill me!

Jourdain’s mouth opened into a screech, an inhuman vibration. Her face elongated, fingers curling into claws in the water.
 

Her form no longer resembled the human body; she became a beast, pure animal and primal instinct.
 

You can’t .
Triumph flooded my veins. I knew it.
You can’t because you need me. To end this war and —

She yanked power away, magic’s abrupt absence like a sharp kick to my head.

I tumbled back in the water a few feet but quickly righted myself and moved back.

She wasn’t getting rid of me that easily.

I pressed forward, ignoring the sparks raging around her form.
 

Ondines are no longer children for you to push around at your whim. We are our own people. We have established ourselves on land and —

“I created you. I gave you magic.”

Then release us!
We have fought on your behalf for hundreds of years. We have given you our lives, the lives of our children, our parents, our family.

“You are my children. You belong to me —“

I belong to no one!

She turned aside, floating toward a wall of coral. Dessondines fled, their heads lowered in fear.

I followed her.
He also said his Aquidae belonged to him because they were his children. You are no better than him.

She whipped around. Magic snapped at my skin.

“How dare you?”

I floated closer.
I am the sondaleur. You need me to end this. If you want me to do so, you will listen to me.

I was what Jourdain wanted.
 

I was what she needed to end this war.

I was the one with power.

“You have no right to —“

I have every right. Either you answer my questions, or I will simply walk away. I won’t fight and I’ll leave you to figure out how you will solve this mess.

She froze. “You cannot
.”

Watch me.

I swam away, trying to control the wild beating of my heart. I was in Jourdain’s territory. If she lifted one of her creepy little fingers, she could crush me underwater.

But I was gambling on the fact that she couldn’t. Risking her best chance at ending this war would be foolish.

Intense energy pressed against my back, her magic threatening to ram inside me.

Empath’s steady current continued maintaining a shield around me.

If she wanted to invade and force her way through, there would be nothing I could do to stop her. But right now, it acted as an effective temporary barrier.

“What is your question?”

Schooling my features, I turned.
Two questions.

I floated back until I was a few feet in front of her.

Her mouth tightened. She tilted her head and watched me.

“What do you wish to know?”

The first ondine was an Irisavie and her Virtue was Empath. I want to know who the first Clairvoyant was.

“The first Clairvoyant came from the family of the people represented by the white wave. “

Genevieve.

I briefly shut my eyes. Of course.
 

“What else do you wish to ask?”

Tell me how to reverse the recall process.

No answer.

I opened my eyes. Jourdain had floated closer, close enough I could see myself reflected in her glossy onyx eyes.

“You sought your friend once she had returned to her home here.”
 

Renee’s blank face swam before me.
Yes
.

“You are tasked with ending this war. Why is this so important to you?”

Because fighting for one person is what makes fighting for the world so important.

“There are many things about mortality I do not understand.”

Tell me how to reverse the recall process.

“It cannot be done. You are who you are. You cannot deny what your heritage demands from you.”

There has to be a way.

Magic governed the process, but it wasn’t a natural process.
 

Originally, ondines had been free to mate as they chose. It was only when war demanded more soldiers that Jourdain created an ultimatum ensuring the continued existence of the demillir race.
 

She’d created it. If any loophole existed, she knew about it.

You’ve taken many ondines.
I remembered Renee’s suspended form in the ocean.
Ondines who did not deserve to be pulled back to the waters.

Magic rudely pushed against me, greedily probing for the truth.
 

“That is not the reason you ask.”

I didn’t respond. But I also didn’t bother shutting her magic out.

She drifted closer. “You ask for yourself. For you and the Warrior Prince.”

You need me to fight this war for you. I need to fight for myself.

“Why him? Of all the mates you could choose up above, you choose a selkie married to land and sea.”

I stared at her for a long moment.
Has it been so long that you have forgotten why this war began in the first place? What you risked everything for?

She began to float away. “If one of my children deems it so, then the process will reverse.”

What do you mean?

She loosely gestured at the groups of dessondines surrounding us.
 

“If a dessondine asks to return, I cannot interfere with free will. Magic shall grant their desire and shall never again demand the same from future ondines. The entire process will end.”

That’s impossible.

The recall process erased all memory of our life on land. The conversion to immortality wiped away our concept of time and memory.

I remembered Renee’s blank expression, her fear and instinctive desire to pull away from me.
 

Fury raced through me.
Dessondines don’t remember being ondines! They won’t be able to make that choice —

“That is the only way.” Jourdain turned away. “I have answered your questions,
sondaleur
. I expect you to keep your end as well.”

But —

Magic whipped around me in a torrent of energy. One moment, Jourdain and her entourage floated before me, pale specters in the inky water.

In the next, she was gone.

By the time I returned to the Council Chamber, a deep frustration had taken root.

Everything was connected.
 

If I could solve one of the questions hounding me, the solutions to the others would come together. I was certain of it.

Everything always came down to the prophecy, the words spoken by my mother, written and preserved for the ages, that connected me to the Shadow.

The end cannot begin until the first is completed.

The Shadow’s message hadn’t ended there. Scabbard said I’d been given all the answers to uncover the truth.
 

The Lyondale attacks also contained a clue I couldn’t see.

Scabbard said it wasn’t about the what or why. It wasn’t about the who, either. The attacks had nothing to do with my presence and different individuals had been involved in each one.

That only left where, when, and how.

The attacks were too precise to be tossed aside as ones of convenience. Scabbard and the Aquidae didn’t randomly choose Silk or the elemental wing.

Had the locations themselves been the target? If so, then the how was simple. They’d watched those places until an appropriate opportunity presented itself.
 

That would explain why all the attacks took place at different times of the day, on different days of the week.

Which muddled the question of when. No pattern existed in time or day.

The Shadow didn’t think of time in the same way we did. As an immortal, his concept was something much broader, grander in scope.

Whether it was my mother’s grave in San Aurelio, or our time at the GrandView, the Shadow had directed me toward my past.

How did these locations fit into the timeline of my history?

The answer clicked into place.

All of them were firsts.

The Shadow had attacked the hospital, Club Axis, and Silk.

The hospital was where I’d first come into being, where I was conceived.

Club Axis was where I’d first met Bastien.

Silk was where I’d first met Gilroy and discovered the truth about my closest friend, Ian.

First.
 

The end cannot begin until the first is completed.

The end can only be written by you.

First.

The last is found in the first.

I halted.

Brigette had been the last clairvoyant.

We’d protected her so she could give us the last prophecy.

But what if the last prophecy had already been made a long time ago?

I changed course and headed for the grand marble steps leading up to an imposing set of ebony doors.

***

An inevitable sense of déjà vu colored the moment.

Jeeves stood beside me in the Royal Gardens, white roses blooming around us like a wild mass of fellow conspirators.

He handed over the heavy iron key. “We did this once before.”

“A lifetime ago.” I tilted my head. “Have you read them?”

As the first Clairvoyant, Nexa’s ancestor - Jeeves’ ancestor -
 
had given the very first prophecy.
 

She was the first to record her words, the magic that flowed from her lips through her hand, a mysterious mix of the indefinite poured into the definite.

The Genevieves were guardians of that legacy. Nexa knew what was inside that room, something she was bound to keep from me.
 

Jeeves had pursued a very different life as chevalier, but had ultimately become my grandmother’s Chief Counsel and right hand. It would make sense if he knew as much as Nexa and Rhian did.

He shook his head. “I’ve been inside the prophecy room a few times, but each visit was brief. I’ve never touched the books.”

“Why not?”

All Council members technically had access, though few felt the need to go to it. Redavi rarely cared for the larger movements of our people.

“It’s not my place to enter. That room, those prophecies, are the voices of ondines and belong to them.” He paused. “I feel it.”

The subtle resonance of magic reverberated off the key and into my palm. It was the same old magic trailing the halls of the governing House, an energy accumulated throughout history and linking multiple generations together.