I laid my hand to the Stone and felt it reach up, felt the life force inside it move to the blood on my palm and draw it away. “Take me home,” I whispered my hot breath into the rock. “Free me from the binds of this world so that I might save my people—save the king.”

I waited, imagining for a moment how Jase would react to my letter, imagining how relieved he’d feel. I knew relief wasn’t what I’d be leaving behind, but after some time passed, I knew everyone would see that this was for the best. One day they would come to understand why I did this. I’d failed at so many things, and for once in my life, I would die getting something right.

“Auress,” a ghostly voice said.

I didn’t need to look up. Didn’t need to see where She stood. I could feel her beside me, feel her touch on my skin. I closed my eyes and smiled. “Mother.”

“Young Auress, defender of all natural things, protector of this realm. Why do you seek to free yourself of your claim?”

I placed my other hand to my bare chest. “I broke him. I hurt him deeper than any soul should ever hurt, Mother. I can’t save his heart, but I at least owe him his life.”

“A wise decision, young goddess. But not the only path that was laid at your feet.”

I nodded. “Yet, it’s the one I’m choosing.”

“And what of her?”

“Her?” I asked, trying hard not to open my eyes.

“Your child.”

“There is no child.”

I felt her touch become warmer, almost as if I could feel her smile. “Would you still want to die if I told you I foresee a child in your future?”

I swallowed, my bleeding hand stinging now, going cold as the connection to the earth flickered, fading. “David won’t give me a child now, and even if he did, I can’t stop Drake from taking her, not if he lives.”

“Ara!” A desperate voice hollered through the dawn shadows, stealing the tranquillity for a second.

I turned my head and looked for the mother, but there was only warmth there where I imagined her. “Hurry,” I pleaded. “Take me now before they come.”

“Ara!” It called again, and beyond the fog I saw faces, sharpening and taking shape before my eyes: Mike, Quaid, Emily, Arthur, and Jason.

“Grab her, Mike!” Emily cried.

“Don’t!” I ordered, my voice coming through my lips in a deep, almost baritone whisper. “Only an Auress can enter here now. You’ll die, Mike.”

“Ara, please,” he begged, taking a step closer.

“Don’t touch me.” I aimed my finger toward him, the command of my voice stopping him in his tracks. He looked down at his feet, trying to move them, but they wouldn’t shift. “I’ve made my choice,” I said, searching their eyes as my gaze travelled over each face. “This is the only way.”

“Ara?” Jason stepped into sight, reaching out to me but not daring to come close. “I read the letter. I know,” he said, his eyes holding the weight of everything I told him. “I know, okay, and you don’t have to do this.”

“I’m the only one nobody will miss, Jase.”

“Oh, Ara.” He dropped quickly to a squat, covering his mouth. “Please don’t think that way. You matter to me, okay. More than anything in this world, sweet girl, and I’ll die without you. You can’t go.”

I turned back, laying my other hand on the Stone. “It’s already done.”

“No!” he cried, and my heart skipped a beat when Arthur sternly said David’s name, telling him to do what he had to do.

I could feel David here with me then—feel him connected to the earth through me. But it didn’t matter. None of them could touch me. None of them had the power. I was completely wrapped up in the hands of my maker, already wedged between this world and the next.

I focused harder on my hands, feeling my wrists and arms go through and touch the world on the other side. And it felt like magic, like a warm, happy feeling right in the centre of my chest. Every problem I ever had just fell away then, like petals off a dying rose, making me laugh for that moment. We all took things so seriously there in that world, and as I looked upon the other realm, I realised as deep as my soul was living, that on this side, nothing mattered—not the past, not our mistakes, not our failings as humans, and not our regrets. Here, we were all just life without consciousness.

“Ara?”

I looked down to the cool, familiar hands wrapping my ribs—smooth against my pale, naked skin, and both of us stared for a moment, open-mouthed as the black Mark of my betrayal faded under his touch, bubbling and reseeding back into my body. “David, let me go. Please.”

“You can’t go, Ara. I need to take you back.”

I looked up from his hands at the blue light surrounding my body shining across his face. “One of us has to die.”

“And it’s not going to be you,” he said. “You have a responsibility to your people.”

“They’re your people now.” I turned back to the Stone, readying myself for the last breath.

“Right. Now, we do this my way,” David growled, and the skin peeled suddenly from hands, detaching at the elbows as he tore me away, my own cries of agony drowning out the horror in those around me.

“Let me go!”

“No.” He cradled my body to his, carrying me from the circle of light to the darkest patch of forest by the trees. I screamed for the searing in my arms and soul—feeling it snap back into my body like a sharp elastic band. I couldn’t breathe, couldn't get a grasp on this realm—slipping between death and life intermittently.

David dumped me on the ground and stood back.

“What have you done?” Arthur cried out, falling to his knees, his hands hovering over my body.

“She was too far gone.” David stood above me, a shadow in the now red light of the Stone’s protest. “I had to rip her from that world.”

“You’ve left half the girl’s goddamn flesh behind,” Arthur yelled.

“She’ll survive,” David said calmly.

I shuddered, feeling my soul connect completely with my body again, making the agony real—fiery, like Hell had risen through the crack in the gateway David left open, and now ran fury among my limbs. “Make it stop,” I cried, folding in on myself. “Make it stop.”

“Move.” David pushed Arthur and Emily aside, and bent down to pick up a rock; my eyes followed his hand to the rise above his shoulder, closing as the stone came down bluntly across my head.

Long, dark hair wavered along a breeze I couldn’t feel, the pale pink dress, like torn threads of ancient fabric, weaving and waving with a life of its own from her delicate, feminine form. Her warmth spoke her name to a place inside me where faces were not identifiers of those we know, but rather the ‘knowing’ that showed us who we were by seeing those we were familiar with.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“In the world beyond thought,” the mother said, showing me all that surrounded us—just a foggy white world with no ground or sky to show up from down.

“Am I dead?”

“No. You will wake soon to a room of people who love you—people who refused to let you walk with me.”

“I’m sorry.”

She tilted my chin upward. “You must not be sorry, child, for anything. You are a great and wise queen, and you have done those before you proud.”

I smiled softly. “Really?”

“I know it comes as a shock to you to get something right, for once, but everything you have done up until now—all the good and the bad—has been written in the stars, Amara. Your spirit had much to learn.”

“So it was all a lesson? Everything? The suffering, the—”

“As it is for all God’s creatures.”

I shook my head for a second or two, remembering suddenly what she told me before I crossed over. “You mentioned a child.”

“I did.” Her lips closed, her eyes shrinking into a pleasant smile. “She will bring an end to everything that began centuries ago, and we have gone to great lengths to preserve that future for you, Auress—called on the mightiest power of nature to ensure its survival.”

“Survival?” I frowned. “What do you mean?”

Her hand moved slowly across the space between us and landed on my belly. “You will see soon enough.”

“When?”

“Once you open your eyes, your world will change, and you will walk a new path now, child—one you are finally ready for.”

“How do you know I’m ready?”

“You faced many truths in coming to the decision you made this morning. Each one of those showed us how much you have truly grown into the woman we hoped you’d become. And, one of those truths, as fate would have it, has set you free from a bind you tied yourself in.”

“What bind?”

She removed her hand from my belly. “Your greatest gift in this realm is the heart, Auress. You betrayed yourself, your birth right, and your crown by denying it.”

“Denying it?” I thought for a second, then rolled my eyes, keeping them closed after. “Jason.”

“It is a sin against God to lie to those you love, but an even greater sin to lie to yourself.”

“And what is the lie, Mother? What did—”

“You want to love him.” She shook her head, a smile warming her whole face. “You do love him, and you cannot deny this any longer.”

“I don’t deny it. But I don’t have to accept it.”

“No, you do not. You, like all God’s creatures, were born with the gift free will. But, Jason’s love is a gift also, and you can do with it what you wish, however, you must not hide the way you feel.”

“So, I need to admit it to him?”

“You already did, and you admitted it to yourself. Now—” She presented my waist, “you are free.”

I looked down and slowly lifted my top, but she stopped me.

“You are blessed in that your soul is not bound to one eternal love. You can bind yourself to any soul you see fit. You will not spend your life seeking that significant other in order to find peace. But do not waste this blessing on lies. Live for those you truly love—the ones who truly deserve your love in return.”

“And what about David? Is he blessed with a free soul—one that has no significant other?”

She shook her head slowly.

“Am I. . .” I touched my chest. “Am I his significant other, his soul mate?”

“Yes.”

I turned and went to cry into my hand, stopping with the warm touch of the mother on my shoulder.

“You must not cry for him. For, if you do, you must shed the same tears for the other who is tied to you.”