Page 202 of The Stolen Throne
The arms around me definitely loosen. Almost there. Just another try.
“Release my grandnieces!” Omma commands the king with a power far greater than hers.
“This grows tiresome.” Anger laces the king’s words. “Pass on my regards to your ancestresses.”
What?
My eyes flash open just in time to see him slash a hand through the air, and a scythe of shadow slices through Omma, severing her head from her body.
A hole of loss gouges me with so much pain, it’s like being ripped apart.
Flashes of memories flood my mind. Memories I didn’t even know I had of Omma. Nice memories. Her laughing as she chased me along the banks of the Hyades River when I could have been no more than three summer solstices old. A small light of pride in her eyes as I was readied to take Tabra’s place for the first time. The small honey cake she bought for my sixteenth name day—the day we enter the age of reason. And more. All tiny moments that by themselves, at the time I never thought amounted to anything.
I was wrong.
Over the images is the sound of her voice that night in the water garden telling me words she had never once spoken before—I loved you every single day.
Words I didn’t believe then. Didn’t believe until right now. When it’s too late.
If Shadow wasn’t holding me up, I don’t think I’d still be upright.
Omma is…gone.
He killed her with hardly a thought, the parts of her strewn across the field of battle like discarded game pieces.
In the wake of the gaping hole of loss that leaves inside me, fear floods in.
I have to face this—the king and his Shadows and his ghosts—alone.
86
Desperation
He killed Omma.
Reaction riots inside me—fear, shock, horror—but I don’t have time to give in to any of them. Because Eidolon turns back to Tabra.
His body quakes hard. Not just with the effort of trying to force my sister’s power to break his goddess mother out of her prison, but killing Omma like that might have tipped the scales. How is he still standing?
Yet, the amulet the king is holding remains whole. Unbroken.
Then suddenly my sister’s eyes roll back in her head and both their lights douse. The darkness wrapped around Tabra lets her go, and her body flops to the ground.
“No!” Eidolon shouts.
“Tabra!” I screech. I’d run to her, but I can’t move. Can barely get enough air into my lungs to yell. Everything we’ve gone through these months was for nothing. He killed her anyway.
Anger explodes through me, obliterating the fear and doubt, pain fueling the burn.
That asshole killed Tabra and Omma. I have no more family left. No one.
A stark laugh bubbles up and bursts from me. I may be doing this on my own, but the king doesn’t hold all the cards. I hope that murdering bastard chokes on failure and dies.
The renewed glow from Eidolon’s hands is so soft, at first I think it’s coming from my sister. That she’s woken up. She’s fighting.
But it’s not her. He lifts his hands as the darkness slowly lifts Tabra back up, her head lolling forward.
She’s not dead. I can see her breathing.
