Page 60 of Ruined Kingdom

“My dear Sophia. You are strong enough for this. You only need to discover what it is you must do.” She held my face in between her hands and forced me to look deeper into her eyes.

They were like infinite universes of light and darkness. I could only catch small glimpses here and there of everything she was seeing. I could only imagine how exhausting it must have been to be privy to all the ordeals of man and beast.

“What must I do?” I heard myself asking, desperate for any guidance.

She pursed her lips in regret as she shook her head. “If I tell you, it alters the end. The purpose changes. Everything falls out of line, and you all fail. I cannot let you fail.”

She was trembling, which frightened the hell out of me. Why would a Goddess be shaking as though she was terrified of something?

I frowned at her, wanting to ask her to tell me what scared her so, but her urgency made me forget the question.

“You are integral to the survival of the Forest of Sorrows and the mortal world as you know it. The Dark Fae King brought you to Kaine, thinking that it would allow him the ability to destroy him. He never expected, however, that you would fight back.” She spoke as if she was inspired and excited about it.

I, on the other hand, was riddled with apprehension. “I'm going to need more than them underestimating me this time around if we are going to defeat them.”

Helene brought my head forward and kissed the top of it.

Out of the blue, I was able to see a vision as clear as day, as if it was happening right in front of me. I would have panicked had Helene not held onto me.

Before me, I could see Kaine transforming into the corrupt beast like before. Only this time, there was nothing of Kaine left in its yellow eyes.

I didn’t know how I came to this conclusion, but I knew he was permanently transformed now.

This is my reality if I fail. The Dark Fae will win, and Kaine will lose his soul.

Helene pulled her lips away from my forehead, and the vision dissipated.

My heart was pounding in my ears.

“A sacrifice of love is to be made for goodness to prevail,” she whispered, and a tear fell from her eyes that mirrored the one that fell from mine.

All of a sudden, the moonlight disappeared as if someone had cloaked the window.

I looked to see that the full moon that’d been hanging in the sky was now gone.

Not a second later, the Library door opened, and Kaine walked in.

“There you are. I should have known you'd be here. You missed the moon. It was really magnificent this year.” He walked up to me and grabbed my hand, but his smile faded as he realized that I was shivering. “Soph, what's wrong?”

I let the silence stretch between us but eventually said, “Nothing.” I gave him one of my most winsome smiles as I rubbed my arms. “Just cold, I guess.”

He took off his jacket and threw it over my shoulders, planting a kiss on my cheek as he did. “Come, my love. Let’s get back to our friends.”

16

SOPHIA

“Excuse me, have you seen Lexi?” I asked the sixth maid that I passed, but no one knew where my friend was.

I was beginning to worry. It’s been a few days since the night of the Taking, and I haven’t seen her around the castle much. Lexi was my best friend, my solace, the one who always found a way to look at things from a fresh perspective—and that was exactly what I needed the most right now.

I’d been tossing and turning, brooding actually, after Helene’s visit the other night, unable to get the vision and the words she’d left me with out of my head. And I had much less been able to figure out what it was that I needed to do to prevent that awful future.

Kaine had been very busy with patrolling the forest with a small regiment of his lately. He left early in the mornings and came back late at night, mostly just collapsing in bed, drawing me into him and falling asleep instantly.

Which was a relief, in a way. He’d been too absent and exhausted lately to pick up on my tumultuous thoughts, giving me a bit more time to try and figure things out without having to add to his worries by telling him about the premonition.

But I was running out of time, hence my urgency to find Lexi. Even Sharra’s no-bullshit approach to things would be a major help right about now, but now that I thought about it, I hadn’t seen her around much either.

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