Page 124 of Bright Soul

I met Geo’s eye, tilting my head in suggestion. They deserved some privacy.

Keshora intercepted me before I took more than a couple steps.“Wait. Braza spoke highly of you…Cress. She’s not with you?”

“I’m going to go looking for her,”I said, hitching my thumb in the direction I felt our fraying tether pointing. With a nod, she fell into step with Geo and me.

It wasn’t a long walk, but I kept shooting glances over my shoulder, knowing from some hazy secondhand memorythat it was a death sentence to stray too far from others in the Void. Keshora kept me occupied with questions, fitting in some pieces she’d missed by dying before the Age of Decay.

She keened with pain when I told her how Braza had died and of the desperate decision made to sustain her by making her a powercore.“She sacrificed herself for us. No wonder I felt her the moment I woke…it was a fraction of her magic that revived me,”she said.

My eyes filled with tears as we closed in on where Braza was and spotted her lying there. What had once been a hearty connection bolstered by her nearly endless pool of energy was nearly nothing because the half of Braza I’d carried wasliterallyhalf of her now.

The Hungering Darkness had bisected her messily, cutting her soul from hip diagonally to her opposite shoulder. She had one wing and one arm like this. Her soul was still black and purple shadows, the jagged wound less ghastly with the details obscured.“You came for me,”she whispered.

“Oh my god, Braza,” I said in English, sinking to my knees beside her. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea you were sacrificingeverything.”

“Would you have stopped me if I told you?”

“Yes! At least, I would’ve told you to save some for yourself. Anything but this.” I took her hand in both of mine. Hot tears trickled down my frozen cheeks. “Let’s get you back to Phaeron. He has the other half of your soul…maybe there’s a chance…”

“Allow me,” Geo offered, bending slowly and offering his steady arms for the task. I clued a distressed Keshora in on what we were doing and she helped me lift Braza into his hold. He carried her while I tried to calm her mother with reassurances that I wasn’t sure were true.

It seemed pretty certain that Braza was fading. Her black shadows were looking more like gray vapor, and the purple was sparsely intertwined with it.

Sensing my distress, Phaeron met us halfway with Ravai and the broken scale. Ben tagged along as well, holding me frombehind to share body warmth. He was nearly too hot to the touch…I must’ve been more chilled than I realized.

“The scale is in two pieces. Could it hold both halves of her?” I asked desperately.

Phaeron tapped the larger piece of scale. Out flowed the bottom half of her, in the same drained state. Worse, actually, with her legs and tail flickered in and out of sight. “If Lucas were here…” he muttered. “She just needs some energy to stabilize her.”

“Can anything be done for her?”Keshora fretted.

“It is my time. But I cannot feel the next life…”Braza whispered. She watched souls winking out of sight around us.

Phaeron answered Keshora with,“She gave away too much. All of these souls moving on around us do so with her energy. She’d need at least…well, two sparks returned. But that will deny two souls the next life.”

Ravai gasped, exchanging a glance with her mother.“It has to be us.”

“Ravita, no,”Phaeron said immediately.“After everything you’ve been through, you deserve paradise.”

“Mother, he told me he has a plan to return her to life. To living, breathing life. We could do this for her. She sacrificed so much for everyone else…”She looked past him to her, clasping her hands together.

“What’s happening?” Ben whispered.

I explained the argument in English as Phaeron grew more dismayed. Keshora was nodding, moved by Ravai’s plea.“There’s no way for you to go to the next life if you do this,”he put in.

“There’s no way for them to move on to the next life,” I echoed.

The air stirred beside me in a way I was intimately familiar with by this point. My birth mother took form andBen gasped. I guess in the Void, all spirits were visible, as he’d never seen her before this moment. “Is the problem that they don’t have someone to show them the way?” Eris asked, uncharacteristically solemn.

“It’s a matter of energy, Mother,” I said.

“Well, I have plenty of that.” She smiled over at me, distinctly bittersweet. “It is time I moved on, dear one. I could think of no better way to go than in helping others…if they will let me.” Keshora was eyeing Eris with suspicion.

Phaeron and I spoke at the same time. He invited her over to try, while I blurted, “Are you sure?”

In reply, Eris hugged me. I stepped away from Ben, letting my birth mother hold me as an adult for the first and only time. More tears leaked out of the corners of my eyes.

Eris said, “You are the core of a mating circle. I watched you defeat a goddess. Yes, I would say I fulfilled my purpose here…to help you.”

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