Page 50 of Bright Blinding Ruin

“There wasn’t always three,” I whisper.

She shakes her head. “No, there was not. Before the three, there was one, just as there will be one again.”

I know what she’s implying. Me. She’s sayingI’mthe new high empress—but that’s just insane, isn’t it? I mean, I’m still in denial about the fact that I could be a general empress. But to say I’m thehighempress, as in the one and only? Seems like a lot of pressure.

“Before I knew it, Laconia was prospering. My people had spread and multiplied. They were my children, each and every one of them.” She inhales sharply. “But I did not sense the darkness resting beneath this land. I did not know what destroyed everything before my time here. I did not know that a being beyond my comprehension was waiting to unleash its full strength once again.”

“Invictis,” I whisper.

“It did not have a name in my time, not one that I knew. When it showed itself, when it proved itself a worthy adversary, it gave itself its own name: Invictis, the undefeated. Its only purpose was to destroy. Its origin a mystery still. Perhaps it is simply a symptom of a land so full of resources and bounty, a way for Laconia to renew itself. I did not know, but I did know it was my responsibility to defeat it.”

The woman goes on, “But it was the undefeated. It was more powerful than I could ever have imagined. The aether connected me to the land, and I knew it was time for the cycle of destruction to be broken… but it would not be broken by me.”

“So what did you do?” I question.

The woman turns away from me. The door to the library opens on its own, and she walks inside. I trail after her. We walk through the library; it looks much like it does now, only with different books and an older, musty scent.

The key difference between this library and the one right now in Laconia? This one doesn’t have any shelf covering the entrance to the undercroft—or the great chasm. Whatever you want to call it. The door to the undercroft is open before us, but we don’t go in.

She stops just before it, facing me as she says, “I did the only thing I could to shackle the creature. I could not defeat it on my own. All I could do was separate it, and when I locked each piece of the beast inside the darkest parts of the labyrinths I created,I put a spell on each one. Unless Invictis was whole, he could never attack Laconia again. As another safeguard, I made it so if it was released, it would be bound to the will of that person.”

“He was set free by people from another kingdom,” I tell her. “They were the first ones to die.”

The news doesn’t surprise her. “I knew it was only a matter of time before Invictis was unleashed again. I could never defeat the creature on my own. In shackling it and weaving the spells upon it, my time was over, but before I surrendered to the aether, I took that part of me and tore myself in three, just as I did to the creature. One high empress became three, and so it’s always been… until you.”

I shake my head as I say, “But how am I supposed to beat him? You couldn’t as one. And when your power was separated into three, they couldn’t, either. All they could do was tear him apart again and lock him into three soul gems. Nothing has changed.”

The look the woman gives me makes me feel scrutinized, like some kind of science project on display. “But it has,” she says. “Everything has changed. You were born of my power, Rey, but you are from another world—a world I could not have imagined.”

“So, because I’m not from here, I have to be the savior?” It’s enough to make me roll my eyes. “I still don’t get how I’m supposed to save the day when I have no more power than you or my mom and the others.”

She says nothing to that, though she does turn and venture into the undercroft. I watch her figure be swallowed by blackness, and even though I don’t want to follow her, I know I have to. With a groan, I push in after her.

The moment I step through, it’s like I’m in another world. I stand on a platform surrounded by thick, viscous aether, yes, but it’s so much more than the other undercrofts. The aetheris brighter, and it runs like a river around the stone platform the first high empress and I stand on. It’s like we’re in a deep cave, with nothing but the white light of the aether to illuminate the vast space around us. No magical torches, no black sky. Everything glows.

“Rey,” the woman speaks as she stands before me. “Can’t you feel it? It is not as it was before. Things are different indeed. You were never only a girl from another world. You were always so much more.”

“I don’t understand. How can there be more? I don’t get it—”

The woman’s lips tug into a slight smile. “Haven’t you always wondered why the scourge does not affect you? Why you are impenetrable when it comes to the madness that twisted your mother and her sisters into shadows of themselves?”

My stomach twists. I have the feeling I’m not going to like what she’s going to say next.

“This time,” she whispers, “and for the last twenty years, there has not been three pieces waiting to reunite.” The high empress places a hand above my chest, above my heart. “There is four.”

I practically jump back to get away from her and that hand. Four pieces? What is she saying? She can’t be saying what I think she’s saying because that’s just deranged. I mean, completely fucking insane, right?

The only word that comes from me is a quick denial: “No.”

Her hand falls to her side. “Yes. When Krotas and the others faced Invictis, when they put their magic together to trap it once more, you were there as well. You were a vessel that trapped a piece of it and you’ve kept it with you your entire life. It was why it was so easy for Invictis to follow you to your world when your mother sent you away.”

All I can do is shake my head. I don’t want to believe it. I can’t.

“You are connected to the creature in a way none of the empresses before you could be. Invictis may think it is whole now, but it is not. Laconia remains because of you and your connection to it.”

“No. That’s impossible. It’s just… not possible. How can something like Invictis not know that he’s missing a piece of himself? How can he not sense that a part of him is inside me, if it’s true?”

The woman replies, “It is a small sliver, but it is enough. I knew we would need a miracle to defeat the undefeated, but I never imagined it would happen like this.” As if sensing my disbelief and my shock, she adds, “You are so much more than you ever thought you were, Rey. You are the key to changing Laconia’s fate.”

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