Page 1 of Dark Princess: Shadows

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MORELLE

"Ihave passed beyond the veil before my time," Morelle's mother said. "But time has no meaning here. It has meaning where you are, though, and it is time for you to wake up and experience the new world I sent you and your brother to. Ell-rom needs you."

Morelle was still reeling from the revelation that her mother was no longer among the living. Was she now telling her that Ell-rom was in danger?

"Who is threatening Ell-rom?" She felt anger electrifying her blood, readying her to wake up and fight to protect her brother.

"Nothing has changed over the thousands of years you were in stasis, my daughter. Your grandfather, the Eternal King, still wants you and Ell-rom dead."

That statement should have been the most jarring of everything her mother had told her, but it was not. Since Morelle was old enough to understand her and Ell-rom's hybrid nature, she had known the Eternal King would kill them if he ever discoveredthat they were his grandchildren, born from a forbidden affair between the Kra-ell queen and his son.

What distressed her more was the revelation that her mother was gone and Ell-rom was in danger. Still, she shouldn't let this strange dream alarm her. It was probably not true, and her mother was, in truth, alive and well, ruling the Kra-ell with a strong and steady hand as she had done throughout Morelle's life.

What had prompted the dream, though?

Had she perceived some new danger threatening her mother?

Was that why she was dreaming that the queen had died and was speaking to her from beyond the veil? Or was the danger aimed at Ell-rom, and had she projected it onto their mother?

Her brother was too kind and pious for his own good, so his being threatened was not surprising.

No Kra-ell could afford to be so trusting. In their culture that was perceived as weakness, and for those in positions of power, it was like painting a target on their backs.

And what was that about thousands of years in stasis?

"You must have misspoken, Mother. This is just a dream. I could not have been asleep for so long."

The queen assumed her customary haughty expression, which terrified most of her subjects but not her daughter. "Walking the Fields of the Brave does not diminish my faculties, child of mine. If anything, it makes them sharper. You have just regained awareness but have been in stasis for a long time, much longer than you should have been. Your grandmother delayed and sabotaged the settler ship. She did it for her own reasons,but inadvertently, she saved your and Ell-rom's lives, so I am grateful to Ani, queen of the gods, even though what she did was not enough to save her son, your father."

The anger in her mother's voice sounded more familiar than anything she had said so far, but it was tinged with sadness, which, in life, the queen of the Kra-ell would never have allowed to infiltrate her tone.

"I am sorry for your loss, Mother. I did not know how deeply you cared for our father."

"I did, and I still do. We might not have been fated as he believed, but we produced two wonderful children who bound us in life and death. Bonds of love never die."

Perhaps her mother was dead after all because she would never have spoken of love when alive. The Kra-ell did not believe in such soft emotions, only loyalty and duty.

"I am surprised you still feel so strongly about those bonds in the afterlife. I thought that we are unburdened at death."

It was one of the reasons Morelle hoped for death to claim her. To take one's life was a sin, and even though she was not a great believer in the Mother of All Life, she was not so rigid in her disbelief as to take the risk and be relegated to spending eternity in the Valley of the Shamed.

"In time, we forget the details of what caused our greatest joys and sorrows," her mother said. "But we carry their echoes through many rebirths." She smiled. "You are an old soul, Morelle, and your burden is heavy, but you should not allow it to rule you. Find a way to turn it into strength. You will need it."

"I am tired, Mother," Morelle admitted. "I feel like I have been struggling through endless epochs. I want to rest."

"This is not how this works, my child, and you do not get to choose when the cycles stop. Besides, Ell-rom needs you, and this time around, you will not fight alone. Listen..." Her mother's voice began to fade.

"Listen to what?"

"Just listen." The dreamscape around her mother began to dissolve, colors bleeding away into nothingness.

And then Morelle heard it.

Someone was speaking next to her about strange things that she could not comprehend, even though she understood every word the male was saying.

"That's why I think artificial intelligence is the future," he said. "It is divorced from feelings and therefore should be able to always choose the truth. It will take time and effort to clean it of biases, and I'm not sure how we can make that part of its algorithm, but if we manage it, we will finally be free from the power grab of the illusions we create."

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