Page 448 of Of Empires and Dust

“MAM!”Ella shrieked, her eyes still closed, her fingers visibly tightening around Tamzin’s wrists.

“What is happening?”

“Let’s have a chat about it when we’re not all close to death. For now, listen. Think of something in the mortal plane, something that grounds you, that anchors you… something you can hold on to. If you don’t, you will lose yourself here. Do that, turn around, and cut down anything that comes near us.”

Farda nodded, then turned. He drew a slow breath, his fingers tightening around the hilt of his sword. In his mind, he pictured Ella standing with her hand on the tree. He would not let any harm come to her. He would be her shield.

A man with the shoulders of an ox charged at him, a Bjorna Angan at his side. Two Fenryr Angan leapt at the Bjorna, and Farda threw himself at the druid, his sword slicing through flesh and bone.

I will be the man I was. I will be worthy of her again.

Ella stoodin the blazing white flames, the sound of crackling wood like thunder in her ears.

“Mam!”

She raised a hand over her eyes, the light blinding. She wanted to run, to pull herself from Níthianelle, to fight with the others, but the wolf within her howled in defiance. Its hackles rose, and the world shifted once more, and Ella stood on the front steps of her home. The flames were gone.

Her mam stood before her in the garden, staring wide-eyed. They both remained still for a brief moment, as though neither believed the other was real. And then they crashed together.

Ella squeezed her mam with every drop of strength she could find, clasping her hands together at Freis’s back, fingers interlocking. She would not be ripped away again. She would not lose her mam again.

“My sweet girl,” Freis whispered. “My sweet, sweet girl.”

The sound of her mam’s voice sent a tremble through Ella, her hands shaking, her mouth unable to form words. Real or not, she never wanted to leave that moment.

“I’m here, Ella.” Freis ran a hand through Ella’s hair, her fingers pressing into the back of Ella’s head.

“You’re alive?” Ella pulled away and looked over her mam’s face. “This is real? You’re real? You’re here?”

Freis nodded. “I’m here. This is real. I’m real.”

“How? I saw you die… Calen saw you die… You… You…” Ella’s words kept catching in her throat, her breaths cut short by tears.

“I saw a thousand thousand futures, my girl. I looked through the stars and beyond, and on every path where yourdad and I lived, you and your brothers died.” Freis stroked Ella’s cheek as though she might break. “We had no choice. Therewasno choice. Your dad and I agreed. Your lives above ours, always. But there are some things even Pathfinders can’t see.”

“How are you here? How are you alive?” Ella looked over her mam from head to toe as though expecting to find some crack or imperfection, some sign that this was all a dream, all some twisted piece of Níthianelle.

Freis smiled, continuing to stroke Ella’s cheek. “You have become such a woman.” Her mother puffed out her cheeks, tears glistening in her eyes. “Such a strong, fierce woman. There is so much to tell.”

“Come with me, now, come with me… please.”

The smile on Freis’s lips curled downwards. “I have followed you from the moment you set foot in this place. Watched you as closely as I could.”

“It was you,” Ella whispered, thinking back to when something had scared that Vethnir hunter away and saved her life.

Freis nodded. “I’ve been here for a long time… But I’ve not always been me. With each day, we see more, we feel more. And we understand. We… there are rules, Ella. Laws, oaths that cannot be so easily broken… but can be bent, twisted.”

“You’re not making any sense. What rules? What do you mean ‘we’?”

Freis brushed a strand of Ella’s hair from her face. “Freis should have died…” Her mother stopped herself, her lips moving without sound, eyes staring into the distance for a moment. “Ishould have died. On every path, I died. I needed to die for you to live. She saved me. She took me from death as I straddled the veil between worlds… She stretched the oaths to breaking.”

“Who saved you? Mam, what’s happening?”

“Elyara… I am her… We are…” As Freis looked at Ella, her eyes glowed with a brilliant white light and her voice shifted. The sound of Freis Bryer was gone. “There are oaths, young one. Oaths sworn millennia ago. To cross to the mortal world would have ripples… But to be here, in the folds of space and time, my kin never forbade that. To splinter myself between planes. To find a soul that could bear my own, one that could see how I see, to bind it to my own in this world… A soul that would charge towards its own doom, knowing the end and facing it anyway. I knew Efialtír was scheming, and I could not allow him free rein while the others sat and watched. I simply could not.”

Ella stepped back, unable to look away from her mam. Elyara. The Maiden. “What are you?”

The voice shifted again, like two layered atop one another. “We are Freis, and we are Elyara. We are both.” Freis’s voice vanished once more. “Efialtír seeks to cross into your world. Many of my kin do not see the danger. They hold to the old oaths, oaths sworn with a purpose but ultimately flawed. If he crosses, we must be ready to fight. But to take form in the mortal plane would cost me half.”

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