Page 81 of A World of Ruins

She stops humming and lifts her head without looking at me. ‘It is so good to finally meet you, Darius.’

I’m deathly silent.

She chuckles, sounding just like . . .her. ‘No, I am not your mother,’ she answers what is already going through my mind as she turns, those green eyes shimmering like the day she – my mother – died. ‘I am only a manifestation of her. My true name, however, is something we have in common.’

She speaks with a celestial grace to her. One I believe belongs to a deity.

Crello.

She smiles, showing the white gleam of her teeth, but the thought of someone else sporting my mother’s face vexes me.

‘Where am I?’ I ask without glancing at my surroundings. I already know exactly what this place is. What I care to know is why, when it no longer exists.

‘Your old home,’ Crello says, sliding delicate, thin fingers across the cracked wall and carved wooden artwork. ‘At least, this is what your mind first thought of when you died.’ She looks at me. ‘It is your haven.’

The memories of what happened barge into my mind, unwelcome. Images of Goldie crying as she plunged a dagger into my heart, as mine did with hers, haunt me on a loop.

‘Nara,’ I whisper.

‘She is safe,’ Crello says quickly. ‘Much how you are, too.’

I scoff, giving her an unkind stare. ‘How can we be, when we are dead, and you have my mother’s face?’

‘Your mother is what your heart wishes for. She may not be here, but you may speak to her once we are finished.’

I cock my head to the side. I want to get out of this place and find Goldie, and I need to see for myself that she is okay, not take the word of a likely hallucination in between a state of life and death. ‘Finished what exactly?’

‘Making a decision.’

Sighing, I cross my arms over my chest. ‘All right, then. My decision is that I wish to leave this place.’

Crello laughs, unaware that I’m deadly serious, or even if the deity does know, it doesn’t seem to care. ‘Do you see that?’ She looks towards my left, but my gaze never follows. ‘It’s the pendant your mother always carried. A sign of who she once was.’

I grit my teeth and stay silent without turning my head. I don’t understand why my mind took me to this place. It’s riddled with horrible moments of hiding, my mother’s death, and the times she would tell me of a future where she was still alive.

‘And who you are now,’ Crello states.

Anger rises in my chest and Crello can sense it. Whatever she thought would work is failing as the cottage around us disappears, replacing the worn floorboards with grass and overgrown trees.

‘Give it back!’ a young voice shouts, and the instant recognition makes me turn.

In front of me are two boys, one copper-haired and the other with dark, scraggly hair and a bunch of cuts and bruises on his face.

Lorcan and me.

‘Why do you even want this?’ Lorcan flails the crescent carving high up in the air, his right palm pressing against my chest. ‘It’s nothing but a piece of junk.’

Funny, I have always known how neglected I was back then, but seeing it now, I was skin and bone. Anyone could have snapped me in half.

‘I said, give it back!’ The younger me lunges at Lorcan once again, only for me to land on the ground as he lets go of me. My knees and elbows scrape against grass and mud, the usual look I donned back then whenever Lorcan and I went head-to-head over the stupidest things.

Except this time, I remember what happened.

To this day, I can still feel it. How much rage I had in me.

Lorcan’s laugh echoes throughout the woods. His eyes close as he clutches his middle, not knowing how much power was coursing through my veins at that moment.

I watch as this version of me gets up from the ground and rushes at Lorcan, releasing a guttural cry when shadows form at my fingertips and fly out at him.

---