Page 127 of Moonmarked

God, it was so difficult to believe thatthiswas my life now, that I was so far from everything I knew, the people I loved, the Nilah I used to be.

Now I was sitting on the floor with a seer in a room, with a crackling fire at my back, waiting with my heart in my throat for her to tell me what I was.WhoI was.

Because I was definitely not the Nilah who first came through the Aetherway.

“Speak your question.”

My eyes opened before I realized I’d closed them. The seer hadn’t moved an inch, but I heard her voice.

“Who am I?” I asked, the words foreign on my tongue.

The white water in the bowl boiled. “Noxavira.”

My gut twisted. I’d heard that word before. The werewolves had called me that.The shadow between truths,Maera said. Old Veren.

“I’m not a shadow—I’m a human being,” I said, a littledesperate now, because what were the odds that two people call me that? People who didn’t know each other. Who I’m sure had never met.

“You are no human being,” the seer said, eyes closed now, head slowly moving back. “Your fate is sealed in frostfire. I cannot see through it.”

My heart squeezed and squeezed. I dragged myself closer to the bowl and said, “Please, tell me what that means. Just…just tell me what I am.”

Nowthatwas something I never, ever thought I’d say to anyone in my life.What am I.What a ridiculous idea not to know what one even is.

“You are what you were, and what you will be again should you so choose,” the seer said, her voice rough now, smaller, more like a whisper by the word. “I cannot see through.”

Red hot anger rose inside me. “Thenwhocan?!”

The way her gaze locked on mine, like she was suddenly surprised. The water in the bowl began to bubble so much, it shook the entire thing. It was going to spill any second now, I was sure of it, so I moved back. Rose to my knees. Looked at the door—this is too fucking nuts!

“Seek the throne that stands with no crown. It will show you what she left behind.”

The words slipped from the lips of the seer in an almost robotic way. I stopped for a moment, my mind blank. “What?”

But the seer didn’t answer me. Instead, she raised her hands and thenbloodbegan to spill out from her eyes.

My God, she was crying tears of blood!

The image of her face like that would remain with me until the day I died. The seer was shaking, fuckingvibratingwhere she sat, and the boiling water in her bowl began to steam.

My first thought was to scream for help because this couldn’t be normal. Somebody needed to do something, help her, because her eyes were fucking bleeding—but I never got the chance. Because the steam rose and became thicker, just like the mist over that river in the Illusion Game, and then it slowly began to gain color. Shapes.

I watched with my breath held and my nails sinking into my palms as the steam created an image I’d seen before—albeit only half.

A woman with light blonde hair, bright blue eyes, wearing dark blue velvet and a small, cryptic smile on her face. Holding a mirror in one hand, and a silver crown in the other, both over her knees.

Air no longer made it to my burning lungs.

It was the painting—the sameimage as that painting I’d seen in the Gallery of Time. What I’d thought was the handle of a knife was actually the handle of a silver mirror she held in her left hand. The picture was whole, detailed,clearas day, so there was no way to miss it.

The woman lookedexactlylike me indeed.

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I’d fallenon my ass, though I wasn’t sure when. I didn’t feel it, didn’t feel anything, only continued to look at the seer. The image on the steam was gone, disappeared just as fast as it had appeared, and though I felt the air going down my throat, I was also sure that I was suffocating at the same time.

Whispers began to leave her in a rush, and the seer was slowly moving to the side. At first, I thought it was on purpose, but then I realized that she was collapsing—slowly,like the air itself was trying to steady her but couldn’t.

Before I knew it, I’d crawled around the bowl and to her side, just as her body let go, and she was heavier than she seemed. So much heavier, in fact, that I couldn’t hold her up with my shaking arms. She fell against my legs and her head ended up on my thighs.

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