When Olivia opened the front door to the house the next morning, she felt nonplussed to discover Shanae on the doorstep. She had come to know all the queens quite well and was finally used to calling them by name, but it still seemed vastly unnerving to discover the High Queen herself on her porch. "Er, good morning?"
"It will be." Shanae rolled up the sleeves of her shirt. She was dressed casually in snug denims and a black shirt, both of which flattered her powerful body more than was fair in Olivia's opinion. "I'm here to torment your daughter. Where is she?"
"Still in bed. She and Rodi are both asleep." Olivia's eyes widened as Shanae headed for the stairs. "You're going to wake them?" she asked incredulously.
"Sure. Why not?"
She had to smile in bemusement. "You and Tasia are far too much alike. I'll get the tea ready."
Shanae felt absolutely no guilt as she climbed the stairs. The conversation she needed to have with Tasia could not wait. Really, she hated waiting for anything even though she could be immensely patient. That was why she all too often would just shove and push until she got what she wanted. She paused to listen out the bedroom door, heard nothing, and opened the door.
Her heart melted. Given Tasia's incessant insomnia without Rodi's presence, it always felt utterly sweet and beautiful to see her deeply sleeping peacefully. She lay mostly sprawled across her husband's chest, and it looked as if she had not moved all night. Thank goodness. It looked equally obvious Rodi had a grip on his wife that even Shanae's great strength couldn't break, so she settled for leaning over them and shaking Tasia's shoulder firmly. "Anastasia. Wake up." A very sleepy mumble in Vericin was the response, and she lifted a brow. "You know, in other Eras, referring to a queen in such terms would get you tossed in prison."
Tasia cracked one eye open to glare at her. "Hate you so much." She reluctantly and expertly disentangled herself from Rodi's grip. He muttered something in Arian and rolled over to pull a pillow over his head. "He doesn't like being woken either," she noted. "He loves to sleep. It's either ironic or hilariously fitting, depending on your point of view."
"I vote hilarious." Shanae stepped back as Tasia slid out of bed. "Olivia said she was making tea."
Tasia glanced at her bedside table, and a cup of tea materialized. She picked it up and sipped at it gratefully as Shanae applauded lightly. "Sending things to another witch is not unlike sending a letter via courier. One takes it halfway and the other picks it up from there. Anyone can do it if they have a bond of some sort."
"Just like spider mail but with no server down time." Shanae tucked her hands in her pockets. "We need to talk, kid."
"I got that much." Tasia pulled on a pair of denims under her pajama shirt but that was all. She felt no more urge to dress up for Shanae than the queen did for her. They were too close of friends to bother with formalities. "Let's go to my sacred space."
"I always wondered what it looked like." Shanae followed her up the stairs to the attic and felt her skin prickle with the awareness of immense power. It was Shadow and Ice with an underlying tang of Glass. The underlying tang came as no surprise despite the fact that it had entered the bloodline five thousand years before. There was actually as much of Byron Ranunculus inside Tasia as the previous two High Priestesses.
Tasia shut the door behind them and then went over and began to gently nudge awake the two dragons sleeping in a little circle on her trunk. Anira had snuggled up against Haeth and made a squeaky noise of disgruntlement as she was woken as well. Deprived her of her warm spot, she flew over and curled around the back of Tasia's neck. She fell asleep again moments later.
Haeth and Striker more reluctantly shook themselves and stretched out their wings and bodies. "What's with the wakeup call?" Haeth asked around a jaw-splitting yawn.
"Sorry about that." Shanae rubbed her fingers lightly over Haeth's head. "I needed to talk to your mistress and she's of the 'if I suffer, so do others' mindset." She quirked a brow. "Which makes me wonder why she didn't make Rodi get up."
"He's only good for one thing in the early morning," was the dry response, "and we don't need an audience for it." She sat down on the floor and stretched out her long legs. Between her natural tendency to wake quickly, and the herbs her mother had dumped in the tea, she felt more awake than normal. "This is about yesterday, isn't it?" Something painful flickered in her eyes briefly and then was gone.
"It is." Shanae sat down across from her. "There's some . . . irony in this conversation."
"There is?" Tasia tilted her head.
"Yes." Shanae rested her chin on her up-drawn knees. "Many wars have littered my past as a Defender Cultivator, but I don't think any—except perhaps this one—has ever been as terrible as the Chaos War we fought when I was twenty-four. The war against Mania."
"Mania." Tasia pressed a hand to her heart as she felt an echo inside saying she had heard the name before. "Damn it, Jean," she muttered.
"That wasn't from Jean." Shanae smiled. "That was from Byron—her soul mate. A Defender Cultivator from Ranunculus who came to Protea to stop Mania. She had been born on Ranunculus when Tara Ranunculus—Byron's sister and the Ruler Cultivator—had lost control of the Chaos power she had been curiously studying. She had tried to save her world by absorbing it into her own core, but all she had done was completely corrupt herself, go insane, and become Mania. Byron knew she would seek out me and Siobhan eventually, given our being the Apexes of Dark and Light, in order to take our Seeds and empower herself more. So he got here first and established himself as an actor to travel the world."
"I knew some of that," Tasia admitted. "Jean's journals mentioned Byron's role and his being a Cultivator since that would have more than a little impact on their shared lineage. That was how I knew I descended of a Defender. I didn't know he had been just shy of being a Dual, though."
"We did not either at first, until after Mania had killed both Edgar and Rocky, and in my fury, I got close enough to her to realize the truth." Her voice remained calm even though her eyes flickered. "We had known she was a corrupted Ruler Cultivator, but once I got in closer, I realized she came from Ranunculus, and that under the Chaos consuming her, she bore more than a passing resemblance to Byron. I asked, and he confirmed it." She took a quiet breath. "To make a terrible story short, in the process of trying to get to her to save her, all of the Defenders sacrificed themselves to allow Siobhan, I, and Byron to get deeper. Alexandria made it down with us to the bottom as well, to buy me more time with her. I was . . . raw. On the verge of evolution to Apex. Siobhan sacrificed herself as well to give me her Seed so she was not a liability. Alexandria fell protecting me and Byron. I . . . maybe went a little mad myself. I forcefully shattered my own shredded and gouged soul, and I reforged myself into the Apex of Dark. That reforging made me just strong enough to plunge into the Heart of Chaos, release my Whisper of Hope, and save Tara—with help from Byron's Virtuoso voice. I did not emerge unscathed. Chaos had nearly killed me anyway."
Tasia closed her eyes and leaned her head back. "I didn't look into the Heart of Chaos. I looked into the heart of madness. It's very different, trust me."
"I believe you. I had to tell you all that to get to the important part, though. Even after the dust settled and everyone had been restored and my body had healed, I suffered under some extreme survivor's stress. As soon as I reached a point where I could be healed, Rocky sent for Jean and Byron to come help me face what had happened, get through, and heal." She smiled wryly. "That's the irony in this conversation. My coming here to do for you what they did for me. I'm no Spiritual Healer like Jean but I'm a damn good listener!"
"Indeed." Tasia traced her finger lightly over the floor. "I can't face it right now, Shanae. If I face it with the intent to heal, it will make me break down and cry. I can't afford that as long as Minstrel is here. He feeds on chaotic emotions, and healing tears are amongst the most chaotic of all because they straddle between good and bad." She shuddered. "You know what insanity is? It's emptiness. Not even silence or peace. Just . . . empty."
"Did you see the Chaos inside Minstrel?" Shanae asked quietly. "Do you understand what Chaos is?"
"Yes to both." Tasia tilted her head. "It was everywhere inside him. Overwhelming. And . . . sad, somehow. It wanted to fill the emptiness with emotion yet could not because it fears the emptiness—fears the thing most opposite to it. That is why he is obsessed with feeding on pain and hate and fear in others. He cannot produce emotions easily on his own, and those are the only emotions that don't recoil from the emptiness. Something about me, however, is able to pierce the emptiness personally and induce him to feeling emotion on his own. Again, the more terrible ones, but possibly that is because he more easily recognizes them. I think that if he fed on love or joy, he would not even see it or know it, and it would be consumed in the emptiness. He would have to be hit with such a raw force of love that it silenced the emptiness in order for him to know it." She slowly lifted her hands. "I know the sparks inside me are the precursor to Chaos. I'm not a fool. It seems almost expected, you know? Given that it is literally the only Flower Element in existence that I do not have—and as much as I did not want it, I can see why I should have it."
"Considering Byron got imprinted by Chaos by being at the focal point of Mania's birth, it is logical. That imprint very obviously got you to where you are now. After all, if the Glass Flower Element managed to come down this strongly to tinge your power, then no surprise Chaos would. It imprinted me, too, actually, and it passed to LeAnn—which may be another reason why you are her twin. The two of us can easily sense Chaos where it manifests, but we can't see it. We can't understand it. You can. That's why Minstrel reads you much more strongly than others. Even when he faced me, he didn't feel as drawn to break me as he was to you. I, who went into the Heart of Chaos."
Tasia got to her feet and walked over to the window. "Reagan said it was inevitable that his focus would shift the minute he saw me. That must have been what she picked up on." She raked her hands through her unbound hair. It looked more chaotic than usual, too. "So that tells us the what. It doesn't tell us the why. Why is he consumed in Chaos energy? Was it there before the emptiness, or was the emptiness there first? Are they inexorably linked, given that Mania went mad after being consumed? How does Sabirah's spirit keep him in check? The door Racine saw and how I have to open it; what is it?"
"Welcome to being a Lead Defender, honey. We get to face and try to answer the toughest of questions." Shanae walked over to stand beside her. "It makes me wonder as well about his hate for our Caretakers. I mean, enemies have been stupid enough to break that rule before, but this time it's deliberate and not necessarily directed at us. It's directed at them. Storm called it envy because he hated Raven but I wonder if maybe there's something more."
"Rule?" Tasia quirked a brow.
"Never screw with a Defender Cultivator's lover. It's a universal law. Not only are those sorts of Caretakers usually dangerous in their own right, but damned if you want an armored and armed Defender after your head—especially a Lead!" She drummed her fingers on her hip. "I think we need to know more about Sabirah herself. If she's at the heart of Minstrel, then she's at the heart of it all. Her resemblance to Anna—and therefore you—can't be an accident. Especially when Anna is not yours by blood. Hell, maybe Minstrel can see that you are what Sabirah could have looked like had she lived. Add it to the questions."
"If there's one thing I've learned in my life," Tasia said dryly, "it's that there is no such thing as a simple answer." She turned her gaze out the window and silence fell for a few moments. Then, quietly, she said, "You hadn't told them."
"No. It wasn't something easy to drop into conversation." Shanae's voice was just as quiet. "I regret nothing about knowing you, not even knowing what your presence means." She smiled. "I am grateful. It tells me that someday I will be free."
Rodi suddenly appeared in the doorway and was still only half dressed. "You're a sadistic woman," he told Shanae.
She grinned. "What's your point?"
He walked over, removed Anira to put her in Shanae's hands, and then caught Tasia around the waist to toss her over his shoulder. "Excuse us. We missed a morning ritual."
Tasia began to beat on his back, torn between exasperation and humor. "Rodi! Put me down! You cannot haul me off to bed in front of Shanae!"
"Why not?" was his absent response as he headed out of the attic. "Given half a chance, her husband would haul her off too."
"He has," Shanae called helpfully after them, "and on more than one occasion." She had to grin to herself as she snuggled Anira. She supposed that it was just the balance of things that would make her and her kindred spirit find mates cut from the same cloth. Robert and Rodi were far too much alike, too!
* * * * *
The Resurrection Cultivators meeting was already in process when Tasia got to the castle. She stepped into the doorway with dignity and gave her friends a pointed look. "I don't want to hear a single word," she warned them. "Because I will turn you into snails and set you loose in the garden."
LeAnn and Raine picked their books back up with grins. The others just whistled innocently. Satisfied, Tasia walked into the room and sat down on the couch next to Emily. "And anyway, that's not the only reason I'm late. I was sending Daelan to the Delphinium Kingdom. Mom and Tosh have gone as well. I'm not taking any more chances. The orchards will be fine on their own for at least a month. One harvest is done; the next isn't coming until February. The ice apple freeze already happened as well." The apples bloomed all year and were one of the biggest exports both on and for Protea. The farm would randomly freeze for one month of every year—usually December or January but sometimes earlier—producing ice on the farm's small lake and allowing the extremely rare ice apples to bloom for the entire month. Protea as a whole had a temperate climate, but snow and ice did pop up in rare places—notably the high northern mountains on Vericity's landmass—and, now unsurprisingly, the Martine farm.
Starlight rubbed her hands over her arms to ward off a chill of her own. "What do we do about Minstrel? Storm said that you must have seen into his heart to unleash the song you did." She still felt a sense of awe as she remembered the force of the power ripping through the air. She had never before heard music with her soul rather than her ears. It had been cataclysmically more powerful than Tasia's song of grief over Arthur.
"I did." Tasia had no objections when Ryan scooted over and took her hand to ease the pain she still felt. It was minor enough to not cause him anything more than some nausea; she had already healed most of it personally. "It was emptiness."
"Emptiness." Raven tilted his head. "How is that terrifying?"
"You've never seen it, I take it." Beth shuddered. "An empath's greatest nightmare. The void of emptiness is the herald of evil. The lack of existence to which evil wants to return everything. Imagine something that has no feelings. Not even indifference, not even silence. No light, no dark. Just an endless now where you can't move or breathe. You're just . . . there. You struggle and you fight but there's nothing there. Eventually it starts eating away at you until there's nothing left in you too."
Phoenix shuddered. "Okay, stop! We get it!" He wrapped his arms around himself. "You're saying that at the heart of Minstrel is emptiness?"
"At the heart of Minstrel is madness, and true madness is emptiness. That's what it feels to go insane. Empty." Tasia drew a long breath. "It's left for debate which came first. The madness or the emptiness. Either way, the Chaos energy inside him wants to fill the emptiness and can't because it is itself afraid of the emptiness. In an effort to fill it personally, Minstrel fills himself with more Chaos by feeding on chaotic emotions."
"Is Chaos innately bad?" Starlight wondered.
"Nope." Theo shrugged. "It's actually another critical part of the universe. Maybe one of the more critical ones because Chaos is, as Tasi said, made of emotion. All of them, even the terrible ones. We wouldn't be alive if we didn't hate, and cry, and hurt; the important thing is to not feel those emotions all the time. I always thought that if someone had enough emotional depth on top of being heavily balanced elementally, they could become the master of Chaos. Chaos is the third arcane force of existence alongside Light and Dark. The latter two have Apexes. Chaos really should have one, too."
Tasia felt the sparks under her skin anew and said nothing. "Well, I can verify that Chaos is not bad," she admitted. "The madness hurt me. The terrible emotions of Chaos only hurt me because Chaos hurt. It was as if . . . I empathically responded to Chaos' own pain. It fears the emptiness even more than we do. Fears the thing most opposite to it." She rubbed the back of her neck. "Shanae told me that I can see Chaos clearer than anyone else because my ancestor Byron was imprinted by Chaos during a terrible war. That imprint carried to me. I suppose it would be suitably ironic that the one Flower Element I do not have, and have never wanted to have, is the one I would be most sensitive to feeling."
"Give your own emotional depth and how volatile your emotions can be, it makes sense," Beth said softly.
LeAnn nodded. "Mom was imprinted as well during that war, and it passed to me. It makes us sensitive to Chaos, allowing us to feel it when it manifests. I've definitely been feeling it inside Minstrel, but I don't think I realized until maybe now that that was what I felt." And now also understood that, perhaps, she could feel it somewhere else. She said nothing about it.
"So what now?" Raven asked.
"Now we focus on Sabirah." LeAnn crossed her arms. "We want to free her from Minstrel. To do that we need to know more about her. What can you tell us? How old was she when she died?"
"Barely five."
"So if she was still alive now, she would be . . .?
"Thirty-two come January, I believe. She was older than any of the Alurian Defenders." Raven felt his heart give an odd thud as something seemed very coincidental. "Tasia . . . isn't your birthday coming soon?"
"In two weeks, on January 1." Tasia got to her feet and walked over to look out the window. "I will be thirty-two. I am the eldest of my generation, the literal herald of the Era for I was born on the first day of the first month of the first year. Me, who has a daughter the spitting image of Sabirah. Anna looks eerily like me and Rodi; few know she's adopted. We can only assume she will continue to look a fair bit like me as an adult. The only thing that prevents her from being wholly mistaken for mine by blood are her beautiful black eyes. All females of my direct lineage have brown/brown coloring." Anna herself also had her birthday in January, only a few days after Tasia and Rodi's shared birthday—just a year separated the destined couple.
"Is it possible Minstrel senses that subconsciously and that's part of his obsession with Tasia?" Racine asked Storm swiftly. "Are we looking at a whole bunch of things combining into a single unit? The nature of Chaos is that it is made up of thousands of little things that lead to a single whole. Is that what's happening with Minstrel's obsession? A slew of small things that all lead him toward Tasia?"
Storm hesitated and then shook his head. "Yes and no. There's something missing. I still can't see the why. I can see the pattern, how it all leads, but I can't see what's at the end. Or the beginning, as it were."
"Was there anything particular about Sabirah that made her different?" Emily asked. "Like weird powers or something. Anything that might tell us why she was so damned critical to Minstrel's minimal sanity? Do we know what Flower Element she may have had, or anything? I mean, you can't sense that about a ghost, so no way for us to tell now."
"Unfortunately, we know next to nothing about her," Starlight admitted. "And given her age, she may have just not yet manifested anything."
The room abruptly plunged into darkness as even the windows suddenly became blocked and all lights went out. "Stay where you are," Tasia ordered as she felt the rise of tension and fear. No darkness nor no light could take her sight again, even all the way into full whiteout or blackout. Being wholly Gray, she could still see just as clearly and distinctly as she had in the light, just now with a different color cast to everything.
Theo took a little breath. "Sabirah is here. I feel her." His Virtuoso voice softened. "It's alright, sweetheart. Come out where we can see you; I offer my power freely."
The lights didn't come back on, but Sabirah's ghost appeared in the middle of the room with an eerie glow. Her light proved bright enough to allow them all to see her. She was facing Tasia. I can lead Minstrel to you, she said.
"Safely?" Tasia asked quietly.
Well, it's not like he can kill me again.
Emily muffled a snort of laughter. "Sorry. It's just . . . well, she even sounds like Anna and her mother."
Tasia ignored her. "There are fates worse than death."
He cannot harm me. He would never have harmed me before if I could have stopped him. He could not hear my voice. This is the price I pay for not being strong enough for him. She turned and floated over to Theo. Aster Defender, I ask you to break the chains binding me. This will free me, but it will also unleash him and he will become entirely unstable. She turned toward Tasia. Just because I am not bound to him does not mean I will be able to leave him. I cannot leave without him.
"What are you?" Ryan whispered. "What are the both of you?"
I can't say. But . . . She floated up and framed Tasia's face with her small hands. But . . . we are connected to Tasia. When the door is opened, everyone will know the truth. I will lead Minstrel to you shortly. And with that said, she disappeared.
The lights returned and everyone blinked rapidly. A thoughtful silence fell before Phoenix finally said to Tasia, "Boy, I'm glad I'm not you."
She smiled wryly. "Speaking of Chaos, my life is made of it."
* * * * *
Minstrel didn't know what to do. It had been an entire day, and he still felt chills when he remembered Tasia's song. It had cut across dimensions as if they weren't even there and had wrapped around him with the taunting knowledge that she had seen inside him. The song had scared him at first as he felt it inside his soul but then . . . he had felt something else. He had felt . . . safe.
It was such an alien and discomforting feeling that he had rejected it. Yet, even in rejecting it, he burned to feel it again. He had wanted to play with Tasia to get as much emotion out of her as he could, but now he wanted to kill her. He wanted to kill her so he could trap her to him and feel that frightening feeling again. He had felt something other than pain or fear. It had made the emptiness disappear entirely for a while.
His head lifted sharply as he felt Sabirah's presence fade inside him. "No," he moaned. She did that only when she was trying to keep him from going too far. He began to rock back and forth. "Come back, Sabirah!" He put his hands on his head and ducked down as if to protect the hat he wore. "I'll play nice!"
She did not respond. The emptiness inside seemed to loom over him as if to swallow him whole, and he felt another new emotion: panic. It was unpleasant. A little shriek slipped past his lips, and he covered his ears as if to convince himself that he heard nothing because he chose it. He screamed out mentally yet Sabirah had somehow gotten strong enough to push away to a place where he could barely feel her.
Tasia.
Yes! He leapt to his feet. If he could get to Tasia, if he could draw her out, her emotions would be enough. It would beat back the emptiness. It wouldn't eat him. She would save him. She was a Defender Cultivator—a Lead no less. They did that sort of thing. He knew all there was to know about Defenders. It had made sense to him to learn.
* * * * *
Tasia and Raine had decided to go for a walk together along the river that ran through Protea City when a burn through Tasia's blood alerted her to danger. Her brief tension flashed to her sister, but Raine felt no fear despite being on alert. Carefully concealed inside potent arcanistry were the rest of their team as well as Starlight and Phoenix. All Masked, all armored. All prepared.
Minstrel suddenly appeared in front of the sisters with a wide smile. "My favorite person!" he crowed. "Ready to play some more?" He waved his hands over-dramatically and made many Reparations appear with bright flashes of color and light and confetti. "See? Aren't I the best?"
Tasia grabbed her Mask. "I've seen better." She pulled it on to call her armor, and Raine likewise did the same. They had barely been protected before the monsters descended on them. Raine grabbed her three-headed spear to help even as Tasia grabbed her sword, and they waded right into the middle. Neither bothered to temper their emotions and let their anger be a tangible thing. They wanted Minstrel to feed on it. They needed to distract him.
Minstrel, however, sensed that there was something off. He frowned. His sorceress had never before let her emotions be . . . obvious. She was always careful to control herself. It was why what made it so delightful to try to break her. But this was . . . no fun. He sensed movement behind him and dodged barely in the nick of time. The arrow that missed him struck a tree and buried itself halfway deep. It was an odd arrow made of alder wood with an arrowhead made of agate. It took a few seconds for his knowledge of woods and stones to catch up, and he realized he looked at an arrow deliberately made for banishing spirits. It glowed softly with familiar Fire majik, too.
His scream of fury and hatred sounded sharp and high-pitched. It sliced through the air and nearly made it bleed. Wild madness gleamed in his eyes as he lost all control and began lobbing chaotic blasts in every direction. "No!" he screamed. "No, you won't take her! Come out, Aster Defender!" His voice dropped to a guttural level. "I'll peel the skin from your body and make a hat to go with my feather necklace!"
He destroyed his own monsters in a burst of chaotic power when they got in his way. Tasia and Raine pulled back from the fight quickly and joined the other Defenders to form a circle with Minstrel trapped in the center. He hunched down toward the ground like a wounded animal and made noises of the same. "If you take her," he whimpered, "I have nothing. Nothing! The emptiness will eat me! I will disappear!"
He was trapped as long as they held the circle. Yet Storm could not use the other blessed arrow Theo had given him as long as his hands were held. They had to take the split-second Minstrel's eyes moved away so that Storm could step free and the circle close behind him. They waited, the enemy's eyes shifted to the other side, and Storm swiftly let go.
Before Starlight could grab Reagan's hand, Minstrel seemed to explode with power. The wild wave of chaotic energy surged from him with explosive force and blew the circle apart. Everyone went flying violently away. Tasia smashed into a tree hard enough that she felt one of her ribs crack despite her armor. As she lay on the ground, dazed, she could only stare up at Minstrel as he came to stand over her with a sword in his hand. There was a wild expression in his eyes that chilled her. It was like looking into the heart of madness. Could she get an attack off fast enough to stop him? Would the Gray inside her be enough to stop Chaos where Light or Dark alone could not? Sparks surged hotter, wilder, under her skin until she felt it crackle her hair.
He laughed shrilly. "When you're dead, you'll be with me. And then I can't get eaten!" He tightened his grip, lifted the sword, and prepared to strike.
"No!" Anna shot into the area and planted herself in front of Tasia with her arms outstretched. She was pale with fear and breathing hard, but she didn't flinch or back down even when she looked into Minstrel's eyes. "Leave my mommy alone!"
"Anna!" Tasia struggled to sit up. "Leave, at once!"
Minstrel went as white as sand. "Sabirah?" The sword fell from his hand to land on the floor with a clatter as he backed up. "But . . . but . . . you're dead! How?!" He covered his face on a moan. "No . . . he'll kill you too!"
"Raven didn't kill Sabirah," Phoenix said distinctly. "You did! You blamed him, but it was you that did it!"
"No!" he shrieked. He turned to look at Tasia, but Anna still stood in front of her. He stumbled back and clawed at his eyes so hard that they began to bleed. "No! No! Nononononononono!"
Storm lifted his bow, sighted, and fired the other arrow. It ripped through the air and snapped the chains between Minstrel and Sabirah. Minstrel snapped, too. His high-pitched scream was the most terrifying thing any of them had ever heard. Chaos energy consumed him, and he disappeared with a violence that cracked the land where he had been standing.
Anna gulped air and lowered her arms. Shaking, she whirled and fell to her knees beside Tasia. "You're hurt!" she sobbed. "Please! Don't die!"
"I'm not going to die." Tasia grit her teeth and pressed a hand to her ribs when they protested. "I'm going to get healed and then I'm grounding you until you're ninety! What were you thinking?! Goddess." Heedless of her injuries, she grabbed her daughter up close and buried her face in her hair. "You scared me doing that!"
"Anna," Raine said as she painfully gained her feet, "heal your mother. There's too many of us for me to handle alone. I'll need you both to help me, and Tasia shouldn't waste her effort healing herself when you're here. That's your special job."
"Okay, Aunt Raine." Anna held her hands over Tasia's side and concentrated fiercely on making the wound go away. Soft silver majik flowed over her hands and down into the wound and then to the bone beyond to mend that which was damaged.
The pain eased, and Tasia took a long breath. "Good girl." She stood and went over to her nearest friend while Anna hurried to heal Raine herself. Between the three of them, they soon had everyone healed and back on their feet.
"You," Beth scolded Anna, "are going to get it when we tell your father! Oh, good goddess, and your grandparents too! How the glassy hells did you sneak away from Uncle Dane? I've been half-convinced he had eyes on the back of his head!"
"Sabirah helped me. She told me that . . ." She broke off as twelve pairs of eyes landed on her. She gulped faintly. "I mean . . ."
Tasia knelt down to her height. "You spoke with Sabirah?" she asked quietly. Anna nodded miserably, and she sighed. "Why didn't you tell me, baby?"
"Because I wanted to help you," Anna whispered. "And I wanted to help Sabirah. Is . . . is she free now?"
I am free from my chains, came Sabirah's voice as she appeared near them. She floated over to Anna. Though there was a nearly four-year difference in their height and their build, they still looked nearly perfectly identical. Thank you, Anna. This is from me, to you. She opened her hands to reveal a piece of softly glowing blue diamond.
Seeing it made Tasia smile softly. "Of course." To Anna, she explained, "The diamond is a symbol of unconditional love and purity, as well as great healing both physical and spiritual. A blue diamond is even more special, and adds peace and communication to the attributes. That's perfectly you, my little healer."
Anna's eyes widened with delight. "Oh!" She reached out to take it and felt it pulsing warmly in her hands in a way that tickled the majik inside her. "Thank you," she said softly. She looked at Racine. "Aunt Racine, can you help me make it into a necklace? I have an allowance to pay!"
Racine smiled. She had professional level jeweler skills and made pieces sold for high prices, but this would be a gift. "Of course."
Sabirah turned toward Tasia. I always wanted to grow up to be a woman like you, she admitted. I wanted to be strong and powerful and to protect my queen and kingdom, but then I died before I could. Please. Protect Aluria for me? Protect Queen Starlight and the Princesses Sunlight and Moonlight.
"You have my vow," Tasia said quietly. Something she had begun to suspect had now become fact inside her Pattern Mastery. "Tell me, would your hair be like mine if you were alive now?"
Sabirah smiled. It is possible, though perhaps I would have just one the silver-green color of the edelweiss. I had not Activated before I died. A little shimmer of light rippled over her body, and she disappeared.
A long silence fell before, finally, Storm murmured, "She had a Seed. She was supposed to be an Alurian Defender. And given her age . . . probably the Lead."
"What!" Starlight and Phoenix spun toward him sharply. "But," Starlight said, "she was five when she died! She did not respond to the pulse of power I and my sisters sent out, and our Defender team was already all accounted for anyway! We already had Vincent as our Lead!"
Phoenix's heart began to pound. "No," he whispered. "That's not true. Don't you remember? We didn't find Jeo until we were ten. He's five years younger than us, and we found him five years after Sabirah died. What if Sabirah was supposed to be the Ice Flower Element, but her death made Aluria give another child a Seed? He turned five, Activated, and we never thought anything of it other than 'hey, surprise, he's younger!' Also . . . Vincent. He didn't act like Lead right from the start, did he? He only started acting like a Lead—surprise—about a year or two into things. After Sabirah died."
Starlight felt her heart wrench painfully. "If she had been a Lead Defender of the Ice Flower Element," she whispered, "she would have been just the second in existence, with the other being Tasia. Oh goddess." In a thin whisper, she added, "She was supposed to be my Defender. My friend. And I never got to know her." She immediately felt Phoenix holding her, but her twin's embrace only helped a little.
"That's why Minstrel hates Raven and our Caretakers!" Reagan blurted. "Oh my god, what if he was supposed to be Sabirah's soul mate? That would explain why he hates the mates of Cultivators! He failed his own in the most terrible way possible! We kept calling her his sister but she wasn't. She was adopted."
Storm rubbed his forehead as it throbbed. "It's still more whats. Still no why. But . . . we're closer. I feel it. There's one last thing. Something to explain the madness and the Chaos." He looked at his eldest sister, but if Tasia had any suspicions, she was not sharing.
"We have to go to Aluria." Starlight squared her shoulders. "He won't come back here to us. We have to go to him. We need to gather the other Alurian Defenders and take him on as a full team of twenty. All of us, together." She took a deep breath. "Tasia, that orb from Arthur. Do you think it will let us go back to Aluria?"
"Of course it will. I might even be able to adjust it to prevent Uncle Talon from suffering if we use it." Tasia closed her eyes for a moment and then hugged Anna close. "I suggest we all make our goodbyes. The Caretakers cannot come with us this time because we don't know what that will do to Minstrel. This has to be a matter of Cultivators only," she said quietly. "We will leave in the morning."
©Stacy J. Garrett. Do not reprint or redistribute without permission.
Chapter 20 (June 1st, 2024)->
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