the planet and save the Great Mother.”
“That would be hard to accomplish without the Great Mother on your side. Is she listening to you now?” Aurora’s face twisted with rage. I was questioning her connection to the earth, something that should have been absolute, since she was the queen of the naturi. But I knew better. During her time in the cage, she had lost her connection with the earth, and I had a feeling it was the reason for the madness that now claimed her fragile mind and spirit.
“How dare you question me?” she screamed, pointing one quivering finger at me.
“In all the years that you have known me, have I ever lied to you?” I demanded. She knew that I had never told her a falsehood in the all the time I’d served her. She would know if I were lying to her. “Just a quick meeting to discuss the future of the naturi people. Isn’t that what’s best for both sides? What’s best for the earth?”
Aurora stared at me for more than a minute in silence, her arms stubbornly crossed over her chest as if to protect herself from my words. She wasn’t happy, but she was turning over my words in the back of her mind. I was willing to bet that she was hoping to get some valuable information out of me regarding Cynnia’s forces before she killed me, but then I had hoped to gather the same. I just needed to think of a way to escape again so I could get the information back to Cynnia.
“Bring her into the tent,” Aurora snapped before turning in a swirl of robes and reentering it. The swords at my throat were lowered and I was shoved forward. My escort took me to the center of the tent, where I was pushed down to my knees on a bearskin rug in front of Aurora, who was now seated in a golden throne with plush pillows of deep green.
“Leave us alone,” Aurora ordered. The guards hesitated, glancing at each other and then back at Greenwood, who had entered the tent behind me. “Leave us, I said! Do you think I cannot handle my own sister, who has already been bound and beaten?”
“Me as well?” Greenwood inquired.
“Leave us alone!” Aurora screamed, tightly gripping both arms of the chair so she nearly came out of her seat again. No one hesitated. They all quickly scrambled to leave her sight and close the tent door behind them.
I watched as Aurora sank back in the chair and took a deep breath, as if to calm her frazzled nerves. In the shadows of the tent, I could see the lines of worry starting to extend from her eyes, and long, deep furrows at the corners of her mouth, which was perpetually pulled into a frown. Returning to earth should have rejuvenated my older sister, but it seems the healing powers of the earth were not reaching her. For some reason I had yet to understand, she had truly lost her connection with the earth. A part of me wondered if I could restore it the same way I had for Rowe, but I knew she would not see it as the gift that it was, but a power that I had over her, which would only get me killed faster.
“I see that Greenwood is still trying to insinuate himself at your side,” I observed in a low voice. Slowly, I moved off my knees and sat so my legs were crossed before me. Not only was that position more comfortable and less formal, but I could also rise with more stability and speed than if I’d been kneeling.
Aurora gave a low snort and slumped in her chair. “He cares nothing about me or the naturi people. He’s still only determined to see an earth clan member wearing the crown. It’s been eons since they last sat on the throne, and it’s eating away at him still that I did not choose him when we were all younger.”
“But you’re dangling the carrot in front of him now,” I said as one corner of my mouth quirked in a half smile. “Very wise. You’ve won the allegiance of the earth clan under any circumstances so long as Greenwood thinks he may one day become your consort.”
Aurora matched my smile with a devilish one of her own. “He thinks I’m a fool. If I were to make him consort, I would be found the next morning dead in my bed and him on the throne.”
“As long as Greenwood is leading them,” I said, “I would not trust the earth clan. They follow him blindly and will turn on you at a moment’s notice. They have not been what I would call a trustworthy group for centuries.”
“Trustworthy?” Aurora exclaimed, sitting straight up in her chair again and gripping the arms for support. “What do you know of trustworthy?”
For just a second she had forgotten that I was no longer her devoted sister, but her enemy.
“I never turned my back on you, Aurora,” I calmly said, hoping my soothing voice would help to ease her temper. “Not even when you ordered the death of our staunchest friends and allies. I followed your orders to find Cynnia and bring her back home to you. I knew nothing of her plans. I just wanted us to be a family again and enjoy the power that flowed from the earth now that we were home.”
“You never should have been permitted to live,” she sneered, easing back into her chair again. “Father was wrong to protect you. You should have been killed at birth, and now you’re a blight on our people. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was your influence that corrupted our Cynnia in the end.”
“I’m not what’s killing our people,” I firmly said, trying to brush aside the same venom I had put up with for most of my existence. I had to remain focused on the reason I’d taken this risk in the first place. “I know you saw it while we were caged. There was no hiding from it. Our women were no longer producing children, and those few babies that were born died at a young age. And then there were the hunts. Hundreds of our people were slaughtered in the name of treason.”
“And what is your point?”
“Our people are dying!” I cried, outraged by her bland attitude. “We can’t afford another war. Not a civil war amongst ourselves or a war with the humans, who have grown infinitely more dangerous with time. A war will destroy any hope we have of seeing the continuation of our race.”
“Oh, do not act as if you care about our people!” Aurora snapped. “You are the Dark One. The one who should never have been born. You don’t care about a race that never wanted you.”
“Regardless of their feelings for me, I am still a naturi, and I don’t want to see the slaughter of our people to continue. You have to know that we can’t survive much longer as we are. This division of the clans is weakening us.”
Aurora remained silent for a long time, staring just past me, lost in some dark thought. I could only hope I was finally reaching her; that the madness that had claimed her was only temporary and she was coming back to reason now that she was out of the grasp of our gilded cage.
“What do you propose?”
I sucked in a deep breath through my nose and released it through my clenched teeth. “We have to end the wars. All of them. I propose that you leave Cynnia and me alone. Leave us to pursue a quiet life and let us simply return to the earth. I also propose that you abandon this need to destroy the human race. Pursuing a war with the humans will not only lead to exposure after centuries of being little more than a myth, but they will actively hunt down those of our people that remain. We will eventually be wiped from existence.”
Aurora’s reply was a low laugh that grew both in volume and intensity until she was nearly rocking in her chair. And then the laughter stopped almost as quickly as it started. She stared at me with cold, merciless eyes that held no memory of the fact that I was her own flesh and blood.
“You want me to abandon the earth?” she whispered.
“No, that’s not what I said.”
“But that’s exactly what you want if I am to leave the humans untouched. You’re proposing that I abandon the earth to those monsters.”
“Attacking the humans will destroy our people.”
“You must be willing to make sacrifices for the Great Mother!” she cried, shaking her fist in the air. She slammed it down on the arm of the chair before leaning forward to glare at me. “The humans are destroying the earth. You cannot be blind to that even if you have lost all contact with the earth.”
“I am aware of their actions,” I admitted.
“Then you must know that they cannot continue to go unpunished. That is why we were created. We must protect the earth at all costs, preserve and nurture her strength. If we protect the earth, then she will in turn give us strength in battle.”
I shook my head sadly at her. She wasn’t listening to me at all. At one time she had closely listened and considered my counsel, but now she was deaf to my words. “If we continue on this course, there will be no one left to protect the earth. You are leading our people to extinction.”
“No, I am leading us to salvation,” she proclaimed with a beatific smile. “However, I am happy to see to your extinction before I turn my attention to our other traitorous sister and her band of misfits.”
