I shook my head. “I refuse to be a part of this. I will do everything in my power to resist you.”
“You have no choice. The prophecy has been spoken.”
“Then I will stop it. I will do whatever I can to stop it.”
“You will fail. You cannot change the future. Do not deny your destiny.”
As she said it, I felt her words echo within me, stirring the piece of herself that existed in my mind. I was shocked to feel it take hold of me, grappling my power away. Resisting, I held tight to my magic, but in this state, without being in full control of my body, she easily overcame me and ripped my power away.
Our bodies traveled away from the three planets, past the moon and Mars, to the edge of the asteroid belt. We stopped near one of the bigger asteroids, so large it must have been three miles across. Bits of ice sparkled on its surface—beautiful, but exponentially deadly.
As I stared at the asteroid, pain rippled through me, shredding my energy apart, bleeding me from the inside out. The force was so violent I screamed but couldn’t hear my own voice. Power exploded from every cell in my body, ripping and tearing until the magic collided with the asteroid, spinning it off trajectory onto a collision course with Earth.
“It has started,” her voice said. “In a few months’ time, the asteroid will arrive at our planet, and you shall be the one to guide it to our world.”
Her words seemed to come from far away as the energy surrounding us faded.
“Know this,” her voice whispered. “My purposes cannot be thwarted. Those you call your companions cannot help you. Your dragon protector will die soon, killed because of your own inadequacy to save him.
“Indeed, the man you love will be the one to kill you. He does not love you, for you have never been loved. And you never will be. You shall die alone, as this is the lot of all our kind.”
Her words pierced me deeper than I thought possible, hitting at some inherent pain that I’d always carried, a feeling that I had never been loved, that I never would be worthy of anyone’s love. It was something I’d never admitted to anyone, and it was a scar that ran deeper than all the rest.
Those thoughts stayed with me as I reappeared not in Tremulac castle, but in the catacombs under the elven keep.
The headache returned to my body as I lay on the cold paving stones. As I lay there, I realized the queen was gone. Kull, Heidel, and Maveryck were in the cell with me. Kull and Heidel were both bruised and bleeding, but at least they were conscious. Maveryck, however, lay on the ground, his skin ashen, his chest unmoving.
“Olive,” Kull said as he came to my side.
I couldn’t make sense of anything. Being taken into a memory from the past, shown the destruction of Earth and the birth of not two planets, but three, and then having every ounce of energy drained from my body in order to set an asteroid on a collision course with Earth, was enough to make me collapse.
I grabbed Kull’s hand as he came near, feeling the warmth of his presence melt the chills that had burrowed inside my heart. Tears burned my eyes as I realized what Theht had forced me to do. The worst part was knowing I had been powerless to stop her. She held so much power over me, and now, with the asteroid coming toward our planet, it was only a matter of time before she took over my body once again and struck our world.
“Kull,” I whispered, shivering.
“Olive, what’s the matter? What did she do to you?”
I couldn’t find the words to answer. It was too much. The wall I’d built to hide my emotions threatened to break, and keeping my pain inside only hurt worse. But it’s what I had always done, so instead of crying and releasing my pain, as a normal person would have, I kept my heartache buried inside, creating a canker that grew larger with Theht’s words so fresh in my mind.
With my energy spent, not even able to lift my head, I lay on the stone floor, realizing I had doomed Faythander forever. I clutched Kull’s hand as it if were my lifeline.
And perhaps it was.
Chapter 32
Time blurred. I knew we had left the elven castle and headed south. I knew Maveryck was dead. Someone told me they had found a way to save my stepfather, but I couldn’t understand how. The only coherent memory I had was of sitting in a light carriage, looking out over the nighttime landscape and focusing on the stars, those glassy orbs that haunted my vision, knowing that somewhere out there a piece of a star was headed for us—for me.
After that, nothing made sense until we arrived at Silvestra’s castle. The witch—her pitch skin sparkling under the light of the moon, her silver dress moving like a fairy’s wings filled with magic, with a spell on her lips—touched her finger to my head.
I exhaled.
My mind returned to the present. I was shivering and cold, though I had a blanket wrapped around me. We sat in her ballroom, and the ceiling overhead looked like the bands of the Milky Way—appropriate and mocking at the same time. Though the room’s light was dim, I knew there were others there with us.
Kull held both my hands in his. A few of the witch’s wraiths milled about, but none of them made eye contact with us. I pulled away from Kull’s hands, and he released me.
“Olive, can you hear me?”
I nodded.
“Thank the gods,” he breathed.
He caught me in a tight hug, yet somehow he managed to be gentle. When he pulled away, I found his glacier eyes sparkling a familiar blue. I thought I might be human again,
