“Do you have any idea how to proceed?” Jofi asked.
“Yeah, I do.” Lyssa lifted her head to stare at the Heart of Remnant. “Nektarios has an idea, some ritual magic that will protect me, but it’s complicated.” She peered at a mountain peak in the distance. “All we have to do is stay out of trouble for a week.”
“That seems simple enough in that all you have to do is nothing. Are there any downsides?”
“Staying out of trouble means not drawing the enemy to me and prolonging this, and the ritual itself is potentially dangerous.”
“Are you sure you should agree to it?” Jofi asked.
“I wasn’t given a choice.” Lyssa closed her eyes. “Besides, I think we’re running out of ideas. We need to do what we can to take these guys down before somebody else gets hurt.”
“Then I think you know what to do.”
“Yeah.” Lyssa gave a wan smile. “I do.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“It’s happening soon,” whispered a woman.
The problem with being in a dream was that it was hard to know how much time had passed in the real world. As Lyssa floated in the familiar void, she tried to gather her wits.
Two days? Three days? She’d been doing nothing but low-level tourism, with an occasional trip to the edge of the city to tempt her enemies. Her sleep had been untroubled, but now she had to deal with the return of the void woman with her mother’s voice.
The shadow of the woman drifted in front of Lyssa. She wasn’t sure how she knew it was a woman other than the voice. The amorphous shape could have been almost anyone.
“It doesn’t matter,” Lyssa replied. “The Elders are taking care of it. Jofi won’t be my problem or my friend anymore.”
“You don’t fear death?” the void woman asked.
Lyssa shook her head. “It’s not on top of my favorite things list, but I’m ready to take the risk if it means saving other people’s lives.”
“Endless emptiness. The darkness doesn’t fear the light. It swallows the light. Pure beauty.”
Lyssa narrowed her eyes. “You kind of sound like Jofi after a showstopper.”
“If I were him, wouldn’t I be reacting more?”
“I don’t know. Tristan mentioned sensing something strange. For all I know, this is some sort of spell, as unlikely as that’d be.”
“You haven’t mentioned me to him or your Elder.” The woman’s form faded into the darkness. “A fragment remains of the past. That allows this, gives me a voice. The power of this place, chance, opportunity. This is difficult and rare to find.”
“What the hell are you even talking about?” Lyssa asked. “Who are you?”
“Someone close to you. Very close.”
Lyssa scoffed. “Using my mom’s voice is a nice touch, but I’m not convinced this is anything more than weird stress-induced dreams. It wouldn’t be the first time. I still remember the dreams I had after my parents died, and Chris, and the crap I dealt with after my first few jobs.”
“There’s only so much I can do to filter things,” the void woman replied. “When the time comes, it’ll be up to you.”
Lyssa laughed. “Sister, that’s been true for a long time.”
What dim hints of light there were in the void vanished, encasing her in nothingness. Her awareness didn’t dim, but she couldn’t see or feel anything.
“The beauty of true darkness isn’t in annihilation,” the void woman whispered all around Lyssa.
Lyssa laughed. “Now I know you’re not Jofi.”
“Emptiness isn’t the goal. Complementarity is.”
“Okay, that’s all very cool, and I’ll put that on my daily affirmations calendar,” Lyssa replied. “But I still have no idea what the hell any of that means. If you’re my subconscious, you’re obnoxious, but I wouldn’t be the first person not to like me.”
“It’s hard. The fragments anchor me, but they aren’t enough. It’s hard for me to reach you as something other than what I am, but know one thing. A choice is coming. You can choose oblivion, but if you call me, I will come and offer you another choice. As limited as I am, I still have power.”
“Who are you supposed to be?” Lyssa asked.
“The Night Goddess.”
Lyssa jerked awake, her breathing ragged. She wiped the sweat off her brow and looked around. She didn’t wait for her eyes to adjust before snatching her mask off the floor and pulling it on.
She was alone, and she didn’t sense any unusual sorcery.
“Is there a problem, Lyssa?” Jofi asked.
“More weird dreams.” She took a deep breath. “Just to be sure, you haven’t felt anything unusual since I went to sleep?”
“There are no other spirits nearby,” he replied.
Regalia weren’t alive. Somebody at some point would have noticed. It had to be a dream born of desperation and stress.
She could tell Nektarios and Tristan, but to what end? They both looked down on her as a young woman who was nothing more than a means to an end for both their plans.
“Some things are just obnoxious,” Lyssa mumbled, sitting up.
As Lyssa followed servants through a cold hallway in the Heart of Remnant, she reflected on how the week had passed quicker than she’d expected. She’d convinced herself there wasn’t going to be a grand ambush on the island, after all.
Tristan only spoke to her a handful of times, noting her room was heavily watched, and he’d decided to not kill anyone on his list yet. He continued to observe the situation and let
