Jenny was stronger than Meg gave her credit. It was something she’d always known, deep inside, but there was just something about a younger sibling that created an urge to protect, to defend, to lead—even if they had the better sense.
The warm stone of the volcanic chamber reached through the soles of her boots as she pounded her way toward Tiron. He hadn’t seen her yet. But he would.
Velanna doesn’t want you to be her. You can’t be, because you’re you.
Was Jenny right? Was that the key?
Maybe what worked for Velanna didn’t work for her. The battle with the gaja had proved that. So maybe the Kirana was the same way.
So that begged the question: What was her way?
Tiron screamed at the Centaurs on the mezzanine as they began to fall to Yodha arrows.
At the back of her mind, the shadow image of Tolan formed, scowling at her, eyes disappointed, expression full of sorrow.
“I believed in you.” The false-Tolan had said to her. “You let me die, Margaret. I wish I had never found you.” The grief-filled whisper still boiled in her soul, stabbing claws like nails into her skin.
But that hadn’t been the real Tolan.
Those words hadn’t been the truth.
Tolan had told her all those months ago. Velanna wasn’t training her to be a Celtican. That had never been the point. That had never been what Velanna wanted. She just didn’t know how else to train someone.
There had never been a human Andai before.
There would be now.
Another step toward Tiron. He still hadn’t seen her.
I’m not Celtican. I’m human. And that’s okay. Tears stung her eyes. I don’t have to do things the same way as Velanna or Tzaitel do them. I can be myself and still be right.
The scream of the gaja she’d killed echoed in her mind.
I can still protect the people I love with the strength I already have.
Meg picked up her pace, ran as fast as she could, as Tiron spotted her. The giant Centaur whirled with a cry of rage and alarm. He raised the hand that clutched the Andhera crystal, and he lifted the hand that still clung to the Kirana.
Jenny’s arrow whistled overhead.
Sometimes you have to figure things out on your own. That’s what makes you strong. That’s what makes you—you.
Jenny’s arrow stabbed into Tiron’s hand, and he screamed in pain and dropped the shimmering white crystal just as Meg reached him. She dove forward, snatched the crystal out of the air, and skidded to a stop on the other side of him.
Warmth flooded up her arm in a wave that stole her breath. She looked down at the crystal. It sparkled brighter than before, almost blinding in its intensity. Adrenaline soaring through her veins, Meg stared at the waltzing swirls of color inside the crystal.
You see me.
It wasn’t a question. It was a certainty, a fact, like truth.
Meg’s heart thudded against her ribs.
Yes. She shut her eyes. I see you.
Searing hot waves of power washed over her skin, trembling deep in her core. She’d thought the volcanic air burned her nostrils. This power threatened to burn her from the inside out.
A voiceless whisper tickled her ears.
Ask me.
Meg paused and stared forward at Tiron. The Centaur Lord was rearing back, the darkness of the Andhera pooling in his hand, and time itself stopped.
In rush of sensation, everything froze.
Silence. It fell over the chamber like a deafening blanket. The burning acrid smoke of the volcano pit was gone, replaced with a silver-white light that tingled and sparkled.
Velanna and Tzaitel stood back to back several yards away, straining to keep fighting the Centaurs poised to destroy them.
Danny and Mickey stood at each other’s sides, and even though the situation was dire, both of them were smiling like they were having fun. Who knew the way to help her cousnis bond was in mortal combat with homicidal Centaurs?
Barb had gone to help Jim.
Poor Jim. He’d taken refuge under a rock ledge, but he’d still been throwing rocks at the Centaurs. Let it never be said that he gave up easily.
Ask me.
Meg straightened and turned in a circle. The whole world had frozen, a veil of silver-white light dropped on everyone around her, but it hadn’t touched her. It was like standing in a wax museum of a horrible war, surrounded by combatants who she happened to know and love.
But there was no one who could have spoken in a voice like that.
Musical. Soft. Thundering. Fierce. Gentle. Everything it couldn’t be at the same time.
“Where are you?” Meg asked.
Her voice echoed as though the chamber of wax figures were hollow. The light around her shivered, and the figures around her began to fade. What was happening?
“Where am I?”
You see me.
Meg spun in a circle. The chamber was gone now. The Centaurs too. Along with her family and friends. And she was alone in a blinding circle of light.
Panic began to climb her throat.
“I don’t see you,” Meg said. “I can’t see anything. Where are you?”
Ask me.
The light grew brighter, piercing, stabbing like ten thousand needles through her eyes. She gasped and covered her eyes, but the pain and pressure continued to build. Her head throbbed, a wailing sound in her ears, pulsing like the beat of a drum.
Her eyes watered. Maybe they were bleeding.
What was happening to her?
Ask me.
“Ask you what?”
The pressure stopped, and Meg gasped for breath as the pain subsided. Her eyes peeled open slowly, as though her lids were made of sandpaper. A figure moved in front of her, long and lean and lithe, glowing like a white star, robes shifting silently.
A hand extended.
You see me. I see you. Ask me.
The figure in her vision blurred as it came closer, and out of the light that blinded her stepped a man in cream-colored robes, a woven headscarf wrapped around his handsome face, teal eyes sparkling.
“Impossible.”
He reached for her. “Ask me, Margaret,” Tolan said. His smile showed his teeth. “You can always ask me.”
“Tolan?” Meg choked on a sob.
What was this? A dream? An illusion? Had she hit her head and been knocked into a coma? Tolan Ittai was dead. She’d gotten him killed. Phoenix Munroe killed him, shot him, murdered him in cold blood.
“You’re dead.” Meg pulled back.
Tolan didn’t lower his hand. “Yet here I am.”
“Where is here?”
“You need not fear.” His gaze burned her with its intensity. “Ask me, and I will help you.”
Heat crawled up the back of her neck again, prickling along her spine, burning in her fingers. Her palm was on fire. She glanced down and stared at the crystal still in her hand.
“This is wrong,” Meg whispered. “I don’t understand.”
Tolan paused beside her, still smiling and eyes gentle, just like the photograph of him she kept on her wall at Prism Castle. Meg blinked. Exactly like the photograph.
“You see me.” Tolan raised his hand and cupped her cheek.
His touch burned like an ember, searing through her skin, burning down to her soul, but she couldn’t pull away from his silver eyes.
Silver eyes?
Tolan had green eyes. Didn’t he?
“Who are you?” Meg whispered.
The image of Tolan Ittai shifted and vanished, replaced by a mirror reflection of herself. The same bumps and bruises. The same half-done hair. Everything except the eyes.
The eyes were silver.
“I am you.” The voiceless whisper tickled her mind. “You are me. You see me, so I see you.” Her reflection beamed with tears shimmering in her eyes. “Finally.”
Ask her? Was that really all it took? Just asking for help?
“I need—to help my friends,” Meg said to her silver-eyed reflection. “I need to stop the Darkness.”
Her mirror reflection didn’t respond, only lowered her hand from Meg’s face and held it out toward her.
It was her hand, the same scars, the same callouses, but it wasn’t her hand. It was something else.
“I need to help them,” Meg said.
Her reflection smiled, those silver eyes far too ancient to belong in her young face. “Kirana-Vahi, ask me.”
Kirana-Vahi? Lightkeeper? Meg’s stomach turned over. “Are you—the Kirana?”
The silver eyes pierced through her, shining with the light of a thousand stars, fierce and bright and unyielding.
Meg eyed the hand held out to her.
“Kirana, will you help me save my friends?”
The mirror reflection held her hand out again, and with a smile Meg took it.
Time jolted into place with a shock that stole Meg’s breath. Eyes watering, the world snapped back to normal with the overwhelming stink of the volcano and the Centaurs. Tiron was turning toward her, lifting the darkness of the Andhera to unleash it.
“Jenny!” Danny’s scream overpowered the battle sounds. It was louder than the Centaurs, louder than the clash of swords and the groans of the injured.
Meg spun toward his voice in time to see the pulse of a plasma cannon blast knock her little sister to the ground. Jenny crashed into the rocks in a lifeless sprawl.
Rage boiled up from inside her. The crystal in her hand became a sun.
Tiron released the Darkness. It swallowed her, and her vision went black.