Dark Queen: The Cybelline Prophecies

Chapter 82

Sirens sounded in her ears, loud and piercing on that winter night. She had the most wonderful dream. She ran across the field with a beautiful boy who promised to be her wife. But her grandmother had come and said it was time to go home.

The boy let go of her hand and she found him fading away, his eyes on hers as he whispered something.

What did he say?

She reached for him, wanting him to come with her, but he faded faster and faster until there was nothing left.

"Cybelline? Child you must wake!"

Her head throbbed and the sting of disinfectants was the first thing she smelled, voices in the background and the ghost of sirens in her ears. She remembered this hospital, the glare of florescence light and the whispering doctors and nurses who pitied the girl who lost both her parents.

Her grandmother, pale and gaunt, sat by her bed. Her hair had become white overnight, her face a dull and deathly grey.

She touched Cybelline's face, "May the gods forgive my selfish nature and my choice. I do not want you to go back to that place so young, and so I changed your fate."

Gently she lifted a necklace off the little girl's neck and placed it in her pocket, "I hope you never have to go back to that land, it is too dangerous. This trip has taken a lot of your magic, my child and magic has consequences."

"Grandma, I want to go back..." The little girl looked at her grandmother, "I want to see that boy again."

Cybelline's grandmother's eyes snapped into focus, "You should have forgotten. You must forget."

She placed her hand over Cybelline's eyes and began to mutter in a strange and unfamiliar language.

The boy...that boy whose eyes burned with her image became blurrier and blurrier. Cybelline closed her eyes. Though she fought hard, she soon forgot. She would not remember him until the battle in the arena in the City of Thieves against that Londarian Lady, until she obtained the light gem. Those images flooded back to her and she knew it was that little boy...

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Cybelline gasped and woke up, her eyes adjusted to the light in the room and she looked around. It had been the stinging smell in the room that had awaken that memory.

Solana sat by a fire, her back to Cybelline. She was whispering incantations, light pulsing in her hands and turning the fire bright white. Every so often, she coughed and the fire turned from bright white to its normal flame red.

"Solana, where is Killian?" Cybelline asked before she sat up, "Take me back, we have to save him."

Solana frozen in mid chant, but she did not turn around to Cybelline.

"I could not see your future before but I thought nothing of it." Solana said with, her voice raspy from her spells, "That was, until yesterday I saw a vision of you, it was something I scarcely believed possible and I knew that the gods had given me the choice."

"Solara, I don't know what you're talking about right now but I have to go back to Killian." Cybelline got up and swayed, feeling slightly dizzy. Her body felt as if she'd been run over by a tank. 

"I could ignore the vision and let you face the Lady of Light, whose magic rivaled even the most powerful of the fae kings and queens." Solana said, ignoring Cybelline, "If I let that happen, then you, in your already weakened state, would have been captured."