I dream a dream that is not a dream at all, but a memory. I am the First Witch, hurtling through space. Fire quartz twinkles around me. The stars themselves are dark. We are our own galaxy. We have no one else anymore.
Onyx rests next to me, his endless eyes mirroring my grief. Phaedra. Our home. Our mother. That which was forever is now gone.
I tap one of his sapphire plates. The sound is hollow. It reminds me of absolutely nothing, which is all that remains of us.
Where are we going, Amarat?
"I don't know."
It's the truth. Where is there to go? My grief slides away, and anger takes its place. No. They will survive. I will never stop believing that. Somewhere, in some obscure pocket of the universe, against all odds, they will remain.
Do check on him, Amarat. He is all we have now.
My anger burns brighter than fire quartz. This is all his fault. If he'd listened to me, none of this would have happened. He's ruined everything. He's taken everything. Never in a million years would I forgive him.
I wake to Bethany's face peering down at me, glowworm eyes softened by the ghost of worry.
"How long have you been out?" I murmur.
The pendant at my chest sits empty. Its ruby glows mists Bethany's skin.
"You were talking in your sleep," she says.
I rub my eyes. "What did I say?"
"You said it was his fault," she replies.
"Whose fault?"
Bethany shakes her head. "I do not know, Lily. You were remembering our ship. We were running away."
"From Phaedra's destruction." The knowledge is suddenly sharp in my mind.
"Yes, Lily. We did not know where we were going. But we believed. We chose to believe Phaedra had survived. Onyx did not argue with us, but he knew."
Onyx had told me that, as the First Witch, I'd held out hope that we'd go home one day. Now that hope feels more like misery. Misery and denial.
"Are we not allowed to hope, Lily?" Bethany looks to me, as if I know the answers.
"Not if it's not logical," I whisper.
It isn't logical. Phaedra is gone. Anger churns in my throat. It's made of black butterflies.
I close my eyes to hold the heat in. Those winged furies must stay inside me.
Bethany sits still at the foot of my bed. She's like a doll that doesn't blink.
"There was someone else on that ship with us," I say quietly. "Another Phaedrean."
It's the answer I wasn't supposed to find. There was another who had survived Phaedra's destruction. Another who had the power to unseal the Orb of Ariadne.
"We were very angry with him," Bethany agrees. "We tried to tell him, but he didn't listen. He told us how smart we were, but when we needed him to trust us, he dismissed us as a fool."
If Onyx had told me there was another Phaedrean on this planet, I might have made a different decision with the Orb of Ariadne. That's why he wanted me to use the dark power to destroy it. He knew another of us had survived.
He'd survived to destroy once more. He'd been the end of Phaedra, and now he had his sights on my new home.