from inside a deep pit—toward a mother I could barely remember, a father who’d never been there, and the Lady. I remembered the day the Lady came into our hut. My mother cried when she told me to be strong. She told me to always look after my brother. Then, she took a bag of gold coins from the Lady and let me go. The only one who cared about me was my brother. I knew that. And if I cared as much about him, I knew what I had to do.
My hands fisted, a physical reaction to the decision. They squeezed the small fingers laying innocently in mine.
“Vee,” Merlin protested.
The day I was dreading had finally come. I looked down at him, his round baby face and big eyes. The Lady wanted him. I knew I had no choice. We never had a choice. Neither of us.
We’d been betrayed.
With a sharp breath, I let go of his hand. Stomping away from him, I went up the stairs. As usual, Merlin ran after me. His little legs stumbled on the first step. I resisted the urge to help him. I kept climbing.
The bright, green eyes of the Lady widened when she saw me at the threshold. “Vivane?”
Behind me, I heard Merlin fall. A thud sounded as his back hit the dirt floor. An angry wail filled the air. I didn’t turn around. He had to figure it out on his own now. He had to be strong. He had to learn to stop counting on me.
The Lady stood up in a hurry. “Vivane, your brother!”
My name wasn’t Vivane. I wasn’t needed as an older brother.
I looked at her… I looked at the man. He watched me with steady green eyes, the exact same shade as the Lady’s.
I declared, “I am Vane.”
And I was alone.
CHAPTER 1 – ENDINGS
CHAPTER 1
ENDINGS
Forever. I ached for it. I hurt for it in places that didn’t have a name. I wanted it. I wanted it for my friends. I wanted it from my family. The world. Like anyone, I imagined some kind of forever for myself—whether good or bad—then, it was snatched out from under me.
The ghostly faces of seven billion people shimmered in a wall of water that stretched from earth all the way up to the heavens. As I faced the giant wave, I made a wish. I wished to change my fate. I wished to live.
How had I gotten here?
One word—tsunami. Wave after giant wave of ocean turbulence devastated the coastlines across the world. New Zealand. Australia. Hawaii. California. Indonesia. India. Five volcanoes started it all. Erupting simultaneously, they threw the whole world into a nightmarish scenario. Relief agencies that were strained dealing with just one hotspot struggled to cover five. However, it wasn’t just the hotspots that were impacted. The effects bounded out into a radius of pure chaos.
In Hawaii, the Wizard Council summoned the wizards who lived there, a surprisingly high number, to stand on the rocky cliffs and push back the onslaught of water. As the underwater volcano, Loihi, spewed out of control, it gave birth to a new island, a birth that wasn’t supposed to happen for another hundred thousand years. The vassal of the Earth Shaker had woken. The Fisher King, and I’d woken him.
I was halfway across the world from Hawaii. My legs were rooted on a flat, concrete rooftop, at the top of a square, white building, in a row of identical white buildings. Other wizards lined up beside me, evenly spread across fifty or so roofs. We faced the ocean, which, just a few days ago, had been a haven of tranquility and peace for the city behind us.
I couldn’t see the beach anymore. There was no beach. Wave after wave assaulted the shoreline, overrunning the mile-long expanse of sand that stretched from the buildings to the water’s edge.
Squatty steel and concrete buildings, only two stories high, were the last barricade as the water relentlessly tried to inundate the crowded metropolis of Chennai, India.
Its vibrant, noisy city streets, usually packed with three-wheeled rickshaws, bicycles, and cars, were abandoned and silent. Millions of people, a rainbow of brightly colored cotton and spice, had to be evacuated from their homes in the wake of the tsunami alerts. The blare of sirens sounded ceaselessly. Somewhere behind me the static-laden voice of a radio announcer described the panic-stricken chaos caused by the mass exodus.
On the rooftop, Matt took my hand.
I looked up into his tired amber eyes, somewhere deep