Shades of Darkness (Guardians of Eternity #16) - Alexandra Ivy Page 0,80
fact she couldn’t meant that the poison had been laced with magic that made it lethal to a druid.”
“A demon?”
Keyrah’s gaze drifted toward the firepit where Greta stood as still as a statue, presumably wrapped in Keyrah’s magic.
“She told me that she suspected Greta.”
Chaaya wasn’t surprised. Her aunt seemed like the sort of woman who would happily poison people for fun, but she assumed her aunt had a specific reason.
“Why would Greta murder the head priestess?”
“To take her place.” Keyrah deliberately turned so she could no longer see her sister. “Greta was the obvious successor. Instead Adryn placed the crown on my head.”
“I doubt that made Greta happy,” Chaaya said dryly.
“She was furious.”
Chaaya smiled wryly. When Greta had been telling her tragic tale of fleeing her home, she’d left out the detail that she happened to be a murderous bitch.
“Is that when you forced her out of the village?”
“No. I didn’t want to believe my own sister could have such evil in her heart.” There was no missing the self-disgust in Keyrah’s voice. “I allowed her to remain, although I’ll confess I wasn’t unhappy when she chose to isolate herself from the rest of us. Her…unhappiness was a blight on the village.”
“She said she took care of me.”
“Never.” The older woman shook her head in horror. “I allowed her to remain, but my trust had been shattered. You were too precious for me to risk.”
Precious? Chaaya released a sharp laugh. “Is that a joke?”
Chapter 23
Keyrah flinched, as if Chaaya had reached out to slap her across the face. Then, sucking in a deep breath, the woman pressed her hands together. To keep them from shaking?
“Do you know what happens when one becomes head priestess?” she asked Chaaya.
Chaaya shrugged, trying to ignore her faint pang of guilt. What the hell did she have to feel guilty about? She wasn’t the one who went around sacrificing daughters.
“You get a crown and people start bowing to you?” she asked in flippant tones.
“There is that, but during the passing of the crown, the priestess is given a vision,” Keyrah told her.
“What sort of vision?”
“It’s different for each priestess,” she admitted. “Some are warned of natural disasters or of plagues that are destined to spread through the land.”
Bleak. If Chaaya had a vision, she’d want it to be filled with upcoming lotto numbers. Or Keanu Reeves in the shower.
“What was yours?” she asked.
“Utter destruction.”
“Of the village?”
“Of the world.”
“Bummer,” she muttered.
“It was…overwhelming.” Keyrah wrapped her arms around her waist as if there was a sudden chill in the air. “I could see the evil spreading through the land. I could even smell the death and destruction.”
“Was it the beast?”
“Yes.”
Chaaya considered her mother’s revelations. It hadn’t occurred to her that there’d been an early warning system to send out alarms about the incoming tide of evil.
“Was the destruction connected to the druids?”
“No, it was a threat to the entire world.” Her mother shivered. “Humans, demons, witches, and druids. We would all have been devoured by the deluge of evil.”
A similar shiver raced through Chaaya. She didn’t have to have visions or try to imagine what it would be like to be exposed to the beast’s evil. She’d actually been trapped in the hell dimension with the creature.
She shook away the memory, concentrating on her mother. “You were eighteen when you had the vision?”
“I was.”
Chaaya grimaced. She didn’t want to feel sorry for this woman. Still, it couldn’t be fun to be a teenager with visions of Armageddon dancing in your head.
“Did the vision show you how to halt the beast?”
“I was shown you. My daughter. And then…” Her words died on her lips as she stared at Chaaya in helpless regret.
Chaaya lifted her hand to draw her finger across her throat. “This?”
Tears shimmered her Keyrah’s dark eyes. “I wanted to scrub the image from my mind. How could any mother sacrifice her own daughter?”
“But you did.”
Keyrah lifted her hands, almost as if she intended to reach out and touch Chaaya. Then, seeing Chaaya flinch back, she let them drop to her sides.
“The vision was seared into my soul,” she said, a stark horror in each word. “I dreamed of it each night. I knew I would condemn the world to destruction if I didn’t fulfill my destiny.”
Chaaya turned away, staring at the empty huts. She could almost see the images of white-robed women moving through the village, the sound of their light laughter echoing through the air.
The women who depended on her mother for their protection.