Page 110 of Memory of Ashes

Had her father stood in this same place?

She’d spent her life excavating what other people buried. This discovery might have begun with him, but its ending belonged to her. She hadn’t been able to stop it, to save her city or her friends. But she could stop this now, and she could save Casyl.

“Your father was looking for a way back,” Eleandor said, “to your mother.”

Amelia stared at him. “My mother is dead.”

He shook his head.

All that time he’d been searching for her mother—not only for an ancient civilisation. She understood now why he’d omitted details from the mine report, and why his research had consumed him.

“How do you know all of this?” she demanded.

“Memory. Everything has memory.”

Danae’s shriek cut through. The creatures were moving closer.

“Go,” she told Eleandor, knowing what she had to do. There was no more time. Her mother was alive. The truth she had never allowed herself to hope for had come when she had no life left to pursue it.

She looked back through the rift at Casyl as he fought. Her hands shook. The discovery she’d dreamt of her entire life had cost her everything.

Casyl turned to her as if he knew something was wrong. She caught his gaze and smiled through her tears.

“Goodbye,” she whispered.

Standing before the rift, she raised her dagger. His eyes went wide as he watched her plunge the dagger into her chest.

The rift convulsed as pain tore through her. The magic of the veil seized its fractured edges and began knitting them together. The ancient forest narrowed from view, its creatures disappearing with it.

Her last sight was of Casyl’s horrified face as he dropped his sword and ran towards her, screaming her name.

Darkness swallowed him before he could reach her.

Chapter 26

Casyl

Danae’s powers were beginning to falter. The strain of holding such enormous walls of fire was draining her of energy. She could only hold them for so long.

Sweat ran down her face, her hair plastered to her skull. Her skin was blistering from the heat of the inferno.

He instinctively ran through the rift towards her. As soon as her powers were doused, the creatures would descend on her, full of revenge. They roared and shrieked as they tried to pass through the fire and the white-hot flames singed their monstrous bodies.

He reached her just in time as the fire died, and the creatures were once again free. They turned on her as she collapsed to the ground in exhaustion. She raised her sword just in time to block the claws of the first creature to reach her.

Casyl moved to stand over her protectively, parrying the creatures’ attacks rather than trying to wound them.

The other warriors joined them, fighting the creatures off, but there were so many that they were pushing them back.

If they got to the rift, all of this would be for nothing. He knew that, and so did Danae.

Danae screamed at Eleandor to close the rift. It had to happen now, before the creatures forced them back into the human world.

He barely had time to glance back as the onslaught from the creatures increased in ferocity, as if they knew what was happening.

Where was Amelia? He glanced back at the rift.

She stood with her arms raised, holding something that shimmered in the light. She smiled at him, and he suddenly knew what she was about to do.