Page 134 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

A smaller Memphis slithered past little Snow’s shoulders to turn into a small cub. She kneeled beside her and whispered, “Find my brother.”

Go find him yourself. I wanted to shout those words when Memphis prattled away on her small legs. The first mistake I’d made that night. I’d hid.

The surroundings suddenly shifted in a murky mist and we were no longer in my bedroom. My younger self ran along the corridors, and we followed swiftly behind as she navigated between heavy bodies of soldiers and terrified Isjordians. Screams, cries of help, the taste of smoke were now in the air. The moment the Adriatians had opened their attack against Tenebrose.

I trembled at the sight of my brother approaching, his white attire littered in blood and soot while he slashed his sword over Adriatian men. How had I forgotten? How had I forgotten how my brother looked?

“Eren,” little me called my brother’s name like a battle cry, drawing a small dagger and weaving through bodies toward him.

My brother gathered my smaller form in his shaking arms. “Find mother,” he panted. “Find mother, she went to the gardens to search for you. They are looking for the three of us. Don’t let the Adriatians see you. They want us. Don’t let anyone see you. Do you hear me?”

Younger me shook her head. “No, we will find ma together.”

He ran a bloodied hand through my hair. “I have to get to Thora first. I have to get our little sister out of the fire. I will meet you there.”

“Eren,” little Snow cried out. “Please.”

He stood to leave toward the engulfing fire. “I will be right behind you, I promise. I promise you, Lin. I am right behind you.”

“Liar,” I whispered, and then shouted at the figure disappearing between the ash, “Liar!”

Time warped again, floating images flew by and past us. My cries begging Cerelia vortexed around us. Flame. More death. Blood. The hounds chasing and sniffing around for us. Memory of me catching Moreen guiding Adriatian soldiers toward the winter gardens as she hid. Till all of a sudden, the air cleared, and our surroundings sharpened.

A black-haired woman searched the winter maze frantically, her white dress stained and wet from the snow carpeting the floor of the gardens. My mother. It was my mother. “Snow!” Her hands shook as she cupped them over her mouth. “Come out, my snowflake. Please!”

“Ma!” Little Snow flew in sight and my mother sobbed with relief.

“You look like her,” Kilian said quietly.

“I couldn’t remember her,” I whispered. I’d forgotten what she looked like. In my dreams she has my face and other times a contorted mess of blood. My beautiful mother.

My heart cried, it wept so fiercely, but my eyes refused to blur the only chance I had to see her again how she was.

And even that got cut short when Adriatian soldiers flooded the gardens, doubling in number by the second while Moreen hid herself behind the garden walls, grinning herself to tears.

Protectively, my mother pushed me behind her. Lifting her hands heavenward, a wall of wind raising between the two sides shielding them. Magic that she hadn’t used since her kingdom had been destroyed. Magic she’d refused to use because it reminded her so much of her pain. But she’d used it then—for me, to protect me.

“Run,” she said to me, her body quivering from magic which had not cursed through her for twenty-seven years. “Run, Snow. As quick as lightning, as quick as Nubil, do not turn, do not stop, and do not fear. Run till all you hear is nothing, till all you see is nothing, till you are so alone, your thoughts echo in your ears. Promise me, Snow, you will run and you will live, promise me.”

“No,” my smaller self cried with conviction, flickers of lightning gathering around her small wrists. “Not until you promise you will run with me.”

My mother smiled brightly down at me. Perhaps one of the first times she’d done so in a while. Maybe it was why I believed the next words she said, “I will be right behind you, I promise.”

A bitter laugh cracked from me. I laughed and laughed hysterically till I couldn't breathe. Promises and promises. “Watch,” I said to the man beside me. “You don’t want to miss the best part.”

As soon as I’d taken off, my mother had given up, shadows slithered from all corners, like tentacles they latched onto her limbs. Quicker than a flash of lightning, black steel jutted out of her chest, life vanishing from her eyes within moments.

Our location shifted till we stood beside little Snow. She’d crouched to the ground, a look of horror painting her face as she saw from a distance her mother bleeding out on the cold ground.

“Get up,” Kilian murmured beside me, and my attention jerked to him.

Little Snow didn’t cry, nor scream, nor mourn at that moment. She looked given up, staring between where mother’s body laid lifeless and the burning castle.

There was little I remembered from that night, but I remembered the thoughts crossing me at that moment—wanting to go after them, to die with them.

A screech came from the sky and Memphis landed beside my smaller self. A second later, Lysander portaled close by. He’d used the morph to find me.

“Go!” he shouted at me. Swirls of red magic twisting around his fists. “The city gates are open, run toward Sabble Abyss and hide.”