Page 135 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

When she would move, Memphis dug her teeth in my dress and began pulling both away. They didn’t get a chance to go far before Lysander was overwhelmed with men attacking him from all sides. All too quickly, Memphis was twisted around a few Adriatians, and I was running toward the gates when a man reached to grab my long hair in his fist.

I flinched, my hand going to my hair on command at the ghostly touch of that memory and Kilian jerked forward, as if he could stop what was happening.

The man pinned my smaller body under him, but I had stopped thrashing. I didn’t remember this part. The part where I’d given up.

Have you heard about the death of a thousand cuts? The words brushed in a whisper past my ears.

He took a dagger out and dug it onto my cheek. “Have you heard about the death of a thousand cuts?”

My fingers went to my scar as I watched the Adriatian carve it on my younger self. I don’t remember it hurting.

A brush of warm wind tickled my cheek. Not wind. A gust of magic. Kilian looked like he was not breathing and breathing too fast at the same time.

I flinched a little when a tear rolled down his cheek as he watched what happened ahead. And when his mouth slightly quivered, I tore my eyes away from him.

Little Snow didn’t scream when he dragged the tip of the black steel from my cheek down my neck and shoulder. Little Snow didn’t cry. She didn’t fear. This was the moment I’d realised my only reason to live, the flash of wanting to take.

“Sorry, mother,” little me whispered, before resting her palms on the man. There was a sharp zap of light and then black dust flew where his form was supposed to be.

Bloodied and dizzy, she shot up and then took in the men surrounding Lysander before approaching them. Her fingers moved slowly by her sides and the sky cracked in blinding light at her conduct. I looked a fearsome thing, not because of the crimson staining my skin and white dress, but because I was something to fear then. Without lifting a finger, bolts of white electricity crawled over the snowy ground. The second it touched the men, only black dust from their remains was left behind. This was the moment I lost faith in promises and oaths. I could have saved my mother had I used my cursed magic. I could have saved Eren and Thora, too. But I swore. Sworn an oath and promise. That promise made me lose them.

Lysander was panting when he kneeled before younger me. “No magic, Lin. Remember what you three and your mother worked so hard and sacrificed so much for. You swore, you all swore, never to let your father win. Now go!”

“At what cost, Lysander?” I murmured and flinched a step back when his eyes met mine over little Snow’s shoulder. Could he see me?

“At the cost of never living through what he was going to put you through.” He smiled. “Say hi to my daughter for me.”

The surroundings warped again. It grew darker and colder. I’d recognise the trees surrounding us with my eyes closed. How many times had I traced their forms and made shapes out of their branches to keep myself from falling asleep.

I searched the white ground for what I’d partly forgotten. A half dead younger me with a half dead younger Memphis in my hold, keeping me warm. We stayed like that for three days. For three days we had not moved and hid under layers of forest and snow. A dying heart next to another dying heart. We’d not yet bonded at that time, but the animal had stuck to me like we had been closer than what any bond or blood could have made us be. Memphis’s heart had slowed almost with mine, willing to die with me.

Kilian reached close to them, running a ghostly hand over my smaller form’s face. In that same moment, little Snow shifted and cracked her eyes open to stare at the grey skies pouring soft flakes over the forest floor. Memphis perked too and nudged her for a pat which I’d never denied. “Remember, M?” my smaller self asked, running a small blood-crusted hand over the matted and wet fur of the morph. “Mother said that if she ever left us for the heavens, she’d become a winter sky, full of snowy storms.” She nuzzled the morph’s neck. “Will we make pretty winter skies, too?”

Kilian dropped to the ground and covered his face. His shoulders rose furiously and suddenly his body shook with a sob. “Forgive me,” he muttered between shaky breaths and cries. “Forgive me. Forgive me.”

I backed into a stump and slumped to the ground as stray tears left my burning eyes.

Like that, I watched Kilian mourn his doing. I wish I hadn’t—not like this. He should have mourned it with my blade cutting him piece by piece. With him suffering as I had. With him losing everything before losing his life. Why did it look like he was suffering just the same—perhaps worse? Why was he suffering?

Why?

“You were such a disobedient child, but that day you listened.” The words were so airy for a moment I thought I’d imagined them.

I stood and spun round at the realness of that voice. Like an older reflection of me, she stood in white, her long black hair waving at the touch of wind. I had forgotten the green of her eyes. How they resembled the vibrance of a forest after rain.

Her fingers lightly grazed my face, they were cold, so cold. “My beautiful girl.” Turning her gaze to Kilian, she bowed her head just slightly. “Kaliantha’s boy, you have grown into quite a handsome man.” The smile she gave her killer was sickly sweet.

I took a step forward and then another till I was within a hand’s reach from her. This couldn't be. I reached to touch a creation of my troubled mind, yet I met soft flesh. “Mother?”

“Don’t frown, my snowflake,” she said, reaching her hands toward me and pulling me into her embrace. “You look entirely too much like my brother when he was about to give me a scolding.”

“How?” I asked, tightening my hold on her, afraid she’d leave me again. “How?” I shook. I shook so hard I couldn’t form a thought. She was holding me. My mother was holding me. “How?”

“There is not much time, my Snow, you cannot stay long in this realm. You’ve already spent too much time here.” She pulled back and reached to hold my hand. “Find Eren and Thora.” Something warm appeared between our hands. The obsidian Visha had given me glowed white for a moment. “Their essence. All of my memories I have of them. All of my love for you and for them, my snowflake. You have it there, it is now yours. Use it to find them.”

“What?”

A tear slid down her cheek. “My last sacrifice. One I will gladly make to have you join them once again.”