Path to Destiny

Chapter 50

Chapter 50

The Drushite queen will reach Aria soon, Eden said. What will you do, Lannie?

I leaned my head against the stone wall of the tunnel. It was silent save for a slight breeze running along the stone. "To defeat Mikkel, I need the laikana's power to seal or purify him?"

Inside my head, Eden nodded.

"And to take that power, to remove it from the tree, would kill the origin of the sylphs. They will never be able to repopulate again. That is everything of Titus's identity. I can never do that to him. I can never do that to Mayra, or Astera."

"Will you sacrifice this world for one man's happiness?" she said out loud.

I started, ramming my head against the wall. Eden had materialized. She knelt before me, her ivory-green eyes peering through me. "You must make a decision," she said.

My tongue wouldn't work, and my throat constricted. "I can't sacrifice his legacy or the future of the entire sylph race," I choked out. "I have no right to choose this."

"Do you have the luxury of a choice?" she asked earnestly. She was so real that I wanted to look away from her gaze, but I couldn't.

I put my head in my hands. "Please don't make me choose."

"Which is more important to you, your country or Titus?"

It was a nonsensical question, petty and stupid because the answer should have been that I loved them equally. But in reality, I felt deep in my heart that my words were lies.

Because I would sacrifice the world for him, and Eden knew it.

"Tell him," she said. "You must take the power of the tree and save Aria, save Etheia. He has a right to know. He loves his country too."

I looked at Eden and bit my lip. I tried to stop them, but tears inevitably touched my eyes and swelled down my cheeks like thick bits of tar. "I can't do this."

Her expression softened. "We all must make hard decisions," she whispered, leaning down to touch her head to mine. "I destroyed my country Ashad to protect Etheia from Mikkel's armies. And with it, I destroyed my soul."

For the first time, I noticed tears fill her eyes. "My people were my essence," she continued, "my everything. But that pain," she added, tucking her long brown hair behind her ear, "and your pain, is not in vain."

"I feel like everything I'm doing is in vain," I whispered, covering my mouth to keep in the sob. "I cannot sacrifice the future an entire race."

Without warning, Eden closed me into an embrace. "There are lives greater than the smallest picture," she said. "We cannot see it all, whether or not we are immortal."

I cried into her shoulder. For the first time in a year, memories of Mother flashed through my mind. How long had it been since I cried like this in her arms?

Years.

Years.

"I'm sorry," I sobbed against Eden's shoulder, apologizing to her, to everyone, for what I was about to do. "I'm so sorry."

Eden wrapped her arms around me and let me cry for a long, long time, until the sunlit ceiling faded from view and the sound of faint footsteps in the tunnels below were all I could hear. And until I could no longer touch her, because her corporeal form dissipated.

I still felt her tears on my hair.

***

I returned to find Ezra and instructed him to bring the others to the tree. They needed to know what I was about to do. Soon Titus, Baruch, and Rowan filtered into the great chamber.