Prologue
I woke up.
My body electrocuted back to the living. I gasped as the air invades my lungs and fills my body with life. I need to breathe so I sat up and pushed my blonde hair out of my face. My mouth was dry, and my hands shook so terribly I clasp them together to try to get a hold of myself.
I’m in a small bed. Large white candles surrounded the room, giving it a beautiful orange glow. It’s hard to breathe in the windowless room. The darkness surrounds me like an obsessed lover, refusing to let me exist without it. My eyes run around the orange room trying desperately to find some sort of recognition. Nothing is familiar in the darkness. I’m dressed in a pale pink nightgown with matching pink sheets. Pink. My favorite color.
He sits beside me on the bed. I recognized Kaylee, my friend and makeshift father figure. He is older than I remember. Much older. I look at him confused. His eyes are no longer blue, but gray. His long, brown hair is peppered with silver stringy strands of knotted hair. Kaylee was now a thin man and who looked as if he hadn’t eaten in years. My mind remembers him.
“Kaylee.” I said with a scratchy, dry mouth. I recognized Regina’s voice as my own.
“Anna, you remember me?” He wheezed. His gray eyes squinted with excitement, and I saw a lone tear escape his right eye.
“Of course I remember you. Why wouldn’t I ….”
I can’t speak. My eyes rolled back, and my head throbbed with pain. I felt Regina’s hurt and pain deep inside me. Tears flowed easily down my face as memories of Regina float to the surface of my mind.
I yanked the soft material of my nightgown aside to see a large red patch of mushy flesh over the spot where Regina was stabbed. It was an unusually large wound. I did not remember the dagger being that big. My fingers shook violently as I touched the rectangular wound over my heart. I noticed the red patch on my hands, one solitary wound on the front, going through to my palms, as if I had been crucified. The memory surged through me.
Looking at my hands, I screamed out of fear and anger. Anger crawled so easily inside my heart. I stare at my wound, the memories of the other girls returning to my head. All had been named Regina. Vengeance ran through me, and starts beating like its own little heart come alive.
“Anna! It’s alright! Anna!” Kaylee said. His voice was no match against my own.
I couldn’t stop screaming and touching the red patch on my chest. Regina’s life made sense to me now. Memories wash over me. Kaylee grabbed the tops of my arms and tried to calm me down, but I can’t stop all the painful memories emerging from the depths of my mind.
“Oh, Kaylee, they killed me! They killed me!” I screamed over, and over. Thankfully, every time I said it, I felt my body relax. I let Kaylee embrace me.
“I know, my dear girl. I know.” He held me tightly. My face was pressed into his neck as I cry into him. He held me as the pain pours out of me. After I shed my tears, I felt like myself again. Every tear that fell from my eyes was the part of me that use to be Regina. With every sob I felt more in control of myself and my emotions. I stopped crying because it feels as if Regina, and her pain, is gone from my body. Kaylee looked deep into my face, his sorrow echoed through his eyes.
“Where are we?” I asked as I wiped away my tears.
“Under a small town called, Brenham. This is a temporary ….home, if you will.”
I shook my head in confusion. “Why are we here? Where’s Delengrad? Whispering Woods?”
Kaylee straightened his spine and cleared his throat as he says, “The world you use to know is gone, Anna. Judge Slider’s power has stretched beyond the borders of Williamson Law. He controls most of the lands. Delengrad, the Woods, Lordview, and all of the surrounding cities are gone.”
“Gone?” I asked with shaky breath.
“Yes, but I don’t want you to think about that. Right now, I need you to calm down and steady your breathing. We didn’t come this far only to lose you now.” Kaylee looked into my eyes, and calmed my breathing.
“Is everything okay?” Someone shouted from the open door.
I recognized my cousin Sarah. She is just as beautiful as I remember her to be. Her hair was a rich brown. A modern blue tank top and black leather pants hug her trim figure. Her head was high and her spine was straight as a board. Confidence emanated from inside her, I could see her time with Via in Whispering Woods did her well. I always thought of her as a sister and treated her as such regardless of her being my cousin. My heart filled with love for her as I think of our life together.
I let go of Kaylee, and looked at her. “Sarah.”
She ran over to me, jumped on the bed, and hugged me tightly to her body. I felt her heart beat into mine. “Oh my Universe, Anna, it’s really you!” It wasn’t long before her tears streaked down the back of my silky nightgown.
“Sarah, you look so ….strong!”
She blushed and turned her head down. “Aww, thank you.”
I gently grabbed the back of her head, and pulled her forehead to mine. Her wet brown eyes look into mine. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” She insisted, making no attempt to wipe her tears. “Once I left the Academy, it didn’t follow me. I’m fine, I promise. Wow, it’s been a long time! I can’t believe you remember that.”
My smile dropped. “How long?”
She looked straight into my eyes as she said, “Five hundred years.”
“Five hundred!” I gasped. “What happened to Father and Mother? My brothers?” I asked with concern, looking at both of them for an explanation.
“Anna, you father is dead.” Sarah said to me with sadness. “His soul moved on to the Gates of Judgment, but your mother is alive and asleep upstairs. It’s a good thing you woke because she doesn’t have long in this world. Your brother, Richard, is below with the council. They’re in quite a stir since you woke. As for Syler, well ….he was with us when we went to rescue you from that house. He didn’t make it back and we don’t know what happened to him.” Sarah answered, and lowered her eyes.
I shook my head to show her I understood, but inside I cried for Syler. My brother, my sweet baby brother. His face flashed inside my mind. I remembered those sweet blue eyes that matched my own. He was twelve years old when I died, I could only wonder what he would be like now. Would he look like Father? Was his temperament like Mother’s? How did he manage to survive after Father and I died? My chest ached for my little family.
“Oh no!” I cried. The pain punched me in my gut. Sarah hugged me again into her arms. I cried, “This is so horrible!”
“Not anymore.” Sarah said. “We have you back. We’ll find your brother, and the others. We’ll find them.”
“You don’t understand, Sarah. Katie is still in Lee! She’s trapped there in some kind of time limbo, and …. Rachel is dead. Slider killed her the last time she gave birth to Regina. Rachel’s ….dead.”
“I assumed as much when I couldn’t locate her. Do you remember everything?”
“Yes, I remember everything. I know who I am, who I was, and in between.” My voice cracked and the tears threatened to release themselves from my eyes as I spoke. I clung to Sarah’s shoulder as if my life depended on it before I let her go.
“Are you okay, darling?” Kaylee stepped forward as he spoke.
“I think so. I don’t feel pain in my body, except my heart.” The last words were hard to get out. Instinctively I placed my fingers to my healing heart. The nasty patch was squishy like a rotten piece of fruit. Pain flooded my heart like a heavy rainfall, drowning me in its downpour.
Kaylee approached me gently. “Speaking of that, I need to check you. You need a complete exam, and I need to ask you some questions. Sarah will stay here to assist me.”
The old wizard brought out a box of potions. His back has a hump and I thought I saw him limp with every step he took. On a purple sheet made of silk, Kaylee laid out his potions and instruments. I noticed there aren't many potions for him to choose from. As Kaylee inspected my wounds he asked me questions about myself. He wanted to know if I remembered being Anna, and Regina. My memory was full and overflowing like a cup with too much water so the answers came easily.
“My hands.” I said as I hold them up. “Will I be able to use them again?”
“The magic inside the Kareithian Dagger is strong, but thankfully didn’t reach your heart, only infected your flesh. Time will tell what the effects will be. I don’t think you should be worried about your hands, I truly believe time will reverse the damage.”
“What the hell is the Kareithian Dagger?” I asked.
“A knife made by a man named Kavner. No one has ever seen it, except for Sarah.” He motioned to Sarah who is sitting beside me. Something about the way Kaylee said this brings a spark to my memory.
“It was you!” I exclaimed at Kaylee with wide eyes. “You were Bill Greer, the man who helped Regina decipher that video!”
Kaylee shook his head. “Yes. I realized you didn’t understand what your dreams were telling you. I found a way to insert myself into your life. I had to get you away from your parents and that town.”
“Well ….why didn’t you just tell me? Why didn’t you warn me?”
Kaylee chuckled. “Oh, my darling Anna, forgive me for laughing. You might not remember it now, but we had the exact same conversation before you died. It was a different situation, but one that could have been avoided if I had warned you.
“Anna, tell me, would you have believed me if I had told you the truth about your parents, the town, and your impending death?”
When he explained it that way, he had a really good point. I chuckled as I said, “Probably not. Regina would’ve written you off as crazy, and looked somewhere else for an answer. But she did feel our connection. Is that how you found me?”
Sarah and Kaylee gave each other a conspiratorial gaze before she says, “We weren’t the only ones looking for you.”
“What? Who else was looking for me?”
“A man by the name of Pirate has been aiding our search for you.” Kaylee answered.
“More like leading the search.” Sarah muttered to herself while looking at my hands.
“Actually, it was sheer luck that we located you. Thank goodness I had the intelligence to mark you with the sign of the Woods. A young boy by the name of Javier Juanson identified you when he attended the Will Lawson School. While we are cursed to the darkness, his family and many others are not. They volunteered to help us find you during the daytime. It was the Pirate’s idea. Javier was able to verify the mark on your head as that of the symbol for Whispering Woods. Sarah went to the school and followed you to Lee.”
Sarah gently asked me, “Do you want me to call you Regina, or ….?”
“No!” My voice echoed around the room like a drum. “Never call me Regina. I’ve always been Anna, never Regina. That poor girl doesn’t exist.”
Kaylee saw the exhaustion in my eyes and said, “Maybe we should let you rest before we continue? There are important things I must reveal.”
Judge Slider had stolen my youth and my life, so I could no longer rest. It was time to exact my revenge against him. Darkness covered my face as I said, “I’ll rest when Slider is dead.”