The Heartland. Atlantis.
2783.
207th Year of the Reign of Emperor Beryl and Empress Opallyne.
Sapphyre.
At ten years old, she had to choose what she would do for the rest of her life.
Sapphyre sat beneath the Heart, surrounded by its warm glow, bathing in its magic.
She didn't want to choose.
Not yet.
"Sapph, you are Apollyon's Heir, you called the Heart of Atlantis to you as a babe," Diamande was holding her hands, his face so close to hers.
Too close.
She needed space.
Why wouldn't they let her decide for herself?
Why did she have to Choose how they wanted?
The Sorcerer's Path was for her, they all said, filled with magic. Filled from that deep, dark pit inside her.
Diamande was so, so close.
She wanted them to leave her alone.
Why couldn't they just leave her alone.
Go away.
She wanted to scream.
She wanted to push him away.
The flames erupted from her.
Brilliant and blue, before turning a merry red.
And her brother's white robes were on fire.
And his face…
His face.
Sapphyre screamed and screamed and screamed.
…
The Western Wilds.
2352.
49th Year of the Reign of King Caspian X.
Emerylda.
He would not stop talking. First it was about the giants.
Was she to be always cursed with unwilling companions that could not hold their tongue?
By the Heart, she needed Sapphyre.
Even his conversation was more boring than the endless trees that they rode through.
"Where do you come from? You are not born of these lands, nor is your magic."
"Atlantis."
That gave him pause. "I had thought Charn, like the White Witch from so long ago that had plagued these lands."
Emerylda snorted. "I highly doubt she thought herself a plague. I knew her well. In fact, I've been to Narnia before. My last visit though…I brought her a gift and told her that I would never see her again. She had been much changed."
"From one sorceress to another," he spat.
"You would expect me to leave a baby crying in a world that held no other life?"
"A child?"
"Jadis's daughter. The last blood of Charn."
The child whose appearance had caused such a storm that it had knocked down the Tree of Protection. The only thing that had been stopping Jadis from entering Narnia. The only thing that could have stopped her and Sapphyre.
…
The Ruins of the Witch City.
Sapphyre.
"Could you cast an enchantment upon the witches?"
Sapphyre snorted, rattling the chains that bound her to the chair. She had little aptitude for the magics of the mind. "Forever the disappointment, I cannot do such a thing."
"You must not be that much of a disappointment for Emerylda to keep you by her side."
Sapphyre laughed, though even to her own ears it sounded hollow. "Blood calls to blood. We of the same ilk band together." She looked into his eyes, which never seemed to stray far from his face. She had taken so much from him, and yet she wanted more. She had kept him from his friends, from his family, and wanted to keep him for herself. And there was so much trust in that gaze, so much earnestness. "Do not think of me as someone good, Ril. I have far too much blood on my hands."
Far too much for her to ever redeem.
"We all have blood on our hands, little bird," he whispered, barely louder than a breath. "Even the great kings and queens of our histories. That does not make someone irredeemable."
…
Cair Paravel.
Drinian.
There was no light in the dungeon, save for the torch they had carried with them, and the faint glow cast by diamond at the top of the sorcerer's staff.
The woman's hair was lank about her face, the short copper curls sticking to her brow. Deep, dark shadows under her eyes showed that she had barely slept in the week she had been held within those walls.
"She is a priestess from my home-world," the sorcerer said. "She risked her life to bring your King the news of the Emerald Witch, and yet this is how you treated her."
Guilt flooded him.
He opened the door, handing her the flask of water.
With trembling hands, she took it, not even hesitating.
Drinian's skull pounded.
Gasping, with water dribbling down her chin, the woman looked up at them with those unnerving crimson orbs. "I knew your king would not listen."
"And yet you came anyway," the sorcerer, with his half-burnt face, looked even more fearsome in the flickering light of the torch. "It was brave, Rubi."
Then her eyes flickered to Drinian's own. "You've not yet freed his mind."
"Ah yes," Diamande, he called himself, turned to Drinian then. "Your mind has been meddled with more than once – the enchantments are battling each other." And then he touched his staff to Drinian's brow before the man could even raise an arm to stop it.
Light flooded the cell and Drinian's eyes snapped closed as something flooded through his mind.
Flashes of blue fire and green mist.
The emerald lady in Archenland.
Her words that she was to be Queen of Narnia, that she was to be wed to Rilian.
The blue-eyed woman he had encountered in the marshes and her sad, sad eyes when he'd spoken of searching for Rilian.
Rilian was alive.
Rilian was alive.
"By now my coven will have Sapphyre," Rubi was saying as Drinian's world suddenly righted itself. "I knew there was a chance I would not return; so I had them separate your sisters."
Sisters?
He felt as if he were three steps behind whatever was happening before his eyes.
Diamande drew in a shuddering breath. "You were right to do so. Together they destroyed a world. If they were to move on Narnia, I do not doubt they would succeed."