Sky Woman: Book One of The Empress Saga

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Enfri wiped her eyes. It had been the story she already knew, and at the same time, it wasn't. What happened had been the same. It was the reasons behind the events that were put in a different light.

    "Mother didn't want him to go," Enfri said to herself. "All this time, I thought she drove him to."

    Deebee sighed. She still sat in her silver-skinned human form with her bare back leaning against the interdiction. "One thing mattered more than anything else to the Mierwyn I once knew. It was her family, the one she was born to as well as the one she chose. She accepted the curse of my ward to keep you safe."

    Enfri hugged her arms around herself. "I don't understand. Why would she agree to be forgotten if she hated me?"

    "The answer is as simple as it is complex," Deebee said as she turned around to face Enfri. "Mierwyn didn't hate you. I think I've proven time and again that I have little understanding of why mortals behave as they do, but I could see that much. To the end, Mierwyn would have laid down her life for yours. Your mother loved you."

    Enfri sniffed and buried her face in her knees. "She couldn't have," she said in denial. "Every time she looked at me... Every word..."

    "Every year spent beneath my ward. You lived most of your life without realizing what was upon you. Neither she or your grandmother ever let that pain touch you. And she suffered for it. They both did, I know. You yearned to be a part of Sandharbor as they once were, but you never experienced that life. The other sky women did. I took that from them, and Mierwyn knew what she had lost. Even so, she endured it to keep you safe."

    Deebee placed her hand on the barrier that separated them.

    "I am not absolving her, Enfri. She loved you from before you were born, but I think she allowed resentment to fester in her heart. It poisoned her, and in turn, she let it harm you. Flames take me, I can't say I can ever forgive her for that."

    "Must I?" Enfri asked weakly. "Am I obligated to forgive her?"

    "Forgive? I'm not asking that of you, now or ever. Perhaps you might someday. That is your choice and yours alone. However, I would ask you to understand her. Not all of us can be as strong as you are."

    Enfri shook her head. "I'm not strong. I'm still the weak, little girl that mistrusts every kindness shown to me."

    Deebee smiled. "And yet you never fail to show kindness of your own. Even now, you give it to that one over there. Show me a mortal who gives life to those that would harm her, one who never acts out of hate and malice, no matter her feelings or the cost. I call that true strength."

    A pit of guilt formed in Enfri's stomach. Deebee was wrong about her. "I do feel hate." She raised her eyes to look at Jin resting in the back of the cave. "Every terrible thing that's happened to us falls on the king and his assassins. When I think of them, I see her."

    "And I see no reason to blame you," Deebee sighed. "But I have my doubts that it's hate you have for Jin. I told you once before that hate and fear are two very similar things."

    Enfri nodded. "I'm afraid of her," she admitted in a bare whisper. "I'm so very tired of being afraid, and courage isn't enough to stop it."

    "I think we had it wrong once again," Deebee said. "Feeling this way and acting on it are two entirely different things. In that, you are twice the sky woman your mother ever was. From my years observing mortals, I've recently come to believe that what you think and feel first are merely what you've been conditioned to think and feel. What you think next— what you act upon— that is who you truly are. It's in the second part, the person you choose to be, where your soul can be seen. Humans and dragons both fall short on occasion, but it's our ability to grow stronger and wiser, to show kindness, that makes us mighty."