Dark Princess: Shadows (The Children Of The Gods Paranormal Romance #89)

1. Morelle

1

MORELLE

" I have passed beyond the veil before my time," Morelle's mother said. "But time has no meaning here. It has meaning where you are, though, and it is time for you to wake up and experience the new world I sent you and your brother to. Ell-rom needs you."

Morelle was still reeling from the revelation that her mother was no longer among the living. Was she now telling her that Ell-rom was in danger?

"Who is threatening Ell-rom?" She felt anger electrifying her blood, readying her to wake up and fight to protect her brother.

"Nothing has changed over the thousands of years you were in stasis, my daughter. Your grandfather, the Eternal King, still wants you and Ell-rom dead."

That statement should have been the most jarring of everything her mother had told her, but it was not. Since Morelle was old enough to understand her and Ell-rom's hybrid nature, she had known the Eternal King would kill them if he ever discovered that they were his grandchildren, born from a forbidden affair between the Kra-ell queen and his son.

What distressed her more was the revelation that her mother was gone and Ell-rom was in danger. Still, she shouldn't let this strange dream alarm her. It was probably not true, and her mother was, in truth, alive and well, ruling the Kra-ell with a strong and steady hand as she had done throughout Morelle's life.

What had prompted the dream, though?

Had she perceived some new danger threatening her mother?

Was that why she was dreaming that the queen had died and was speaking to her from beyond the veil? Or was the danger aimed at Ell-rom, and had she projected it onto their mother?

Her brother was too kind and pious for his own good, so his being threatened was not surprising.

No Kra-ell could afford to be so trusting. In their culture that was perceived as weakness, and for those in positions of power, it was like painting a target on their backs.

And what was that about thousands of years in stasis?

"You must have misspoken, Mother. This is just a dream. I could not have been asleep for so long."

The queen assumed her customary haughty expression, which terrified most of her subjects but not her daughter. "Walking the Fields of the Brave does not diminish my faculties, child of mine. If anything, it makes them sharper. You have just regained awareness but have been in stasis for a long time, much longer than you should have been. Your grandmother delayed and sabotaged the settler ship. She did it for her own reasons, but inadvertently, she saved your and Ell-rom's lives, so I am grateful to Ani, queen of the gods, even though what she did was not enough to save her son, your father."

The anger in her mother's voice sounded more familiar than anything she had said so far, but it was tinged with sadness, which, in life, the queen of the Kra-ell would never have allowed to infiltrate her tone.

"I am sorry for your loss, Mother. I did not know how deeply you cared for our father."

"I did, and I still do. We might not have been fated as he believed, but we produced two wonderful children who bound us in life and death. Bonds of love never die."

Perhaps her mother was dead after all because she would never have spoken of love when alive. The Kra-ell did not believe in such soft emotions, only loyalty and duty.

"I am surprised you still feel so strongly about those bonds in the afterlife. I thought that we are unburdened at death."

It was one of the reasons Morelle hoped for death to claim her. To take one's life was a sin, and even though she was not a great believer in the Mother of All Life, she was not so rigid in her disbelief as to take the risk and be relegated to spending eternity in the Valley of the Shamed.

"In time, we forget the details of what caused our greatest joys and sorrows," her mother said. "But we carry their echoes through many rebirths." She smiled. "You are an old soul, Morelle, and your burden is heavy, but you should not allow it to rule you. Find a way to turn it into strength. You will need it."

"I am tired, Mother," Morelle admitted. "I feel like I have been struggling through endless epochs. I want to rest."

"This is not how this works, my child, and you do not get to choose when the cycles stop. Besides, Ell-rom needs you, and this time around, you will not fight alone. Listen..." Her mother's voice began to fade.

"Listen to what?"

"Just listen." The dreamscape around her mother began to dissolve, colors bleeding away into nothingness.

And then Morelle heard it.

Someone was speaking next to her about strange things that she could not comprehend, even though she understood every word the male was saying.

"That's why I think artificial intelligence is the future," he said. "It is divorced from feelings and therefore should be able to always choose the truth. It will take time and effort to clean it of biases, and I'm not sure how we can make that part of its algorithm, but if we manage it, we will finally be free from the power grab of the illusions we create."

She had no idea what he was talking about, but it was nice to listen to something other than the thoughts swirling in her head.

"Who is he?" she asked, but her mother had already faded away, leaving her alone in the darkness.

The voice continued, weaving tales of a world similar to the one Morelle had left behind and yet so vastly different that most of what he was describing did not resonate with her. She lacked the context to connect his words with familiar images or processes.

Still, as she listened, she felt a pull toward wakefulness, curiosity warring with her reluctance to leave the comforting oblivion of the dreamscape.

As the darkness around her began to lighten, transforming into a soft, warm glow, Morelle became vaguely aware of other sensations, like the weight of the blanket covering her supine body, the gentle whisper of air that did not sound like wind but rather like something mechanical, and other noises that seemed artificial rather than natural.

It made sense, given that she was in a stasis chamber inside of a pod, surrounded by a variety of life-supporting equipment, but who was the male speaking to her?

Was it one of the gods back on Anumati? Broadcasting through the speakers in the stasis chamber? But then, why was he talking about strange and unfamiliar things?

Her mother had said that thousands of years had passed while Morelle had been asleep in stasis, so maybe things at home had changed beyond recognition, and that was why she could not understand most of the things the god was saying.

How was he speaking in Kra-ell, though?

Had the gods who had been exiled to Earth adopted Kra-ell as their official language?

That was not likely, even though their rebellion had been on behalf of the Kra-ell. It wasn't as if their Kra-ell collaborators had been sent into exile with them. The Eternal King had only punished his people who had risen against him. He made a peace treaty with the queen of the Kra-ell and even supplied her with the ship to take settlers to Earth.

She was dreaming.

That was the only explanation.

"...and that's why I think we need to focus on educating the younger generation," the voice was saying. "If we can teach them to think critically, to question and verify facts, we can combat the spread of untruths."

Part of it resonated with her, and part of it sounded like gibberish.

"What do you think, Princess? Ready to join the fight for truth when you wake up?"

Morelle had never thought of herself as a princess because no one had ever regarded her as such, and being of mixed blood, she would never have become her mother's successor, so perhaps this wasn't a dream after all.

But how did the god know that she was the queen's daughter?

Did he also know that she could never ascend to the throne?

If she were fully Kra-ell, she would have been the crown princess, her mother's successor, but as a hybrid abomination, all she could do was hide or run, and she had done both.

By sending her to Earth, her mother gave her a chance to change her destiny, but first, she needed to wake up.