“So, it was all a hoax?” Elea asked, her hands cupping her face.
The older woman shook her head. “The chief’s visions proved to be true, just not always in the way that I thought they would. Or how she thought they would. . . . It was not my daughter but my granddaughters who were born with the violet hair. And there were two of them.”
Aris put her arm around Elea and started to stroke her wet violet hair. “The chief didn’t prepare me for that. So, I did my best.”
“You named us both Eleanora.”
“I didn’t know which one of you would fulfill the prophecy,” Aris said. “Truthfully, I didn’t think Nora would live—she must have had the strength of Orla as an infant, for she was barely bigger than my hand. . . . There are no dates in the book. No order to the prophecies. I guessed. I made mistakes. I married my only daughter to a brute of a laird to prevent his uprising, only to have Laird Lochdon seize the throne now, killing my only son and his second family. I have their blood on my hands.”
“Why didn’t he kill you too?” Gerard asked, pocketing the seer stone before unfurling the single sail. They were wasting daylight.
“If you kill a seer,” the old woman said, “you make their last prophecy come true, and he believes that my last prophecy is that he will die by the hand of his only child.”
Aris stood up in the boat, holding carefully to the side for support and balance. “It wasn’t until Aine was poisoned that the earth began to shake and the Three Sisters Mountains formed. The beginning of the Trigon Prophecy. The prophecy that you, Gerard, and Nora will fulfill.”
Shaking her head, Elea dropped her head into her hands. She looked as if the wind had been taken from her sails. “Nora is dead. I felt the piece of her soul leave mine. We cannot form a Holy Trigon.”
Aris kneeled slowly onto the deck, pulling Elea’s hands from her face, and placed the worn book into her hands. “I knew Nora would die.”
“What?!”
Gasping, Gerard was scarcely less surprised than Elea. He put his hand back into his pocket to feel the warmth of the seer stone again.
“I also know that she will live again.”
“In the realms of the Eternal Kingdom?” Elea whispered, sitting up and touching her forehead and shoulders to create the symbol of the Holy Trigon.
Aris pointed a wrinkled, sunspotted hand to the floor of the boat. “Here, in our world. I read about her death in this book. That is why, when you both were eight years old, I made you swear a blood oath. You each sheared a piece of your own soul and gave it to the other.”
“I felt her soul leave mine.”
“But did the piece of your soul return?”
Elea shook her head, her expression a mixture of hope and disbelief.
“You and Gerard must travel on the Great Stone Road that leads to the ruins of Yakura at the foot of the Three Sisters Mountains,” Aris said. “You must each find your ancestor’s cairn, enter it, and free their soul. Each sister will tell you what you need to complete your part in the prophecy. To fulfill their blood oath.”
“What about Nora?”
“She’s coming.”
But it wasn’t Aris who had spoken those words. It was him. The stone in his hand had started to sing again, and this time he understood the words.
25
NORA
Nora hadn’t thought that souls could sleep, but she certainly had. She’d watched over her body until it was dark outside and then her eyelids flickered closed. Opening her eyes, she could not see the body below her.
Had she already become part of the dust?
No, the canopy of the bed was above her.
She sat up, grabbing her arms, her throat, her face. She could feel them all, and the pain in her stomach was almost unbearable. Somehow she was back in her own body. Touching her bandaged neck, she felt a steady pulse. She was alive again. It was impossible. She looked down at the scar on her palm. Elea’s soul shared hers. Her soul must have kept Nora tethered to her body long enough for her to heal. To come back to life.
It was a miracle.
There was no other word for it.