"Go on." I thought I had begun to put the pieces together already, but I was wrong. More was to come.
"It was said that she will have the power to end the drought of seven years," Sirenia said. "That's why our nameless witch cursed your land into a barren womb, unable to produce apples."
Silence consumed me. Was I cursed or was I blessed?
"The day that girl is born, no other mother in the land will deliver their babies. Their birth will be either delayed or they will be born dead." Sirenia was happy about it. A dark fairy tale, like the one the Grimm Brothers wrote years later.
"So that's why she cursed our land in the first place?" I mumbled, as if the mermaids couldn't hear me. I was inside my head. Inside my childhood memories, looking for more answers.
"Indeed," Sirenia said. "The nameless witch wanted to find you for her own reasons. Night Von Sorrow kidnapped you later for the same reason."
"Because I was the prophecy girl who'd fall in love with his son," I commented absently.
"Night Von Sorrow wanted to turn his son into a fully transformed vampire, and bite you as well, because the prophecy said that would be the best way to get rid of you, Majesty," Sirenia said. "As it was told, you're stronger than anyone thinks, even stronger than what you think of yourself. Killing you wasn't going to work. But turning you into one of the Sorrows was going to end the curse."
"That's why they lied to Angel and told him they thought I was a vampire," I said. "They wanted to tempt him into biting me. Trying to make it easier on him."
"I don't think Angel believed that," Sirenia said. "He was only questioning why you can't look into a mirror—which, frankly, none of us know." She gestured at her army of sirens, now silent, not singing, listening to a bedtime fairy tale, as dark as they had always meant it to be.
"Is that why you're not hurting me?" I asked. "You want to pressure me"—I remembered Cinder's words—"so I give in and come with you, to save Angel."
"The same way he fought for you until now," Sirenia said. "You have no idea what he went through in those two years. Tortured, exiled to a tower under the sun, and beaten each day, to force him to end the prophecy by biting you. In the end, he decided he couldn't live without you, and that he would protect you forever." Sirenia pursed her wet lips, pouting at Angel again. "But what a pity. Look at him. So weak, sleeping like a beautiful princess." She snickered again.
"Why am I so important to the nameless witch, then?"
"That, also, we don't know," Sirenia said. "She"—Sirenia neared the log and whispered—"is very demanding, but also patient enough to get what she wants the way she wants it. She has lived since very long ago, and has nothing but time on her side."
I brushed my hands into Angel's hair, contemplating what to do. Soon we both wouldn't be able to stay on the same raft. Soon he would be thirsty and want to bite me against his will. I couldn't even escape to the water I feared the most. Was I supposed to give in and go with the sirens, only to save Angel—and myself? A stepping stone in our journey, maybe, until we could meet again and find the Tower of Tales. But why should I keep sacrificing myself—first for my land and family by not staring into mirrors, and then for the one I loved by surrendering to a nameless witch who definitely wanted to hurt me?
"You haven't told me why it was so important a Karnstein married a Sorrow," I said to Sirenia.
She eyed me, as if it had been only common sense. "But, Majesty, don't you know?" She winked. "Your offspring. Another girl will be born, the daughter of Carmilla Karnstein and Angel Von Sorrow."
"We will have a girl?" I smiled in the middle of all my sorrows.
"Two, maybe," Sirenia said, then waved her hand as if it were a trivial detail. "Who cares about numbers? The point is that one of them is really, really a threat to the Sorrows."
"How so?"
"Your child, Carmilla, is said to have the power, an unknown one, to eliminate all vampires in the world, if not all evil in the world."
46
Fable's Dreamworld
"Where is he?" Cerené asked with terribly scared eyes. Fable could see her chest rise and fall, her eyes scanning the night, looking for the boy who had cut off her hands before.
"I don't know, Cerené." Fable realized she was as scared as her. She reminded herself that if Loki killed her in the dream, they'd probably prepare another coffin for her in the Waking World cellar. "The problem right now is that we don't know which direction he could attack us from," Fable told her.
She looked at the dense trees surrounding them. How did people find their way in such forests?
"Maybe he won't attack us," Cerené suggested. "Maybe something happened to him. Or why would he have stopped?"
"Loki likes to play games, remember?" Fable said, taking hold of her scared horse.