DAEMON’S POV
As it to confirm Aneris’ words, the Afternoon Blood Moon completely receded, strong rays of sunlight restoring, but Zina forever remained immobile in his hands.
She didn’t move an inch. Her chest didn’t rise and fall. Nor did her body get any warr.
She just remained motionless in his arms, her body getting colder than it originally was. The life that she once brimd of, draining farther and farther away from him.
She was never coming back.
Zina was never coming back.
Not to ntion, she was getting colder than was remotely normal.
His wife had been stolen away from him—just like that.
And no amount of grief, or rage on his part was going to change it.
"I nad her after the Zinnia flower," her mother said, leaning before them. For a woman who had never held her daughter since the day she was born, she looked far more collected than Daemon could ever be.
And he almost admired her composure, but he was far too gone in his head to actually appreciate anything.
"Here in the Iron West, where most flowers cannot survive, Zinnias are survivors. Withstanding the harshest sunshine, they bloom. They always bloom."
Daemon looked at the woman. Like really looked at her.
"I shall take Zina back to the North where she belongs." He growled the warning, "Every single day, she will be by my side. Inseparable from . She has no business being associated with a place that dood her before she could even live."
Then he rose to his feet, clutching Zina tightly.
The one who called herself Ada or was it Lysandra dared to block his path with shaky steps. "Outside these walls, the people of the West chant that the Prophesied Moon Goddess has co back to them and saved them from all their sins," she croaked in that voice that sounded like it had tired from living. "They demand for her body." She finished.
Daemon narrowed his eyes on her. "Perhaps I shall send yours to them given how it seems you’re eager to die yourself."
"I am not your enemy, your majesty. But they want her body, and what is inside of it." She added, staring intentionally at Rowan and his Master who were both held bound by Zelkov.
"What is inside her body?" He repeated, his voice like chalk scratching against a tally board.
Aneris stepped forward now, her eyes pinned at Zina. Yet again, Daemon couldn’t make sense of the woman. Perhaps it was because he never felt a mother’s love either, but Aneris just struck him as strange in all the wrong ways. He could sll from miles away that she was up to sothing, but he was far more interested in figuring out what it was.
"The sa thing that lended her voice the Scream—the Rune of the Screars Pack." She answered, never taking her eyes from Zina.
He pretended ignorance to her words. "What about it?"
"It is the only thing that can truly rid us of the Deford. Zina’s death is far from enough. Just as she was used as a dium, another power like Master can rise tomorrow and decide to find another dium."
Daemon drank those words in, his mind racing to make sense of its possible hidden aning. Once upon a ti, he didn’t believe in supernatural powers and whatnot. But all that changed when he witnessed what Zina could do.
Even now in death, Zina was still proving to him that a whole lot happened in the spiritual realms than he could ever understand.
"What are you trying to say?" He asked slowly, inquiring of Aneris.
The other woman smiled. And that smile might be the only thing that was so different from Zina. Zina’s smile was shrewd, sotis teasing and just so alive.
But Aneris’ smile was different. It didn’t hold life nor death. Just a hollowness.
Her hands reached out for Zina yet again, and Daemon didn’t hide her away from him. He allowed the mother to touch her daughter. Her fingers, caressing her hair while that hollow smile of hers remained.
Then in a voice like nothing he had yet heard from her, she gritted. "No mother can ever allow their child to die before them. It was the sa for your mother... and now, it would be the sa for ."
Daemon stilled completely. "You knew... my mother?"
He had hardly uttered the question when Aneris’ fingers hovered over Zina’s heart with lightening speed, and then everything around them froze to pieces.
Like a different world crashing against theirs, everything stopped.
Daemon knew that because while he was still self-aware thanks to his two wolves that struggled to gain lucidity, nothing was moving anymore.
Not Kairos who was stabbing at a fallen Deford with rage. Nor Zelkov who was once tugging at the reins that tied Rowan to his Master. Nor Malik Zorch who was patrolling the Cave Manor as if to confirm all the Deford were truly fallen.
The only thing that actually moved in the room was a burst of light that appeared on Zina’s chest, just at the spot where Aneris’ fingers hovered while a twisted expression overtook her face as she concentrated all her might on manipulating that light.
A tear rolled down Ada’s face, but before it could fall, it froze mid air as well—sa with everything.
Daemon tried to move, to turn, to do sothing. But nothing happened.
He wanted to scream at Aneris, to inquire what was happening, to make sense of this strange power that gripped the room. But not a single word could form on his tongue.
Yet without a proper explanation, he realized it by himself. Weeks of investigating Zina’s background revealed sothing to him about the Runes of the Pack.
Even though official records said nothing much, Yaren’s skillful investigation had revealed in fact that there was sothing more about the Runes. Especially given the mysterious manner it disappeared after the Screars Pack was purged.
And sothing about the runic symbols that ford with the light over Zina’s chest seed to reveal that Aneris was tapping into the power of the runes.
But for what reason? And why at that very mont?
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