Chapter One Hundred and Twenty Two: The Prophecy

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty Two: The Prophecy

Something was coming. Something profound.

The chatter died completely, strangled in a collective intake of breath.

A line of girls stepped forward from behind the main stage, barefoot and veiled in thin, pearl-white silk, and barefoot. Their long silvery hair, freshening-snow-white, moved in the still-air like streamers. and between their cupped hands, held sacred, were wood bowls smoothly carved of the most exquisite shape, and filled with some delicate, white, frosty-like powder, that glimmers like crushed moonlight.

They did not walk to the centre as performers might, but to the square’s exact midpoint, as if drawn by something unseen.

The crowd slowly parted, without command, without a single shouted word. Backs straightened, shoulders pulled back, people rose, a ripple of quiet reverence moving through the hundreds of spectators. The girls made no sound as they walked, their steps impossibly light. With each graceful, measured step, they sprinkled the shimmering powder in a curving line that spiraled outward, like a blooming, impossibly intricate flower on the dark earth.

Then came her.

The Queen Mother.

Barefoot also as the damsels. Clad in raiment of sombre silver and that indefinable tint of orange which twilight has, which changed from sapphire blue to amethyst purple, with each gust of torchlight, as changeable as twilight, as ephemeral as the purple star. She was bare to the shoulders, and her fantastically long and pale hair was plaited with ropes of polished onyx and glowing moonstone. No crown. No fanfare.

Nevertheless all eyes bowed. All the heads bowed. All the wolves, as lowly a servant as mighty a warrior, bowed their will.

Beside the stage Kaelia was standing, with one hand clasped half consciously to the centre of her body, and with a frown of baffled indecision on her face. Her other hand touched Aaron's arm with tiny involuntary significance, to save herself. With a frown of perplexity Aaron looked up at the Queen Mother, then at Kaelia, with no word upon his lips. The two stood and stared, frozen where they stood.

On the powder path the Queen Mother walked with bare feet, and the sound of her footsteps was a whisper on the earth behind her. She was smoke, memory, something old magic, ancient and endless. The place was filled with her presence.

She raised her head when she got right at the center of the spiral. Her profile was weather-beaten, but with an other-worldly calmness. The crowd, without being told to, had formed a perfect, silent circle around her. No guards ordered it. No words were needed. Even the King, noted with a jolt, had not stirred from his seat on the dais, his gaze fixed on the Queen mother, his expression unreadable.

The entire square held its breath. The only sound was the faint crackle of the distant fire dancer’s flames.

Then she sang.

Not words, not at first. A hum. Low, melodic, trembling with an age so vast it felt like the earth’s memory, a profound loss, and an undeniable prophecy. It grew – rising in haunting, resonant waves that trembled through the very air, vibrating through everyone's skin like phantom hands touching something deep and ancestral.

A baby somewhere in the crowd began to cry, a thin, piercing wail, and then was quickly, almost violently, hushed.

Then there's absolute silence. A silence so heavy it felt like a presence, pressing in on them all.

The Queen Mother raised her arms, slowly, like old branches reaching for a forgotten sun. Her voice, now words, rang clear and chilling, cutting through the heavy air with the sharpness of winter ice. Each syllable seemed to etch itself onto the very air, carrying immense weight.

“The moons have touched.” Her voice vibrated, a deep thrum. “The sky remembers.” A shiver ran down Alarion’s spine. “Barriers have been broken.” Alarion’s breath hitched; a cold dread began to bloom in his chest. “The blood returns.” His mind raced, struggling to grasp the meaning. He wanted to understand the words because his father had been particular about the prophecy.

“A name shall be reclaimed,” her gaze, ancient and piercing, seemed to sweep over the crowd, lingering for a fraction of a second on where Alarion stood, and then on Kaelia. “The buried name will split the throne and the crown shall pay for its sin. By womb and will, the erased bloodline returns.”

She lowered her arms, slowly, her voice fading like an echo off distant mountains.

And nothing moved. Not a whisper. Not a step. The silence stretched, thick and pregnant with unspoken meaning.

Then—

Gasps. Murmurs as waves beating on a shore. It was very, very tense in the air, full of awful electricity. Alarion heard the quick constrained breathing of his father, the hurried, agitated swish of counselors, and the frightened inquiry of the people.

Not none of them, though, his eyes were on Kaelia.

Kaelia had folded up, pressing in on herself, an expressionless, hollow gasp coming out of her mouth. Her face had gone white as chalk, drawn pale in the flickering lights, her eyes were wide and gazing, with a horror and a suffering dawning on it. One hand shook violently, seizing at her belly, the fingers pressed through the woollen of her garment.

With his own face twisted with panic, Aaron had seized Kaelia by the other arm, in an effort to steady her. “Kaelia—? What is it? Are you in pain?”

Kaelia parted her lips but said nothing, only a gasping, whistling breath. She had a tremor, a tremor of the whole body. Her eyes were wild and unfocused, her fingers remaining clamped to her abdomen, as she scanned her world, seeking something perhaps she was the only one who could see.

Before the crowd had yet recovered its breath, before the first question had been fully expressed aloud, Alarion was already on the move, the princely amount of his composure overthrown. His attention reduced to a pinpoint and he tore through the shocked, motionless crowd.

Because in the profound, heavy silence that had followed the Queen Mother’s chilling, final word… he had felt it. Not just a thought, but a deep, undeniable shift within his own core, a resonating thrum in his blood.

And Kaelia, across the courtyard, knew it too. She had felt it.

The pup.

It stirred almost violently.

Or maybe not the pup. But something seems dangerously wrong.

But as Alarion blinked, he realized he was still standing beside the King's throne, he hadn't left, he hadn't abandoned his princely position to tear across the crowd and ask Kaelia what is wrong with her, he was still standing still and that reminded him of how much distance there's always been between him and Kaelia and how much little he's done to reduce that distance.