Prologue
I was sitting in front of the mirror at the dressing table in the Queen’s Tower. That’s how I knew it was a dream. My Tower had been burnt during the Fate Maker’s last attack against the palace but right now, in my dream, it was still perfectly fine. It looked the same as it did the first time I’d ever set foot inside of it.
“The end is coming,” my reflection announced, and my eyes widened as I stared back at the girl in the mirror.
“What?”
“I said,” my reflection said, “the end is coming. The Last Rose is on her throne, the relics have been found, and the land is free of the Fate Maker. The time of the Prophesies has come.”
“Wait. What? No.” I shook my head and the girl in the mirror arched an eyebrow at me. “No, that’s not true. I don’t have all the relics. We’re searching for the last relic but I haven’t found it yet.”
“You have found it,” the girl in the mirror argued. “The First Leaf was never lost. It’s always been with you. Because of it life flows through you. The ability to keep this world—and its people—alive.”
“I don’t—”
“The Last Great Rose is on her throne and the relics have been found. The dead will rise, the lost will be found, and our world will be free again. The Prophesies command it.”
The girl in the mirror in front of me dissolved and when I looked into the mirror nothing stared back at me. The room behind me was reflected as if I wasn’t even there. “Wait.”
“She’s right,” Esmeralda said and I gaped at the sorceress, still trapped inside the body of a small, black and white housecat sitting on the reflection of my bed in the mirror. I glanced over my shoulder and saw that she wasn’t actually there, and even in my dream she was just an illusion. “The time of the Prophesies has come.”
“But the Prophesies are made up. Make believe. You should know, you’re the one who made them up.”
“The things I wrote, I never meant for them to come true. But they have now. Fate, or whatever it is that truly guides us, has made the nightmares I wrote about come true and you’re the only one who can save us. Save our world, Allie. Save us. Before it’s too late.”
“Save you from what? The Fate Maker is trapped in the Bleak. I’m signing a peace treaty with Bavasama in the morning. Our world is safe.”
“Death is coming, my queen. A world of death and nightmares, and if you’re not prepared they will destroy us all. The nightmares that I unleashed upon this world will destroy us all.”
“I don’t know how,” I said. “I don’t know what to do. Tell me what to do.”
“When the time comes you’ll know,” Esmeralda said, her brilliant green eyes meeting mine in the mirror.
“No, I won’t.”
“There’s only one thing that can defeat nightmares,” Esmeralda said. “Only one thing stronger than fear.”
“What?” I asked.
Instead of answering the cat in the mirror began to fade away.
“No!” I slapped my hand against the mirror. “No, don’t leave. You have to tell me it is I need to do to keep us safe. What I need to keep us safe from. You can’t leave me.”
The cat disappeared, her eyes the last thing to fade away, as I stood there, watching her. “Don’t leave me,” I whispered. “Please don’t leave me. I can’t do this alone.”
About the Author
Andria Buchanan is the pen name for Patricia Eimer, a small-town girl who was blessed with a large tree in the backyard that was a perfect spot for reading on summer days. After a stint of “thinking practically” in her twenties she earned degrees in business and economics and worked for a software firm in southwestern Germany, but her passion has always been a good book.
She currently lives in Pittsburgh with her two wonderful kids and a husband that learned the gourmet art of frozen pizzas to give her more time to write. When she’s not writing she can be found fencing and arguing with her dogs about plot points. Most days the Beagle wins but the Dalmatian is in close second. She’s a distant third.
http://www.andriabuchanan.com/