Mass release: 16/25
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I muscle plumed in my jaw as I clenched it, "My parents said I broke a glass table as toddler."
["Not our parents,"] Kitsune groaned.
"You are not helping, Kitsune!" I groaned back.
Then Bianca got at it again, getting up from the conch, standing in front of me, and kneeling, this time looking at me, both hands holding the amulet, "Princess."
But it didn't take me even a minute to realize what the hell they were trying to tell me, and my entire blood system froze, my heart stopped, and it all fucking hurt worse, "No," I denied it, "no, no, no, no, no!" I felt my lips shaking. "No. No. No! No. Absolutely not. It's not me. It... it... I... it can't be me. I'm... younger."
Putting the amulet at the side, Bianca took off her gloves, set them aside, and took my shaky hands in hers, "His Majesty time magic didn't get undone for millennials, Princess. I am 2995 years old, because I'm 26 years older than you, we fae age slowly, but when the attack happened, you were 7 months old and i was almost 27 years old, and you are 2969, aren't you? But this is the time we consciously lived for, not our real age. In real age," she swallowed, "I'm 9195 and you are 9169 years old, but we stayed 6200 years frozen in time, in that magical cocoon that His Majesty, Her Majesty, and my... and my parents made with all their remaining magic."
"When it... when it undid itself, 6200 years had passed, and we regained our consciousness still in the bunker, but it was worse, the palace in the mountains at north had been abandoned, we were alone, dead bodies everywhere, lost and left behind where not even the vultures dares to wander. The magic emanating the bodies had created a suffocatingly ominous atmosphere in there, and I could not walk out of the bunker because it felt wrong, in my mind it had happened minutes before, and I was hurt and broken, and you were catatonic. So, I used this," she showed me the amulet, "like Her Majesty made promise to, to take you to your uncle Balthazar."
"The second I got to the Underworld with you, I took you off the blanket because you were sweating, and you were with two tails then, you probably awakened when you saw Their Majesties being murdered in front of us, as it has to be an emotional trigger, and that was a trigger. But I tripped and as you weren't with the blanket anymore, your shoulder was cut on a sharp Hell stone, and as it was a Hell stone, it actually stayed wounded. We were still tainted with our parents blood, and... when I got to your uncle, he was already the Emperor with your aunt as Empress, and they had murdered their parents. So, I told them as much as I could, but they had already gotten word of the Queen's passing."
"Both the Queen and the King's passing, since the usurpers had taken the throne and moved the Royal Capital to the southernmost region of the Kingdom after abandoning the North for good... or bad. All the surviving allies of our families were exiled further west from the south, out of the borders, and they had been initiated on the exchange program for 'rectification back into the Kingdom' and whatever shit they meant by that, which I learned by your uncle. So, after I left you there with them, I wanted to stay, but they told me to come back, because if I stayed the royals would be suspicious and that could be bad, as they were still sensitive to them killing their parents."
"I then used the amulet, and told them that when I got picked for the rectification, I would send word to them, so they would send you here, and I did that, a month ago, I used the little magic still left in the amulet to send a letter to Balthazar, telling him I was finally picked for this year's exchange program, after I played coy and pretended to be open for their new monarchy now. They wanted my family's power back in the realm, I'm the daughter of powerful mates, and they weren't stupid on not picking me, even if they are still suspicious, as they should, given how I am not open to it at all. My loyalty is yours, Princess, and I have a promise to keep, to be your protector and your right hand, just like my parents were to yours."
"I had no idea Balthazar and Dakira would raise you as if you were their child, and not raise you while letting you know who you truly were and... did they repress your fae magic?" She leaned closer, touching my ears. "Or did you wander in Tartarus too much? The Queen once told me that Tartarus is a poison to the fae and it represses their nature until it's dormant, and it takes a big tool to get that back. You didn't really wander inside that horrible place, right? You were just joking to intimidate everyone, right?"
I swallowed, feeling the overload of information take a tool on my entire body, soul, mind, and heart, "I... I did spend a lot of time in there."
"Well, shit, that explains a bloody lot," sigh. "What are we going to do?"
["Before awakening the dragon back, we gotta get the rest of me, of us."]
Bianca frowned, "And where is the rest of you?"
["In Tartarus,"] Kitsune exclaimed.
"And how are we gonna do that?" Bianca gasped.
["Starlight may know Tartarus well, but she needs the notebooks to find us."]
"What notebook?" She groaned.
["The four notebooks mom wrote in her time in Tartarus, each of them contains a part of the map that she draw when she mapped Tartarus, and the possible places the other fragments of us could be in. They are in the north!"]
Bianca turned pale, "We'll have to go there."
["Then you will need a group of strong people, and our mate!"]
"You are mated?" Bianca cried in shock. "To whom?"
["Why aren't you saying anything, starlight?"]
"I... I... I feel... I feel faint," my eyes rolled and I lost consciousness.