When all else ends, when hope perishes alongside wonder, her darkness shall rise and all shall be devoured.
Suddenly it’s personal. “Child of Watcher, Child of Slayer” didn’t mean anything before. But now I know the truth of my family history. My father was a child of a Watcher. My mother wasn’t.
And my father mentioned a prophecy in his diary that seemed of personal concern to him and my family.
I stand. “Artemis.”
Imogen stops midsentence, alarmed by the expression on my face. “Is everything okay?”
“I need to talk to Artemis. Now.” I grab my notes and hurry out of the library. Artemis is behind me. I’m relieved. I worried she wouldn’t come. When we get back to our room, I slam the door and throw my notes onto the bed. “Look at this prophecy.”
Artemis rubs her forehead. “With everything else going on, I hardly think me helping you cheat on translations is a priority.”
“No, that’s not— The prophecy! It’s about a child of a Watcher and a child of a Slayer having two girls who will go on to break the world!” I jab my finger at it. “Gods, Artemis, look at it. It could be—it might be—it could be us. There’s no timeline, but we should at least talk about it.”
Artemis gives me a flat stare. She’s always the first to support me. But she looks like our mother again. “There’s a demon loose and you’re worried about some musty old prophecy?”
“I found a reference to a prophecy in Dad’s diary. I’ll bet it’s this one.”
She looks like I’ve struck her. “You read it without me.”
“You didn’t want to read it. I never said I didn’t. I came straight here to talk to you after, but you were getting cozy with Honora, and I wasn’t about to share personal information with her!”
“This isn’t about Honora!”
“It is!”
Artemis kicks over the stack of books I stole from the library for Doug research. “Nothing is about Honora! You need to get over this grudge. People could die because you decided you would rather punch it out with her than listen to someone with way more demon experience than you’ll ever have!”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Just because I’m not a Watcher-in-training, my instincts don’t matter? I’m a Slayer!”
Artemis throws her hands in the air. “Oh, good. Let’s bring that up! Because you discovering you’re a Slayer—two months after the change happened—makes you an expert in everything!”
I flinch at her tone. All my anger dries up, leaving only hurt in its wake. It’s not like I didn’t know something had happened to me. I was afraid to face what it was. “Why are you being like this? I’m asking for your help.”
“Of course you are. That’s what you do. That’s what everyone does.” She spits out the words. “We have hundreds—thousands—of prophecies in that library. If this one mattered, someone would have said something. This is the last thing we should be worried about now. You’re trying to find something else to distract me from the fact that you hid a freaking demon from me.”
It hits me hard. She’s right. She’s absolutely right. This isn’t a priority now, but I want it to be. I want anything that brings us together to be a priority. I latched onto this prophecy as soon as I saw it because it was easier to think about than everything else. It was easier than sitting in class, easier than making things up with Rhys. Easier than talking about this growing chasm between my sister and me. “That’s not it at all,” I lie. I step toward her.
She steps back.
“What about you?” I ask. “What was Honora talking about, saying you gave up your chance at being a full Watcher for me?”
Artemis turns away. “It doesn’t matter.” She might as well be our mother. This is how we deal with pain, with hard things. We shut down. And we shut each other out. She leaves me alone with a prophecy of doom and a broken heart.
She had studied the words enough that she knew them by heart. But she still found them sometimes. Ran her finger over them.
Her own mother had failed. Spectacularly. And for a while the hunter had thought, perhaps, she wouldn’t be needed. After all, if a prophecy ends up being inaccurate, how can it come true? She told herself that, but she didn’t quite believe it.
Prophecies are slippery things, after all.
And so she watched, and she waited. There was no rush. The girls grew. One strong and smart and capable, one weak and clever and kind. Maybe the prophecy had never been about them. Maybe all her work, all her sacrifice, had been for nothing.
She was okay with that. Better to be wrong and have sacrificed a few lives than to be wrong and sacrifice the world. She wouldn’t have felt guilty if she had succeeded in killing one of the girls. That was why she was the hunter. Because she knew she would do whatever it took to keep the world safe.
For a long time—for years—it looked like she wouldn’t have to do anything.
But then the weak became strong. The healer became killer. Which meant the other twin’s fate beckoned as well.