Destiny Rising (The Vampire Diaries 10)

Andres hesitated for a long moment before he answered. "I think it's better that you find that out for yourself," he said at last. He stood and touched Elena on the shoulder briefly. "I'll let myself out. "

Elena nodded and watched him go. Andres shot her a small smile as he closed the door behind him. Then, wonderingly, she turned her attention to the book. It was quite plain, without any patterns or words embossed on the outside, and was covered in a very soft pale-brown leather. Opening it, she saw that it was a journal, handwritten in a large, looping, dashing script, as if the writer had been in a hurry to get a million thoughts and feelings out onto the page.

I will not let them have Elena, she read, the words halfway down the first page, and gasped. Glancing down the page, names popped up at her: Thomas, her father, Margaret, her sister. Was this her mother's journal? Her chest felt tight suddenly, and she had to blink hard. Her beautiful, poised mother, the one who had been so clever with her hands and with her heart, who Elena had loved and admired so much - finding this was almost like hearing her speak once more.

After a moment, she composed herself and began to read again.

Elena turned twelve yesterday. I was getting down the birthday candles from the cabinet when the eternity mark on my palm began to itch and burn. It had almost faded into invisibility after so many years, but when I looked at my hand, it was suddenly as clear as the day I was first initiated into my duties.

I knew my sisters were calling for me, reminding me of what they think I owe them.

But I will not let them have Elena.

Not now, and maybe not ever.

I will not repeat the mistakes I have made, so disastrously, in the past.

Thomas understands. Despite what he agreed to when we were young, when Elena was just the idea of a child to him instead of her own funny, determined, sharp-witted self, he knows that we can't just let her go. And Margaret, sweet baby Margaret, the Guardians will want her, too, eventually, because of who I used to be.

The Powers my darling girls will have are almost unimaginable.

And so the Celestial Guardians, once my sisters and brothers, want to get their hands on them as early as possible, want to bring them up to be weapons instead of children, clear-eyed warriors with no trace of humanity about them.

Once, I would have let them. I stepped away from Katherine when she was only an infant, pretended that I had died, so that she could fulfill the destiny I believed was inevitable and right for her.

Elena stopped reading. Her mother had once had another child? The name must be a coincidence, though: the Katherine she knew, Damon's and Stefan's Katherine, was hundreds of years older than her. And about as far from being a Guardian as possible.

There were plenty of Guardians who looked rather like Elena, though. She reviewed in her mind's eye the faces that she'd seen in the Celestial Court: businesslike, blue-eyed blondes, crisp and cool. Could one of them have been her elder sister? Still, though, she couldn't shake off her unease: Katherine, her mirror image. She read on.

But Katherine was a sickly child, and the Guardians turned their backs on her, rejected the great power she could have been. She would not come into her Power for years, and they did not think she would survive long enough to see that day. A human child who probably wouldn't live to grow up wasn't worth their time, they thought.

My heart ached for her. I had abandoned my daughter for nothing. From a careful distance, I watched her grow: pretty and lively despite her illnesses, brave

even in the shadow of the pain she suffered, adored by her father, loved by the household. She did not need the mother she had never known. Perhaps this was better, I thought. She could live a happy, human life, even if it was a short one.

Then, disaster struck. A servant, thinking it would save her, offered Katherine up to a vampire to be transformed. My sweet daughter, a creature of joy and light, was dragged unceremoniously into the darkness. And the creature who performed the deed was one of the worst of his kind: Klaus, an Old One. If Katherine had come into her Power, if the Guardians had made her one of them, Katherine's blood would have killed him. But without that protection, it merely bound them together, tying him to her with a fascination neither of them understood.

My darling girl was lost, all her charm and intelligence subverted into what, before long, seemed to be merely a vicious, broken doll, Klaus's plaything. I don't know if the real Katherine is still there underneath that shadowed life she must live now.

Elena gasped, a harsh sound to her own ears in the room's silence. There was no denying the truth now. Katherine's illness, Klaus's cruel gift, all the details Stefan had told her were here. Katherine, who had hated her and tried to kill her, who had loved Stefan and Damon centuries before Elena herself did, who had destroyed Stefan and Damon, was her half sister.

Part of her wanted to slam the book shut, to shove it to the back of her closet and never, never think about it again. But she couldn't stop herself from reading on.

I wandered for many years, mourning my daughter, turning my back on the Guardians who had once been my family. But, after centuries of loneliness, I met my sweet, honest, blindingly intelligent Thomas, and fell deeply, hopelessly, madly in love. We were so happy for a while.

And then the Guardians found us.

They came to us and told us that the Old Ones were gaining in Power. They were too strong, too cruel. They would destroy humanity if they could, would enslave the world in darkness and evil.

The Guardians begged me to have another child. Only an Earthly Guardian with the blood of a Principal Guardian could kill an Old One so that the Old One could never be resurrected. My peculiar situation - a Principal Guardian who had abandoned her post to live a human life, who had fallen in love - made me their only chance.

Thomas knew everything about my past. He trusted me to make the right choice, and I chose to say yes, under certain conditions. I would bear a child who could destroy the Old Ones, but she would not be taken from me. She would not be raised as a weapon but as a human girl. And, when she was old enough, she would be given a free choice: to come into her Power or not.

And they agreed. Elena's blood, Margaret's blood, was so precious that they would agree to anything.

But now they want to break that agreement. They want to take my darling Elena now, even though she is only twelve years old.

I will save Elena and Margaret, as I couldn't save Katherine. I will.