The Gilded Ones #3: The Eternal Ones

1


The end of the world begins not with a scream but with a mist, spreading sinister tendrils on a dark, moonlit night.

Deep as I am inside Ixa s mind, I don t even notice. There s just too much to experience. I may be able to see only the faintest shades of color through my blue-scaled, feline-like companion s eyes, but even then, everything I glimpse is breathtaking. Groves of soaring silver trees sprout from pink stone hills. Scrubby purple grasses cling to their roots, tiny iridescent lizards darting across them. Glass flitters. They, like the silver trees and the purple grass, are native only to Gar Nasim, the haunting, remote island that is my current location.

Finally, after three months of running and hiding, pursuers constantly at our backs, I m here on the island that Anok, the only goddess who s still our ally, told us to seek. The island where, she told me, I would find my way to Mother and, through her, the way to unlock my full power so I can defeat the gods.

Except there s no sign of Mother. Not even the faintest trace.

I sniff at a nearby tree, nose flaring with irritation when it immediately puffs a noxious odor in my direction. Trees and plants, they all have defenses invisible to the naked eye--after spending most of the last few weeks inside Ixa s mind, I understand that now. And these silver trees, in particular, are quick to express their displeasure.

The tree sends another puff of odor our way, and Ixa wrinkles our nose, the motion sending a tickling sensation down the rest of our body. Stinky, he says.

He s in here too, the shadow just behind my consciousness. I don t know how it works precisely, the way we share one body, one mind. Only that it does. And that while I m here, I don t have to be in my own body. In the wounded, golden ruin that s all that s left of me after my confrontation with the Gilded Ones, the false goddesses I once thought were my mothers, all those weeks ago.

Britta calls it possession,

Namina Forna is the New York Times bestselling author of the Gilded Ones series. She’s been published in over 24 different countries and also works in film and television. She loves telling stories with fierce female leads and now lives in London, where she spends all her time trying to stay warm.