"It doesn't matter now, my dear. When you dream of him for the first time, you'll remember my words. Let Dad think that everything is under his control. Never reveal your visions, or you'll be another victim of his greed, and..." Kellen looked up at the ceiling. "You won't grow up on this island, and you won't remember your origins until your enemy, the Knife, opens an important book about the Mists. You'll go to other places, where people won't know that Avallon really exists... Your life... Ah! Brianna. No Bruma can live past the age of twenty-five. Change that fate, my child."
Brianna stared at Kellen, frowning. By the way, she couldn't remember everything she'd said, how would she do that when she grew up? She was only three years and a few months old.
The man Brianna didn't like entered the room with another man and rudely demanded that she leave them alone.
As soon as the girl left, Anthony sat down next to Kellen and held her hand while all the tests were carried out.
The doctor left just as her mother entered the room with a tray and a cup of tea in her hands. She put the tray down on the dressing table and brought the cup of tea over to Kellen.
"What did the doctor say?" she asked, after handing the cup to her daughter, who had been tucked up in bed by Anthony.
"Nothing. He said he'd be back in a few days with the results of the tests, but his face was gloomy. He didn't even have to say anything to know that what she has is serious."
The room fell silent. Anthony looked at his mother-in-law suspiciously.
"You know what's wrong with her, don't you?"
"Yes. I know."
"Before you tell me what she has, tell me what my father-in-law's source of income is."
"I don't know how you missed it. He's the leader of all Avallon. Who do you think collects the taxes?"
"I thought there was a gentleman's center that redistributed the tax money to..."
"No, my son! All the money goes to my husband."
Anthony became pensive.
"The gentlemen kill those who don't pay their taxes. Is your husband complicit in this?"
"Not just conniving. He orders the death of anyone who dares to break his laws."
Anthony looked at Kellen. She was calm. It seemed that her intuition had ended, because she wouldn't be so calm if she knew what he was about to do.
"And what is Kellen's illness?"
"She... She made a pact with life in front of the ocean."
Anthony frowned and stood up. That pact was nothing more than someone too naïve to believe it, taking poisonous salt fruits that grew right on the edge of the sea, in exchange for some request."
"What did Kellen desire so ardently?"
"You."
Anthony shook his head. Madness ran in the whole family and his wife would die because of it."
"Her visions, they never said I was coming?"
"No, Anthony. Her visions showed you setting off across the ocean again, and meeting a woman who is at her destination."
"And why didn't she do it before? Why didn't you look for an antidote to the poison?"
"Because her father believes that if we tried to interfere with the poison acting on her blood, the sea goddess wouldn't give up her location to him, and... he needed an heir who could carry on his name and lineage. If she took the treatment, she wouldn't be able to get pregnant. So he decided that she should resign herself and prepare herself so that she could marry and bear a child."
"You're still old enough to have children. Why didn't you give him another heir?"
"Each of us can only bear one Bruma. No other child of mine would be born with these gifts."
"And why are you so... obsessed with this lineage?"
"Because that sound grants us the power to have dominion over other... Supernaturals. My husband wants to own the whole world, not just Avallon."
"There is no place other than Avallon. Are you crazy?"
Anthony went to the closet and started taking out everything he owned.
"What are you doing?" His mother-in-law asked in surprise.
"I'm leaving right now. And tell your husband that I'll leave a report all over the island about who he is and how he earns his living. I'll also accuse him of being responsible for the death of his own daughter, with some trusted elder advocate, if he should have me killed."
"Are you going to abandon your sick wife?"
"You deceived me. She was ill, and you didn't give me the right to choose whether or not to stay with someone who had no future. I wasted almost four years of my life believing that I would have a family and making plans." He said and put the clothes he had thrown on the bed into his suitcase.
Anthony, under his mother-in-law's disgusted gaze, approached the headboard and looked Kellen in the eye with fury and hurt.
"You're as false as your father. You deserve the fate that awaits you. And you don't even know how to separate reality from dreams anymore. Where are our three children you said we'd have?"
"I didn't say we'd have more children. I said you would." Kellen said, without changing his expression of tenderness and serenity.
"So... I've already fulfilled my mission in this castle. I've given you and your father what you wanted. I think I'm no longer useful." He said and left.
Kellen's mother looked at her questioningly.
"Did you realize that if you told him you loved him and asked him to stay, he wouldn't leave?"
"I know that, Mom. But he's right. His destiny in this family has been fulfilled. It's better that he doesn't see the end that awaits me."
"Don't be so pragmatic. Maybe the tea will work, or maybe the doctor will come back with good news?"
Kellen just looked at her mother, put the empty cup where Anthony used to be and lay down, sleeping easily. And despite everything, no worries.