Page 16 of Dawn of Hope

What was he trying to teach me?

My mind strains as I try to think back to the events of the morning. Reading the journal had completely consumed me, and I try to focus on what came before it.

Edmond’s story. The myth of Dawnlin.

Hope.

Was Edmond trying to give me the gift of my mother so that I wouldn’t lose hope for her? It was a pretty fucked up and cruel way to go about it. I told him I didn’t believe in the magic, but was there hope I could actually have?

Maybe that is all the magic was. What if it was a metaphor, something to help people understand they don’t have to be hopeless?

Maybe I don’t have to be.

Maybe it is time to consider letting her go.

No. I don’t have to accept that. I can be the magic, and I can work to figure out how to help her. I told Edmond I didn’t believe in sitting around and waiting for something magical. That would cause nothing but pain.

My mother has been lying in that bed for over twenty years, waiting for a miracle.

I don’t have time to wait around for magic or myth.

The healers say that this is it, that it is time to give up hope.

I already said goodbye to a woman I didn’t know, to the idea of having a mother, but I have her now. I have her in these words, in her book, and by some weird fate, she is still there, waiting.

Maybe she is waiting for me, not to give up hope, and to be the one to do something more, to find something that can help her, and not to just release all hope and let her go like they are trying to convince my father to.

This had to be why Edmond said I needed the journal now. He didn’t want me to give up hope, to give up on her. He wanted me to see what I was losing and do something about it.

I suck in a breath and push myself up, wiping away the tears and trying to blink through the swelling.

I will do it. I won’t give up on her, I won’t give up hope.

But I don’t have much time. All it would take is one word from my father, and they would stop providing her care and let her fade away. I need to act now. Clearly Edmond believes I can.

And maybe if I believe in myself and find something to bring her back to me, my father will finally see how worthy I am to rule this kingdom, and I won’t be alone while I do it.

CHAPTER SIX

“If only Tila could see me now,” I murmur as I scan my reflection in the mirror, looking over the staff outfit I had snagged from the laundry to make sure nothing about it would give me away.

I need to blend in, not only if anyone inside the castle saw me, but also so I didn’t catch the attention of whoever I encountered outside of it.

I stayed in the library well into the night, pulling all the books I could find with any information that might be helpful for my mother. Edmond had taught me the basics of healing and the human body during my lessons growing up, so at least I understood what I was reading.

Despite being in the castle library and supposedly having the largest range of books and texts in our kingdom, I didn’t find anything specific to a case like hers. I scoured the titles, poured over the table of contents, and spent hours reading anything that was even remotely related. I couldn’t find any case like hers, or any sort of treatment for a body in a perpetual sleep.

It isn’t until the windows brighten with the coming dawn that I made my decision. I needed to exhaust all possibilities and search elsewhere. Maybe written encounters of cases like hers never made it to the royal texts. Maybe they were out among the people.

I needed to check. So as my eyes were drooping and my mind was begging for sleep, I decided I was going to do something I had never done before.

I was going to sneak out of the castle.

That decision led me to this moment, staring in this mirror.

I pull my hair back and braid it sloppily, but my eyes catch on the color. Despite no one outside of these walls ever having set eyes on me, I feel that my long golden locks, so similar to my mother’s, would be a dead giveaway.

I scan the surface of the vanity next to the mirror. Maybe I could use something to disguise it. I spot a powder Tila normally uses on my eyes.