Chapter 1423
Jude took a step forward, instinctively, protectively, but Rose held his hand.
"Wait," she whispered. "She’s not new. She’s old."
The woman smiled gently. Her voice, when it came, was like music. "You opened the flower."
Jude found his voice. "What... are you?"
"I am the first note."
Zoey exhaled sharply. "You’re... part of the island."
The woman nodded. "I am its heart. Its daughter. Its lover. Its song."
Lucy stepped forward. "Did we wake you?"
"You completed me," the woman replied. "Your union, your touch, your surrender - your pleasure - was the final call. The island remembers. The bloom was memory. But you... you were creation."
Rose stepped beside Jude, her hand still firm in his. "What happens now?"
The woman stepped from the pool, and water rolled down her body like strands of silver. "Now... you become."