Ceres didn't say a word in her defense. Not familiar with this side of her father, An Ning became worried and tense. Richard held her hand in his and smooth his thumb over her fragile wrist, trying to comfort her with his touch. An Ma glared at Ceres then turned his back like he can't bear to look at her anymore.

"Why did Yu Yan kidnapped me? I can't understand that part," An Ning said tentatively, looking nervously at her father's resentful back.

"You have to understand what happened before that to understand your question," Ceres answered. "When Father packed Yu Yan off to magic school, we seldom saw her after. Mother didn't like her. Maybe it was her fault, I don't know. But you have to look at it from my mother's point of view. She seldom had dealings with soft, feminine, easily cowered creatures like Yu Yan. She didn't understand them and despised that kind of woman."

When Yu Yan visited the village again, she was unlike her usual self. She was quieter than usual, more tentative, and very emotional. She lost weight, was absent-minded, and seldom left her room. Later, they discovered that Yu Yan went through some mind-numbing experiences in her first relations.h.i.+p that she apparently never got over with.

In the course of her job in the department of magic, she fell in love with a colleague who promised her marriage but then married someone else instead. Worse, the man bilked her of the money she inherited from her parents. When she found out she was pregnant and told the guy, the guy was indifferent and told her to have an abortion. She had the abortion but that seemed to have pushed her over the edge because she came back to the village and insisted that she had to talk to Li Cheung.

When Ceres told her that Li Cheung and Hippolyta were missing, Yu Yan became hysterical and caused quite a scene. The women were worried about her fragile state of mind so they put her under lock and key and had someone look after her. After a few days, she became very violent, nearly killing the boy they put in her room to guard her. She eventually spiraled into madness and talked about killing Ceres' baby. She also blamed Hippolyta and Ceres for the bad things that happened to her.

Ceres was very worried about the situation. None of them knew how to deal with a woman like Yu Yan, who was self-destructive and completely consumed by rage. It was the first time that the Amazons encountered a woman with mental issues so they were at a loss how to handle it. Ceres was tired of the drama, telling herself she and the woman weren't even related to each other. Yu Yan was just someone who came to live in their house for three years then left never to be heard from again.

"And because I never took her seriously she kidnapped you and imprisoned me. I underestimated her and it was all my fault. I failed my mother and the women whose lives I was responsible for," Ceres' voice was tortured with self-blame.

"Mom, stop blaming yourself for what happened," An Ning reaching out to hold her hand. "You didn't know. Besides, you said you never heard from her again after she left for school, right?"

"Only occasionally. She would send letters. She would come for a short visit. But she wasn't really welcome. We didn't know her and never wished to know her, that's the problem."

"You said she learned magic from grandpa?"

"He felt he owed her something so he taught her."

"How did she succeed in imprisoning you and taking over?"

Yu Yan had used a very powerful and very forbidden spell that broke the line between illusion and reality. It was a spell that Li Cheung had perfected years before but had never used. Yu Yan insisted that he teach it to her because it might be useful in her job and he agreed because he was somewhat worried about her.

Ceres had a very difficult birth with An Ning. It might have been due to the stress and worry about Yu Yan but the birth had exhausted her so she stayed in bed for a couple of days. One night as she was drifting off to sleep, something woke her up. It was an indescribable feeling, as if a light had gone off and the world suddenly changed. She opened her eyes and saw someone that looked exactly like her standing by the bed, holding the baby.

Ceres thought it was surely a dream. How could she be seeing double when she was lying in bed watching all this happen? Then she realized it was Yu Yan and what she had done. She was not unfamiliar with magic; her father had been one of the most powerful warlocks in his time and had taught her the art since she was young. She recognized the spell and was terrified, especially when Yu Yan laughed and kissed the baby on the cheek.

She tried to scream but everything went black. When she opened her eyes again, she was looking at her body which was lying inside the cave where Hippolyta built her time machine years ago. She chanted a spell that sent her back to her body at the same time that Enxuo arrived, having stumbled into the grove in a daze.

She called out to him and the two of them tried to break the spell to let her out but the spell was actually a trick. When she used the spell to get back to her own body, she unknowingly triggered another spell that entrapped her inside the cave.

Enxuo then told her what had happened, which literally froze her blood.

A vicious fight had broken out among the women when Yu Yan appeared and told them a lie about the department of magic. She told them that the kingdom had decided to imprison the women and sold them as slaves because they were getting too powerful and the king wanted to teach them a lesson. The department will accuse them of crimes against the kingdom then they will be sold off, their land confiscated and their treasures taken.

It was a lie powerful enough to be believed because the one they thought telling it was Ceres. But all were not convinced. There were many who hesitated and urged Yu Yan to calm down, verify first if it was true or not then they will act.

The already unbalanced Yu Yan was enraged. She lashed out at these dissenters and ordered the rest of them to be killed. When they hesitated, she led the battle against them and the whole fight became a bloodbath.

"I had over 70,000 warriors under my command but after she went through them only 20,000 were left. She decimated more than half of the army that your grandmother built with trust over the years. She killed the innocent and poisoned the rest. I don't even know where to begin rebuilding after this."

Ceres looked grim. She looked as if she was no longer there with them, as if her spirit had escaped and flown away, to the time when the supremacy of the Amazons prevailed and truth and gallantry carried them to war after war, always victorious because they depended on each other and trusted each other.

The ideal of the Amazonian way of life had been destroyed. The strong sisterhood which created its own myth poisoned. The comrades.h.i.+p that generations of Amazons fostered in blood and tears wiped out. All because a woman weaker than themselves carried a grudge against the world, because she wanted to punish the men who had robbed and hurt her, because she was a woman who didn't believe in her own strength.

An Ning didn't know what to say. She couldn't even comprehend such a magnitude of crime. The Yu Yan she knew had been encased in the camouflage of her own illusion. She built her own lie based on a twisted hierarchical elements of happy wife living with good husband and good daughter and added adoption to make the lie more believable and possible.

"I failed because of my own shortcomings," Ceres was saying. "You didn't know your grandmother," she continued, looking at An Ning. "She was the wisest, bravest woman I've ever known. It took me a long time to understand why she and my Father left as abruptly as they did. It was her way of telling me it was my time. The job didn't entail training until I turned twenty one. I fall by my own sword because there was no one."

"You were very young when she left," An Ma was angry. "Get over your guilt because none of it was your fault. Yu Yan was a very unbalanced woman. Believe me, I know because I lived with her for over twenty years."

"You knew but you still stayed with her?" Ceres was surprised.

"I loved my daughter more, that's why. Because she reminded me of the girl you once were," An Ma shrugged. "Of course, I didn't know I was living with the fake woman all these years. What really bothers me is how you used me for your own ends. Were you even planning to tell me you were pregnant? Oh yea, I forgot. An Ning is a girl so she stays with you. Me as the father was merely nothing. Not even worth remembering, right?"

His bitterness lashed at them like a tide. Ceres flinched. An Ma was so angry his balled fists turned white. They didn't know what he would have done if someone had not come in and lightened the tension in the room.

"Mistress," the man softly said, "I have the bags with me."

An Ning goggled at him. She couldn't help it. The man was handsome like a movie star. His elegant body was encased in the tightest jeans she had ever seen, practically plastered to his crotch like a second skin. An Ning could feel her cheeks blus.h.i.+ng as she furtively looked at that part of him that proclaimed his maleness. She gulped.

Suddenly, a hand caught her chin. Richard glared angrily when he watched the red suffusing her face. She tried to laugh and jerked her chin back. But Richard clamped a hand down her neck which he used to move her head forward. His lips touched hers in an open mouth kiss. An Ning was surprised so it took her a long time to react. When they separated, she was breathing fast and he was grinning at her like a lovesick fool.

Ceres grinned at them and turned to the man.

"Take a rest first. We'll talk later," she said. "Is there a room he can use?" she asked An Ning.

"Take the one near the stairs," An Ning told him. "Lunch will be at one. Is that okay?"

"Yes, mistress," the man nodded then walked away with the bags.

An Ma broke the silence.

"Who the h.e.l.l was that?"

"Enxuo."

"That was Enxuo?" An Ning gaped at her mother like a fish caught in a bait.

"That's him," Ceres said.

"But he's so young. And so handsome. He's totally dreamy in a very s.e.xy way. Are you sure he's not your boyfriend or something?"

"Handsome?" An Ma snorted. "He looks like a beach b.u.m."

"He's not my boyfriend," Ceres said, ignoring An Ma. "But he's been with me all these years. He took care of me. I owe him my life."

An Ma glared at her while clamping his mouth tightly shut.

"Were you aware what Yu Yan did after she left the village?" An Ning asked, again keeping a wary eye on her mercurial father.

"Yes. It was obvious what she was going to do. Make real the illusion of family she created in her mind. But she made sure it was all nice and tight by creating another spell around you, daughter."

"Me? What did she do to me?"

"Created you based on what her expectations were of a good daughter. She basically transformed you into her ideal: Timid, unsuspecting, biddable."

"What?" An Ning was shocked.

"Even your persistence in loving Richard all these years was her creation. You loved him but he didn't love you. But in the end he realized it was you he loved all along and you got married. All Yu Yan's creations. She's become a great illusionist and you were her greatest creation," Ceres stopped. "I'm sorry if I'm scaring you with all these Tatiana."

An Ning swallowed painfully.

"No, no, I think you're right. I was always insistent that Richard and I were destined to be together. Even when I lost my memory that idea still persisted. It seemed to be what everyone expected so I just followed the script."

"The script veered off, however, when you divorced Richard. That upset the balance and created a crack in the illusion."

An Ning stared blankly at her.

"How did you know all these?"

"Did you really think I would leave you to that woman's clutches without knowing where you were? And not protect you to the best of my ability? It took a while but Enxuo managed to find you. At first, it was enough to know you were okay but....," Ceres took a deep breath. "We made plans to rescue you that first year but Yu Yan seemed to know what we were up to because she took the women and left them in an island."

Yu Yan had been more clever than she first thought. She took the women but her spies failed to know where she took them except that it was an island. They didn't know the name of the island. How they got there and where to start looking for them. Then a message had arrived. A pure white dove with a red arrow piercing its heart.

Ceres nearly went out of her mind until Enzuo frantically a.s.sured her that An Ning was still alive. But the psychological torture continued the following year and thereafter. The same pure white dove with the red arrow would arrive year after year on An Ning's birthday without fail. Rain, snow, monsoon, typhoon, it didn't matter. It nearly drove Ceres mad.

Then one day, the spell that kept her locked up in the cave for 20 years was broken. An Ning was alive. She had gotten married to Richard then the news of the divorce. The illusion of happily ever after that Yu Yan had carefully spun was fast unravelling. By divorcing her husband, An Ning had rejected the made up world and chose, on her own, to rejoin reality and live her own life.

"It was as simple as that?" An Ning asked, still confused. "I left Richard and the spell was broken?"

"It could only continue if the players still played their parts but you chose to opt out which stunned Yu Yan. She wasn't expecting it."

"But Richard and I were back together. Surely, that would restore the illusion, won't it?"

"It didn't matter. You chose of your own volition to go back to him. No magic was used to force you to do so. Then you lost your memory, which completely wiped out your connection to Yu Yan. From then on, you were in full control of your thoughts and actions. And the first thing you did, after meeting her, was hire a private detective. You followed your instincts because you knew something was wrong. You did great, my daughter," Ceres complimented.

"What about Maya and her attempts at seduction?"Richard asked.

"Yu Yan was desperate. She thought Tatiana would surely leave you after catching you inflagrante so to speak. When that failed, of course she had to kill Tatiana. She wanted to hurt me, wanted to hurt her father, wanted to hurt you. What else did she have to lose?"

"Is she really dead?" An Ning asked with apprehension.

Ceres scoffed.

"Of course not. She got away scott free and is now somewhere planning her revenge against me."

"What? How could that be? We saw her burned to a crisp!" cried An Ma.

"You only saw her body burned. You forgot about her soul."

"I didn't know she had a soul," An Ma said tersely.

Ceres laughed.

"Of course she has a soul. She is what you might call a jumper," she explained. "At the moment of death, just when you thought she died, her soul jumped to take possession of a body she had prepared for such an emergency. Guess whose."

The three of them stared at her with varying degrees of shock on their faces. Then An Ning gasped loudly.

"Maya?" she asked, stunned.

"Maya," Ceres nodded. "Yu Yan's spare skin. The empty suit, you might say, that Yu Yan now wears to exact her revenge."