Chapter 30
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Not wanting to leave each other’s sight, we opted to sleep out on the couches in the Christmas Room.
Elden and I pulled some hand-embroidered blankets from the queen’s chamber closet.
My blanket was covered in stitched mushrooms and flowers, all labeled with their names.
Elden appreciated the faithfully embroidered realism.
It was the most beautiful blanket I’d ever beheld, though a part of my heart longed for my grandmother’s hand-crocheted piece.
Elden’s velvet blanket was covered in tall fir trees.
We’d moved the couches to better suit us, facing each other. The fire crackled, and I stared at Elden’s handsome face as he lay an arm-length away.
“You are radiant, Little Baker,” the Elf King said with a slow blink.
My toes curled at the compliment; my cheeks heated by more than just the fire. How had I come to love the king’s ridiculous nickname for me? “As are you.”
So many worries and excitements whirled through my mind, it was hard to settle on a single thread.
“So, what will become of Winterthorn, now that spring will eventually come again? The castle is a stunning masterpiece that deserves to be lived in.” I paused.
“Of course, something will have to be done about those pillars you destroyed.”
Elden raised a thick white eyebrow. “Would you rather I hadn’t flipped out and wrecked those pillars? It may have very well saved your life.”
I smiled widely.
“What?”
“You said ‘flipped out’.” I giggled.
“Trust me,” Elden’s eyes twinkled, “It will be the first and the last time I ever use such mundane language.”
I giggled.
Elden tried not to smile as he continued on. “But the castle, yes, it does prove a new problem. It was the first home of the elves here in the human realm. The home of my ancestors one thousand years ago. The first home of the human queen. It must be reopened.”
I nodded. Yes, something must be done. Every inch of this castle was a stunning masterpiece of craft.
An icicle of beauty among a snow-covered winter wonderland.
I felt a connection to the place. A kinship to the first queen.
As if she saw me as easily as I now looked across to find the king’s golden eyes on mine. There was a heat in his stare.
“What?” I squirmed down into my blanket at the intensity of his eyes, my toes twisting.
“I was just thinking.” Elden’s deep voice rumbled through me.
“What were you thinking?” I was all too aware of how close we lay. Of the king’s heated stare.
Just then, Elden’s cheek lifted in a smirk as he cleared his throat. “I was just thinking of the time I beat you in a snowball fight.”
He had certainly not been thinking of that, but I was glad for the distraction. “You cheated, so it doesn’t count. I call a rematch.”
“A rematch?”
“Yes,” I smiled into my pillow, “You cheated. Next time I require you tie at least one hand and leg behind your back. Your elvish speed is an unfair advantage. Are all elves that fast?”
Elden’s answering laugh turned my insides molten. Sent my heart out on a wing.
“Now, that is an interesting question that we will have to puzzle out.” Elden put a hand to his chin as if in thought. “For I have not been around many humans in my short life. But I was fastest in my class.”
“You went to school?”
“Well, I was the only one in my class, so that would make me the slowest as well,” Elden said with a grin.
“Private tutors?” I guessed.
“Yes,” the king answered. “But they were mostly schemers and politicians trying to sharpen my mind into a tool that could skewer rival courtesans.”
“Sounds stimulating. My school days often involved me positioning myself to be alone.” I laughed. “I was always trying to get away from all the gossip and noise.”
“You will make a lousy royal, then, I should think. Gossiping is one of the many duties you will be expected to perform as queen.”
As queen? Heat filled my cheeks, but I found I had nothing to say. Yes, we had exchanged the words. Yes, I felt that love in my heart, but this new love was, well, new. I did not know how far the king’s affections truly reached. What he envisioned for us.
What I envisioned for us.
A glance at the first queen answered my own question for me, a knowing glimmer in her eyes that had not been there before.
The next morning, I awoke to find the couch across from me empty. The king was gone. I sat up, searching the room, fresh panic in my mind. Where was he?
I pulled on my boots and stood, ready to wander around the entire palace to find him, when Elden ran into the Christmas Room, a giant smile lighting up his ethereal face. I sighed in relief.
“It works!” he exclaimed with a look of pure delight. His wild white hair fell across his shoulders and surrounded his head like a halo. “Come, Noelle! Come!”
Before I could ask a single question of what he fixed, Elden pulled my hand and led me down several hallways. Dark browns and cream tones reached my eyes as we entered the king’s bedchamber.
“I thought it was a myth, an old tale my father used to tell me, but we are finding out that more and more of these tales are based in truth.” Elden’s words came fast, still not making sense.
“Father showed me the other side before he died, when he’d told me of the blight, but it had been blocked off.
It is why we had to travel for so long to get here—”
“The other side of what? What was blocked?” I practically tripped over a massive leather ottoman in the center of King Theronvere’s ornate bed chambers.
If Queen Elayna’s rooms were a colorful burst of flowers and wildlife, then the king’s rooms were the opposite.
The walls were a muted white and the tapestries geometric in style.
He favored browns and tans, earthy tones and bold lines and patterns.
“Here we are,” Elden exclaimed as he led me to a gigantic tapestry of browns and whites blended together abstractly taking up an entire wall.
“It’s very unique,” I said in confusion.
Then Elden did the unthinkable. He ripped the fine tapestry from the wall in a fluid motion.
I gasped and jumped back in shock, but something else jumped back with me: my own reflection.
Before me was an intricately carved archway.
Leaves, baubles, evergreen trees, the phases of the moon were all etched into the columns and curves of the doorway.
The bristlecone pine at its center. Inside the archway was a warped reflection of myself in a strange muddled puddle, as if a body of water lay pooled on the wall ahead of me.
My features were distorted, my breath disturbing the tranquil motion of the ripples.
I watched as Elden moved to stand beside me.
But deep in the ripples as if at the bottom of a great lake, I saw something just beyond the king’s chambers of Winterthorn. I squinted, taking in another bedchamber quite different from this one.
“What is this?” I asked in awe, lingering on Elden’s handsome reflection beside me. Even warped, he was magnificent.
“This, my dear Noelle, is our way home.” Elden bowed.
I blinked, nerves squirming in my gut. “This?”
“It is a portal. One that leads to the king’s chamber back in Elkhaven.”
“A portal that will take us back, just like that?” Would I ever get used to elven magic? “We just walk on through?”
“Yes, but it had been closed off for centuries. The way blocked because of the blight. But I followed the instructions my father laid out before he passed, and then, well, here it is! I am quite relieved,” Elden said cheerily.
Relief flooded through me as well. As fun as it would have been to travel with Elden, I was grateful not to spend too many nights roaming the woods in the company of roving wolves.
“Sounds lovely,” I smiled. “I, for one, can’t wait for a hot bath.
Though I am a bit sad that we will not be seeing Scarlet, Tabitha and their families again. They were such a help to us.”
They’d welcomed us into their homes with warmth and kindness, sharing their food and traditions. Would I ever see them again? I tried to keep the burning from my eyes. All of this felt like some kind of goodbye, and I wasn’t ready to say it to this enchanting world.
Elden nodded, as if he, too, were saddened by the thought.
We gathered our things, cleaned up after the horses, then made our way to King Theronvere’s chamber. I offered a silent goodbye to the ethereal palace of Winterthorn, to Queen Elayna. Thank you for allowing me to thaw my heart, to grow a budding love here.
“And we just walk through?” I asked for the tenth time as I stood before the portal with Sapphire by my side.
Elden chuckled. “Yes, it is perfectly safe. But if it makes you feel any better, we can send the horses through first. Just like the Evergate, any who enter the portal must have the blessing from the king directly. And lucky for us, the king is pretty easy to find.”
I smiled, even though nerves danced along my stomach. We’d been on this sweeping adventure only having each other to lean on. With him returning to his kingly duties and mine as baker, would things between us remain the same once we were back in Elkhaven?
My heart squeezed. This was it. After I stepped through the portal, things would be different.
New. What would my life look like on the other side?
Would Elden go back to the cold leader he was before?
Or would he stay the warm, loving elf I knew him to be?
And how would Elden honor his promise of reuniting me with my mother and sister?