Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Instinct led Lia to the park. It was the closest, thickest grouping of trees, away from all the noise. She remembered the countless times she had found Kayce, tucked way up in the nearest tree, anytime the pressures of the court were too much to bear.
Now, she was the cause.
It made her want to empty her already hollow stomach right there on the sidewalk. Instead, she ran faster. Pain was the last thing she wanted to give her—suddenly real—best friend. But she would find him, as she always had. Just as he always found her.
Relief soothed her burning lungs like a balm when Lia saw Kayce cradled by the nook of a sturdy oak.
Her shoulders dropped, slowing her pace to a walk so she wasn’t sucking wind.
It was a comfort she knew him, even here.
But his brow furrowed, casting a shadow over his eyes as he stared out at her world.
His body was so stiff, like he had become one with the tree. Even though he knew her footsteps well.
“Hey,” she tried lamely, stopping below him.
He didn’t reply.
Lia toed the ground. She’d earned that. Didn’t make it sting any less.
Like when he’d lost his pendent bearing the family seal.
Each Weatherstone brother had one. It had been only a week after he’d gotten it on his tenth birthday.
He and Lia—Aurelia—had pilfered the royal kitchens, taking treats the chefs spent days working on for that year’s inaugural ball.
Didn’t matter that his pendent was left at the scene of the crime.
She’d still snitched on him when the Lioness cornered them, faces dusted with sugar and hands sticky.
He didn’t talk to her for four whole hours.
And that, for a nine-year-old, was a long time. She’d never snitched again.
But this wasn’t stolen sweets. And they weren’t kids anymore. So, Lia waited.
Eventually, Kayce let out a forceful breath. “You really are not from Norenth,” he said as if trying to convince himself.
Following his gaze, dawn had painted the clouds—here, in this world, fluffed as cotton candy—a soft pink.
The prospect that his world—no, their world—was as alive as this one made a tingling surge from her chest, spreading outward like the sun inching over the horizon.
It was a warmth that enveloped her, chasing away every dark thought.
But even the sun created shadows. And doubt made that sensation in her chest restrict with each breath she took.
“No.” The soft response hung between them a moment.
Lia swung herself to straddle the limb as she would onto the back of Paxia.
Settling into the spot next to Kayce, her gaze followed his once more.
Uncertain of what to say, she waited. But the silence was unbearable.
Pulling the sleeves over her hands, Lia stared at the tree bark.
“I don’t have answers, Kayce. And for that, I’m sorry.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t figure this out together, like we always have. ”
“You mean like you always have,” he said, unblinking, but the muscles in his forearms twitched.
Lia clamped her mouth shut. Shame heated her neck.
Silence ticked on, a robin twittering overhead.
Suddenly, Kayce surged forward, causing Lia to jump.
“It’s true, isn’t it?” Jaw ticking as he clenched his teeth, Kayce returned his focus to the horizon.
“You made me up. My family, the kingdom, the seas. None of it is real—”
“It is to me!” she insisted. “It’s always been real to me.
I’ve always felt more at home there. Yes, they were stories, but they were mine.
They were ours. And I…adore them with every fiber of my being.
You, your brothers, the people.” She sighed, almost tasting the salty, Norenthian air. “You’ve always been real to me.”
But Kayce pushed on as though he hadn’t heard her—or hadn’t cared to.
“It somehow lives in your mind, and I’m just an imaginary friend along for the ride.
” Red splotched his cheeks in contrast to the paleness of his lips.
But his eyes…they didn’t rove calm and confident over the trees and clouds beyond.
They were chips of amber, glinting like cold stones.
Lia’s throat itched with bile. It filled her mouth, roiling her stomach. She forced a swallow, closing her burning eyes. But she couldn’t hide from this. She couldn’t sequester herself away to her room, her books, her journal.
No escaping this time.
“Kayce, there’s no ‘just’ about it.” She bit her lip. When she opened her eyes, she found one scarlet leaf hanging below the rest. “When my parents separated, my father didn’t call on my birthday. Only sent cards. He didn’t even come when Marcus kept having night terrors.”
She grimaced. That was a particularly dark period for Mom.
Lia hated how she had twitched every time the phone rang, the constant meetings with the school for their whistleblowing concerns.
Older now, she could see the validity of it: any unexplained bruising on a child would do that.
Still, it had been a harrowing few months.
And her father couldn’t be bothered. Maybe she shouldn’t have been surprised when he stood up the funeral.
“No one wants to be friends with a kid dealing with that stuff. I didn’t get invited for sleepovers anymore. And when I turned eight, only four people ate the giant cake my mom bought.”
Kayce’s shoulders curved toward her. Silent, distant, but listening. It pushed Lia to continue. To help him understand.
“Even though I thought my stomach would burst with icing, I felt like I ate nothing at all,” she whispered, watching the leaf tumble on a breeze. “That gnawing was always there.”
That empty, aching void inside. A loneliness that left her hollow. That had tried to swallow her, drown her completely, since Papa died.
Kayce’s eyes slid over her, flickering like a beacon in the dark. His voice was hoarse. “You wore a green dress.”
Lia blinked back the tears that threatened, the corner of her mouth lifting. “I did.”
They stared at each other.
“Papa’s garden was the best place for the party, before my mom decided to move us. When no one showed, I tucked myself into the rose bushes.”
He cleared his throat. “You never minded the thorns.”
“No one looks there.” She tilted her head. “Except you.”
“I needed somewhere to practice without my brothers mocking every move I made for once.” Kayce soured, uncrossing his arms to drop his hands to his lap. “Besides, I didn’t think you would want to sit on that rock and watch all day.”
Her smile opened up. “But you said it would do you no good to have an utterly defenseless partner.”
“Which is why I had to teach you.”
“To feel better about yourself?”
“Absolutely. A boy’s pride is no small thing.”
They both chuckled, their reminiscing proof of the past. The truth it held.
“I had no choice.” He sobered. “Though you were nearly a lost cause.”
“Now you know why!” She pushed his foot off the tree with a grin that faded like mist. Because he filled the void in ways he would never understand.
“Since then, I have always seen you. And my papa, he coaxed you out of me. Asked about our adventures, your kingdom and family. My answers always came easily, and I never once doubted from where. In fact, you seemed to tell your own story. I was only the recorder.”
It was her papa’s best writing advice. It was like Kayce was living inside her all of that time, waiting for her to open the door to find him.
He nudged her knee with his foot. “I’m sorry for leaving like that, I just—” Kayce looked back over her world with a heavy breath, shaking his head. “It’s a lot.”
“I know the feeling,” she mumbled, leaning her chin on a fisted hand. “It’s not every day your stories come to life.”
“Or discover you’re a story.”
“Touché.”
He cracked a grin. She wanted to capture that uniquely Kayce smile, hold it in her palm to savor so she never had to see his desolation again. But her mind was a vicious creature, intent on reveling in the questions while ravenous for answers.
“Kayce.” Her voice pitched with urgency to get her friend to understand. “I didn’t make you up, not really. You came to me when I needed you the most. That made so much difference, that was real.”
The young ranger smiled softly, turning to her with a reassuring nod. Nothing more needed to be said. But as they sat in silence, a thought built in Lia’s mind. “What if that story Papa wrote really was true?”
“Is this your way of telling me I was actually right for once?” She pushed his pesky leg off again as he insisted, “Well, I feel alive! And to me, Norenth felt real, like this place.”
“Norenth felt real to me too, but even more so lately.” She looked down at her newly scarred palm, despite her nailbeds still being a mess.
“My hands didn’t always look like this. The blood oath we took was in Norenth, not here.
But yesterday, I woke up with the scar and my hands were worn like I’d been working with them for years. ”
“Because you have. I have a bad knee to prove it.”
“Here, the only calluses I had were where I held my pen.” A shudder raced down her spine. “And then there was the gremlin.”
“The what?” Kayce frowned, a hand to his belt for his sword. Thankfully he hadn’t run into any police on his way into hiding.
Quickly, Lia detailed what had happened: how her dream of the inaugural ball felt clearer than ever before, how she woke with a splitting headache and fever, how that horrific creature attacked her.
How she’d called for him. It was a relief to speak it aloud, to reflect with someone.
It made it real. And it had been, all along. She hadn’t been losing her mind.
“Have you ever fought here before that attack? In this world, I mean. Because in Norenth, I’m pretty sure Wolfe is still nursing his pride.
” Kayce scooted closer. She could see the small scar through his eyebrow, her finger itching to touch it.
His coldness had melted, but muted smiles and scant glances shuttered Kayce’s usual warmth.
Lia ached for it. But she focused on his question.
“Skies and seas, no,” she said. “Huh. I’ve been saying that here more lately, too.
But I could defend myself like I had really trained with you at the guild.
Like it was all—” Lia stopped herself. Kayce was there in front of her, so she would not continue to rub “reality” in his face when the basic understanding of what that was had gone out the window.
Obviously, he’ll be disappointed. His best friend’s been traded in for the prototype model with only a few begrudging upgrades.
Lia chewed her lip. “Anyway, I hadn’t seen anything like that in my life. It was like something from a—”
“Nightmare?” he offered.
She nodded, tapping her knee to hide another shudder that worked up her spine.
Noticing the nervous tic, Kayce took her hand and flipped her palm up.
Showcasing what they shared. “You know everything from my world. How to fight, how we speak. You have scars and calluses you never got in this world.” His gaze snagged hers.
“I’m here. And that gremlin thing too, but I’m better looking. ”
She rolled her eyes but paused, biting her lip. Lia hopped off the branch, turning to face Kayce while tucking a flyaway curl behind her ear. “We need to go to my papa’s house. Maybe he wrote something else that I missed.”
Landing nimbly beside her, Kayce readjusted the cuffs of his tunic. He flipped his hair back before he met her gaze with a determined smile. “I’m with you, Aurelia.”
Her stupid heart flipped as they stared at each other, his lips softening. He really shouldn’t be calling her that—especially not here. He was going to see how unlike the Aurelia he knew Lia really was.
But she didn’t have the heart to correct him. Not yet.