Chapter 45 Malachi
Malachi
Aurelia turned in a slow circle beneath the lantern light, her eyes wide as they drank in the impossible—branches coiled in graceful arcs above her, blossoms glowing with bioluminescent threads.
Her hand brushed the carved bark of a nearby dwelling, fingertips grazing sigils like a language she hadn’t yet learned but somehow recognized.
The light caught in her hair—soft and living. It gilded the curve of her jaw, the sweep of her lashes, the hollow at her throat. She didn’t look like the girl I’d met.
Santiago and Lysara moved ahead, pointing out rope ladders and stairwells, their voices a low murmur in the distance. Aurelia stayed still. Her gaze was fixed on the tree at the center of it all, its trunk wide enough to house a temple, its roots sprawling through stone.
I stepped beside Aurelia, and together we moved toward Eryndis, who waited just ahead.
“How is this here?” I asked, my voice low. “How long has it been like this? Why hasn’t anyone come? No word, no sign. I would’ve come. Gabriel, too.”
Her gaze met mine—soft, steady, unwavering.
“You will have answers, Malachi,” she said gently. “I promise. But not tonight.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“It is—for now.” Her voice deepened, a slow current of divinity threading through it. “Your people are safe. That has always been my first vow. Come. You need rest.”
I didn’t move. “Tell it to the rest of us bound to Nyxarra for centuries,” I said, and I didn’t blunt it.
“Tell it to the ones who bled for a city that demanded sacrifices we never owed. I bent the knee to Talon. I put my name on his leash and called it duty. I told myself I was saving them, but I was only buying time with their lives. So don’t tell me we’re safe. We were left. We were forgotten.
I wanted to hand the blame across the gap and make it hers. But I knew whose fault this was. I knew who damned my people. I made the decision. I swore the oath. I don’t even know what I wanted from her now—absolution or the knife. Maybe both. Maybe neither.
The others stilled. Even the forest seemed to hold its breath.
Eryndis met my gaze. “I did not forget you, Malachi,” she said.
“No?” My voice was low now, a thread pulled taut. “Then why didn’t you come back? Have you been here all this time?”
Her eyes darkened. “I was waiting,” she said. “For the moment that would matter. And for the one who would matter most. This place is not what you think, Malachi.”
She looked past me. To Aurelia.
And I understood, then, that there were things she couldn’t say yet. Truths wound too tightly to unravel all at once. The weight of what she carried was in what she didn’t say. And it left me colder than if she’d lied.
She turned, motioning for Lysara to follow.
The stairs ahead wound through the branches, carved by hand and shaped by magic.
Homes dotted the canopy—some strung on bridges of rope and woven cord, others built into the trees themselves, their doors marked with sigils and fabric that swayed in the breeze.
Santiago looked between the stairs and the path, then back to me.
“Uh,” he said, raising a brow, “not to sound ungrateful, but is there… a tavern in this place? I mean, no offense to the glowing mushrooms and floating bridges, but it is a birthday. Feels wrong to let that go quiet.”
He glanced toward Aurelia. She blinked, caught off guard.
Eryndis paused, and something warm flickered through her expression. “Yes,” she said. “There is a tavern. And a feast hall, if you’d prefer it.” Her eyes lingered on Aurelia. “I know what today is.”
Aurelia didn’t answer. But something shifted in her gaze—grief, or maybe the ache of birthdays forgotten.
Eryndis inclined her head. “You’re welcome to eat. To drink. To celebrate each other. This place is yours now, as much as it is mine.”
Santiago bumped Lysara’s shoulder, grinning. “You hear that, firebird? I get to buy you a drink in a tree.”
“Firebird?” she echoed, arching a brow. But the corner of her mouth twitched. She didn’t pull away.
Eryndis stepped ahead of us, guiding the group along a curved platform draped in lanternlight until we reached a carved doorway woven with strands of living bark. She brushed the hanging fabric aside, revealing the warm glow of the tavern within.
Santiago and Lysara slipped through the doorway Eryndis indicated, the fabric brushing against them as they entered the tavern beyond.
Gabriel followed just behind Eryndis. He hadn’t spoken—not once—but he hadn’t looked away from her either. She paused on the stairs, slowing enough for him to lean briefly against her shoulder, and turned to him.
Her expression shifted—something tender and breaking at the same time. She lifted a hand and cupped his jaw, thumb brushing the line of his cheekbone as though relearning the shape of him.
For a heartbeat, grief and love warred openly in her eyes. Gabriel leaned into her palm like a starving thing, breath shuddering, but he didn’t speak. She didn’t either. The moment was small, quiet—an echo of everything they’d lost.
She let her hand fall and faced the rest of us, gesturing toward a path veiled in hanging moss and the golden glow of firefruit lanterns. “Malachi,” she said softly. “Come. Yours is this way.”
I hesitated. “Aurelia comes with me.”
Eryndis looked to her, and Aurelia nodded once.
“Of course.”
We followed her down a winding path where the lanterns burned in deeper hues, amber and plum, rimmed in green and silver.
The walkway opened onto a broad platform, its edges cradled by the limbs of an ancient tree. The door ahead was carved with familiar symbols—swords crossed beneath a crescent moon. My family’s crest. I hadn’t seen it since before the war.
The door opened soundlessly. Warmth spilled out. The space breathed.
Polished wood stretched beneath our feet. Rugs in deep forest tones unfurled around a low table and wide hearth. A small alcove cradled books and scrolls.
The far wall stopped me.
Paintings: my mother—stern, radiant; my sister and brother mid-laugh in a field of poppies; my father, tall and steady. Varnish caught the light. A hairline crack ran through a poppy petal. Someone had cleaned these recently. Someone had kept this place waiting.
I didn’t know who. Or why. But, for a moment, it felt like they were here.
My mind caught up to my dream. Oil. Canvas. Memories preserved inside frames. And grief did what it always does—arrived late and all at once. My hand went to the doorframe to steady the tilt of the room.
My father’s eyes held the weight of kingdoms and the tenderness of a man who remembered to be a father first. When he smiled, I believed the world could hold.
Aurelia stepped in beside me. Her fingers brushed a frame’s edge the way she’d traced the sigils outside. The windows stood open to the setting sun, and beyond them, the falls shimmered—curtains of molten light spilling down the cliffs.
It was regal, yes, but not remote. The kind of beauty born of care. With Aurelia standing in the middle of it—still, silent—it felt like a home rediscovered.
“This looks so much like my family estate,” I murmured. “I’d almost forgotten.”
She didn’t turn. “These are beautiful.”
“My mother painted most of them,” I said softly. “She believed memory was sacred. That when the world forgets you, a portrait becomes a kind of rebellion. Art moves through time when the rest of us can’t.”
Aurelia stepped closer to one frame—a boy mid-sprint through a poppy field, all wild hair and open laughter. “And this one?” she asked.
“That would be me.” A quiet laugh escaped me. “Always moving. Never still. Drove her mad.”
She didn’t reply. Just let her fingers drift over the frame’s edge. I turned toward the hearth, already lit with a low, steady flame.
Behind me, her voice came soft, a little awed. “How does a place like this exist? Hidden in the middle of everything else? Why has no one found it?”
I hesitated. “I don’t know.” Then, quieter: “But it feels… dangerous, somehow. Peace like this…it’s the kind that unravels the second the world realizes it exists.”
I sank into the chair across from her. The fire cast long shadows across the floor.
She didn’t flinch from them.