CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
It took all but a minute for Kodhan to help me find a seat in the spot right above Theia’s wings.
Her wings. It still felt like I was dreaming. Like my mind still could not grasp what was right in front of me.
And then we were airborne. Though my stomach remained far below, buried in the ground after jumping up and out of my throat.
Kodhan bore no signs of wings of his own. Instead, he claimed the same spot by Brannon’s wings, the duo gliding next to us as we covered miles of nothing but trees, hills, and mountains that bent and sloped the further we flew.
The four of us travelled in silence, which proved to be a small mercy. I needed the quiet, and the time to sort out my thoughts.
To sort out where the truth lay in so many masterfully woven lies and secrets.
I was so engrossed in the chaos churning in my head that I failed to notice the twinkling stars above dimming into inexistence, giving way to hues of persimmon and periwinkle lining the northern horizon like spilled paint.
A bright orb emerged moments later, stealing my attention at last.
It appeared as a mere sliver at first. But continued to rise until I could no longer look at it, its shape engrained behind my eyelids while tears leaked down my face.
“What is that,” I gasped, trying and failing to keep my eyes open. Between each blink, color—vivid unlike any I’d ever seen—consumed my entire vision. “It hurts.”
Theia roared underneath me, her entire body vibrating with the sound. Brannon immediately followed suit. But it was joyous. Celebratory.
“That, my darling, is the sun,” Kodhan beamed. “Or the Sunstar as you call it. And you will go blind if you keep trying to look at it like that.” His laugh was almost as warm as the bright rays pouring over my face. A melody I still could never get enough of.
“How is this possible? Orthil, he—”
“Fought Maverick, yes. But that is the extent of it. The sun has remained in the sky, untouched and forever burning bright.”
Another piece of information that wrought an ache between my temples. And I was getting a sinking feeling that it would not be the last.
I swiped at the tears that continuously spilled down my cheeks. “Then if Orthil never absorbed its power like they say, why does Aedreath live in darkness?”
“Because Maverick wanted it to be that way.”
The remaining contents in my gut turned to lead.
“The Veil does act as a wall between Aedreath and what lay beyond, but it remains a figment made purely of his magic. He can pick and choose how it appears. What it lets through. Even sunlight.”
This time I let the tears run freely. “For the entirety of his reign, since the creation of the Veil… it was his doing?” Kodhan nodded once. “But for what reason would he plague his own kingdom with eternal night?”
His expression sobered, the lines around his mouth going taught. “We have guesses, but we don’t know for certain. It is likely a permanent form of punishment for those residing in Aedreath.”
“Or he might’ve thought the sun too harsh on the leather of his shoes,” Brannon mused.
“Either way, he’s never seemed inclined to change his mind.”
“And the flashing colors? Are they not residual traces of the Sunstar—the sun’s power?”
“They are nothing but a mockery of the real thing, existing only in the name of spite,” Theia bit out.
“Spite towards the goddess?”
“In a way,” she surmised.
None of us spoke after that.
I turned the information around in my head, over and over. Like pieces of a puzzle with ends that did not fit, no matter how hard I tried. I was travelling by dragon, for stars’ sake. The very beings I’d been taught to fear my entire life.
But it was a glorious thing to touch the sky. To breathe in the clouds and to taste the wind. For the first time in my life, I felt at peace. Like my soul had been missing its final fragment without ever knowing. And I had just found it.
I kept turning them until mountain peaks broke off into rolling valleys of sprawling grassy hills and vast riverbanks leading further into the horizon. The closer we flew, the more I could begin to make out the frames of houses, speckled in clustered neighborhoods.
Whole. Clean. No traces of destruction or ruin. Not a single hint of what could have been a world-shattering war.
They surrounded a behemoth of a castle, its colossal towers and structure almost rivalling the one in Aedreath. But where they were similar in size, the similarities ended there.
Maverick’s castle lived as the embodiment of all things night, with stone as dark as the sky, and diamonds as bright as the stars. This one was its polar opposite.
It wasn’t the bright white stone, soaking up the sun’s rays that stole my breath away. Nor was it the fact that it almost seemed as though the trees leaned towards it, as though they were one and the same.
It was the hundreds of thousands of different gemstones, in every shape, encrusted within the stone walls. Reflecting the beams of the sun. Warping them into an iridescent kaleidoscope of color.
We dove towards it, my heart nearly flying out of my throat once more as we descended faster than my body could handle. I scrambled forward, leaning against the long expanse of Theia’s neck to lessen the steady influx of wind threatening to overwhelm my lungs.
At the last second her wings snapped outwards, leveling us both before her powerful legs absorbed the impact of landing.
Kodhan was at our side in an instant.
“Can you make it down?” he called up.
“I think so.” The wobble in my breath was far from convincing.
“Let me help,” Theia offered, and crouched low, bringing her chest and neck flat against the ground. Still, the dirt below seemed impossibly far.
My trembling, exhausted legs obeyed as I stood, then slid down the expanse of her shoulder and the remaining length of her leg. And then I jumped.
My ankles protested when I landed. But Kodhan wrapped supportive arms around my middle, steadying me. Supported my weight while I adjusted to the feeling of being back on solid dirt.
“Steady now. I’ve got you,” he murmured, hand lifting as if it would brush away the strands of hair that had stuck to my cheeks. It halted as my eyes met his.
I didn’t allow myself the time to read the expression that befell his face. The twinge of hurt that lay there.
My swallow was audible as I pulled away from him, away from the touch that burned invisible imprints of his fingers through my clothing.
Worse still was the tingle that lingered across my skin while I turned, expecting to face claws and scales once more.
But it was no longer two dragons that towered above me.
Theia and Brannon stood in their places. The real Theia and Brannon. No wings, no razor-sharp teeth the length of my forearm.
It was one thing to hear their voices. But seeing them whole, seeing them, felt like I’d awakened from a centuries-long nightmare that had taken me hostage.
Guilt marred both of their faces as I kept looking between them, convinced they would disappear again if I so much as blinked. Their competitors’ clothing was long gone, replaced with loose-fitting brown pants and similar cream-colored shirts, slightly askew on the both of them.
They were here. Alive.
And it was the truth.
Through all the anger and confusion weighing heavy on my shoulders, relief flowed through my lips in a long sigh. It carried away the constant, throbbing ache that had buried itself in my chest since the moment I’d fallen from that watchtower. Until I no longer felt it at all.
Before I could say anything, Theia shot forward, gathering me in a hug so tight that my bones creaked. And I let her.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “For all of it.”
I could only nod against her shoulder. Battle against the overwhelming sting behind my eyelids.
Brannon’s hand found the crown of my head, ruffling my hair as he said, “Stay angry for as long as you like. We’ll do our best to make it up to you in the meantime.”
Theia pulled back, allowing me to search them one last time for wounds. Scars. A limp. Anything that would point back to what I’d seen when I fell from the watchtower. Nothing. The puppet dragon had never touched them.
“Angry is a light way to describe how I feel.” My brows narrowed at him. He nodded slowly, shifting on his feet. “But,” I added, carefully, “I’m glad you’re both alive.”
A slow, growing smile graced his mouth. “We’re glad you’re alive, too.”
Theia gestured to the castle. “Are you ready to go inside? You’ll love it, I think.” She crossed, then uncrossed her arms. Then settled for picking at the hem of her sleeve. “It’s not as cold as that other castle. Far livelier, I mean.”
Scanning the colorful pillars, and the trees surrounding it, I asked, “Is it yours?”
“In a way. Well, it isn’t only mine.” She waved her hands as she corrected herself. “We all live here. Many other people, too. And it is used for all sorts of different events.”
“It is also yours.”
My eyes snapped to Kodhan, who was staring at me with an odd look I couldn’t place.
“Impossible. I’ve never seen this place.”
“The hundreds of dresses tailored to your size might not bear any wrinkles, courtesy of their disuse. Dust might cover every painting, every chair and dresser. Ghosts might waltz across the wing that houses it all at night. But it doesn’t make it impossible. It doesn’t mean they aren’t yours.”
There was a rawness to his voice. One that, despite the stony mask he’d placed upon his features, betrayed the extent of his pain. The pain I would not allow myself to dwell upon.
But it was that rawness that had me desperately sorting through every facet of my mind. That had me trying to remember.
I flipped through memories like scattered pages in a never-ending archive, and still, the elements of the castle remained foreign.
I didn’t have a single idea of what it looked like on the inside.
Not an inkling of what those paintings could depict, nor any sense of how large or small that wing was.