Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
Nova
The silence was shattered by laughter coming from somewhere far in the distance. It was so faint, I wondered if I was imagining it, yet I still found myself stumbling toward the sound.
I didn’t make it far before a hand closed around my arm. I instinctively tried to jerk away, but my captor’s grip remained firm, forcing me to twist around and face him.
“Whatever you heard,” Aleks said, calmly taking my gaze, “I’m fairly certain it’s not real.”
I slowly exhaled the breath I’d been holding.
“And I doubt it will be the last trick this forest tries to play,” he added, casting a wary glance at the twisting tree limbs around us. They were paler on this side of the archway, like walls made of gnarled bones.
“Let’s stay close,” Aleks said.
I nodded, stopping just short of pointing out that he’d been the one who had left me. He’d seemed so completely overcome by the song, that lure meant for divine beings…
But now he didn’t seem bothered by it at all.
Yet another shift in him that I couldn’t make sense of.
The forest loomed, full of overgrown trails that looked foreboding, at best. I glanced over my shoulder, briefly considering turning back for the others—strength in numbers seemed like a good idea—but the trees were moving, rattling and twisting, obscuring the trails until it was impossible to say which way was back.
“Maybe we could try to sense the energy coming from the fragment?” Aleks suggested. “If it’s here, I’d think it would feel obvious to us and our magic.”
I agreed. Neither of us mentioned what we’d do after that, how we were going to make our way out of this place once we found the fragment…if we even managed that first part.
I exhaled slowly, letting shadows lift and curl from my skin. Their cold was comforting. Familiar. Blinking a lens of magic over my eyes, I scanned the white trees for some sign of the powerful object we sought.
I’d never seen so many different energies competing for dominance in one place.
“This could get tricky,” I muttered. Quickly, I explained what Orin had told me about the purpose of the grove.
Aleks frowned. “So, I imagine this place is a mess of residue from all the magic buried in it, and from the spells used to contain and absorb that magic…”
“It is. I don’t even know where to start looking for the fragment. It could be—”
The mark on my wrist started to itch, startling me.
It had all but faded on my skin, and I’d given little thought to that outward proof of the bargain I’d struck with my enemy.
But now it stung in a way that couldn’t be ignored.
Grimnor rattled violently as well, not stopping until I withdrew it to find bluish-white energy twisting along the blade.
Lorien?
My chest tightened.
I couldn’t stop what happened next; Grimnor lifted on its own, the tip pointing and pulling as if to encourage me forward.
“…I guess that’s a start,” I muttered, staring past the blade, eyes narrowing on the path it had indicated. Rolling the tension from my shoulders, I started to walk. Aleks hesitated, but then he withdrew his own sword and walked side-by-side with me down the darkening path.
As we made our way deeper into the woods, even the light Aleks summoned didn’t pierce the dark haze around us. What little birdsong there was disappeared. The breeze stilled…but something was still making the skeletal tree limbs rattle and dance in a haunting rhythm.
We’d been walking for several minutes when a low, resonant hum rippled through the grove. We drew closer to one another, standing back-to-back, weapons raised, as the ground began to tremble faintly beneath our feet.
Something tickled my cheek.
Glancing up, I saw pale blue flowers dotting the branches above. More bloomed in slow waves, petals glowing faintly in the half-light. A few of those petals shook free and fell over us, their touch soft and cold as they brushed over my skin.
I continued to watch the falling blooms as Aleks took a few cautious steps onward, his expression fixed on the path ahead. I realized quickly that the flowers were unfurling in sync with his steps—following him, almost, like watchful eyes opening as he passed.
“Aleks...stop!”
He slowed for an instant, glancing back at me in confusion.
I never heard his reply.
A thick swirl of petals descended, engulfing me. As they pressed against my skin, an exhaustion unlike any I’d ever felt overcame me, sinking deep into my bones until all I could think about was how much easier it would be to just keep still. To just stay.
An instant after the thought crossed my mind, the cyclone of petals froze in mid-air before dropping straight to the ground.
I felt something else wrapping around my body—a gentle pressure that slowly increased, like a hesitant embrace. For some reason, I imagined my mother’s arms circling around me, her body rigid with shock and disbelief after so much time spent apart.
Then, she was actually there.
And my father somehow was, too. Alive. In one piece. We were complete. Astonished to see each other, and certain, at first, that it had to be a trap. But then we slowly accepted what was happening, and tears of relief trickled down my cheeks as our embrace grew tighter.
Tighter.
Tighter.
The laughter from earlier returned, closer this time. With a gasp, I realized it was mine; a faint, ghostlike version of me was moving through the forest. Mesmerized, I watched her approach. My mother and father abandoned me and turned her way, stretching out their arms to her.
“No,” I whispered—though I’m not sure any sound came out. “No, she’s the ghost. I’m real. I’m…”
I frantically stepped toward my spectral self, pressing closer and closer until we became one; it was like fusing back into myself after using one of my projection spells.
I didn’t remember using any spell, but maybe I had.
Maybe I’d actually severed myself in two long ago, without even realizing it, and that was why I’d felt so off balance for so long.
But now I was whole again.
We were whole again.
So I laid down my sword.
I let my mother take me in her embrace once more, melting into her as my father wrapped his arms around both of us.
I don’t know how much time passed before something ripped them away from me—something that jerked hard enough to knock me off balance again. I landed hard on my hands and knees, my fall painfully broken by sharp rocks and pine needles.
I blinked, snapping out of a daze I didn’t remember falling into.
Thalia stood in front of me, staff in hand. Torn vines hung from the weapon—the weapon that had just freed me from a potentially deadly embrace of the forest, I realized. Zayn stood near Aleks, similar evidence of ripped bindings hanging from his sword.
“Th-thank you,” I told them, getting to my feet and hastily swiping away the last bits of vine clinging to my arms and shoulders. “But how did you…”
Thalia twisted a newly-acquired bracelet around her wrist. It was woven with threads in various shades of silver, with a faintly pulsing grey stone in its center. Zayn had a similar one; they looked like Orin’s handiwork.
“Gifts from my—from Orin,” Thalia confirmed.
“They won’t fend off the grove’s entrapment spells indefinitely, though, so we need to keep moving.
” She swept a concerned look over me. “He seemed to think you wouldn’t need one…
and that it would be better if you weren’t encumbered by any protections that might interfere with your power. ”
“We’re fine. We just got sidetracked,” Aleks told her—and I eagerly agreed.
We’d been caught off-guard, but I was determined not to let it happen again.
“Let’s hurry up, then,” Zayn urged. “Any ideas on where we should go next?”
Grimnor—still on the ground, several paces away—shuddered with enough force to rattle the dead leaves around it. It flipped onto its edge, spinning once before settling back against the forest floor.
We all stared at it for a moment, silent and uneasy.
“…To wherever it’s pointing,” I said.
Zayn gave me a dubious look.
“I think it’s able to sense the shard of Lorien’s soul better than any of us,” I explained.
“And we’re just going to trust it?”
“Unless you have a better plan.”
“He rarely does,” Aleks said, picking up the sword and handing it to me.
Zayn ignored the jab. “Gentle reminder that there’s an evil demon contained within that blade.”
“Yes, which is what’s making it capable of giving us directions to the soul of said evil demon,” I said, dryly.
“He could very well be leading us into a trap.”
“I love a good trap,” Thalia muttered, starting to walk. “Keeps things interesting.”
I let out a nervous laugh, falling into step beside her. Aleks followed closely behind—as did Zayn, eventually.
The path narrowed to a ribbon of sandy white dirt, hemmed in by an increasingly tangled mass of overgrown roots and branches. Everything glistened as if coated in a thin frost, despite how suffocatingly warm the air was quickly becoming.
Deeper and deeper we went, until a massive tree came into view, stunning us to a stop.
It stood out—a dark giant among ghostly white trunks, its bark smooth as marble and streaked with veins of deep gold.
It was as tall and wide as any tower at Rose Point.
Wider, really, if one counted the roots that rose all around it, curling and knotting into shapes that, at first glance, almost resembled creatures caught in a web.
Grimnor shook once more, the energy along its blade brightening.
On a whim, I tapped the flat of the sword against the closest tangle of dark roots.
We all drew back a step, tensing, as a crack of sound split the silence.
Light bled from one of the veins of gold in the tree trunk, shimmering just brightly enough to give us a better look at all the things around it.