Chapter 22 #2
The hint of green I had spied was a beautiful private walled garden that was as big as the main housing area of my pack lands, spanning over one hundred metres in both directions.
Meiryn didn’t stop walking when we reached the fountain at the heart of it.
She kept walking along the paved path between the low clipped hedges, striding towards another small door at the far end.
The private garden had been quite beautiful, but the space I stepped into beyond that doorway spoke to me on a primal level.
That feeling of connection I had felt in Falkyr returned, blooming within me as I drank in the stunning blossoming fruit trees that dotted the expanse of lush green grass, but it was muted compared with how it felt there.
A shadow of the connection I felt to nature in that place.
“You look… strangely happy… all of a sudden.” Meiryn stared at me.
I shook myself back to her, smiling in apology. “Sorry. I just feel this weird… connection to nature in Lucia… like nothing I’ve felt before coming here.”
“It’s probably your fae blood. Royal bloodlines often feel a strong connection to the land.
” She bent and unlaced her boots. “Take them off and I’ll show you how to use that connection you feel to ground yourself in nature and Lucia.
It might help you move past whatever mental barrier there is between you and your magic. ”
When I scowled at her, she just smiled.
“I understand. I really do. I know why you are so intent on denying you have any fae blood. I know what it’s like to find out your father isn’t your father, and how desperately you want to pretend he is, because admitting he isn’t is like losing a part of yourself.”
I swallowed, unable to dispute that as those words touched my heart, seeming to peel back one of the barriers around it, opening it a little to her. Someone who had been through the same terrible moment I had, and who still struggled with it years later. The truth could be a terrible burden.
“I do feel that way,” I admitted and felt as if I had taken my first real step towards confronting my fears, and I felt stronger for it.
Meiryn’s blue eyes softened. “It does not matter who sired you. Your father will always be your father, and you will always be you.”
Those words didn’t just touch my heart or open one layer of the wall around it, they cleaved it open.
She was right. About my father. About me. About my fear.
The mental barrier between myself and my magic was the fact I didn’t want to have any magic.
I didn’t want to acknowledge my fae blood.
But coming here with that attitude wasn’t going to help me get stronger.
I couldn’t keep being afraid of it and what it might mean.
If I was going to do some serious levelling up like I had in the Shadow Court thanks to Jenavyr and Kaeleron’s training, then I needed to push aside that fear and test myself.
I needed to confront the blood that ran in my veins and what it might mean.
I removed my boots and socks, and set them aside on the grass.
The second my bare soles touched the cool blades, something inside me shifted.
Calm washed over me and my wolf side settled for the first time since coming to this court.
I crouched and pushed my fingers into the short grass, down to the damp earth, and closed my eyes, reaching into that connection I felt to this land.
Reaching through it to another court.
Kael.
I wanted to feel him.
I pictured his hand on mine and him crouched beside me, just as we had been back in Canada, when he had helped me feel the magic someone had cast on the pack lands to protect it.
I felt him.
Gods, I was probably imagining it.
Probably just feeling what I wanted to feel.
But I swore I could feel him, and my wolf side, those instincts that were an integral part of me, that made me who I was, bayed mournfully with a need for him.
With a need to be close to him again.
Back with him.
I wasn’t afraid anymore.
If it would make me stronger, if it could help me survive this court and get Danica to safety, I would embrace my fae blood and accept it, but it wouldn’t change who I was.
I was a wolf.
I would always be a wolf.
I would just be a wolf with magic.
“Focus on your connection to nature,” Meiryn murmured, sounding distant to me as I let that connection fill me. “Focus on building it while remaining calm. Feel her warmth. Feel what it is like to be one with Lucia.”
I exhaled slowly, surrendering to the connection, not fighting it or what it might reveal. Instead, I embraced it. For Danica. For Kaeleron. For myself.
For my court.
I lost myself a little in the flow of nature, the energy that seemed to swirl past my fingertips, tickling and warming them.
The feeling that bloomed inside me made me think of my dreams, of the emotions that washed over me when I was running in those moonlit woods or in the presence of the elkyn by the lake.
The first time I’d had the dream of the woods, and the violet-veined trees, I had thought Neve had pushed a vision into my mind to make me want to stay in the Shadow Court.
Now, I wasn’t so sure it had been her doing.
I had been in danger of breaking, afraid and alone, and hurting, and that dream had offered me comfort and strength, and courage. Just as the dreams I’d had since Kaeleron’s brand had been taken from me had held me together and kept me strong—kept me from breaking.
I pushed deeper into the connection with nature, letting it speak to my wolf instincts with promises of running and the wind in my fur, and the scents of the forest. Of freedom.
Of joy. I found the strength and comfort I always felt in my dreams in this orchard, in the sensation that I was connected to the land, and the land was connected to me.
Every tree, every flower, every blade of grass seemed to reach out to me.
Calling to me.
“Good.” Meiryn stepped closer to me and I felt her too.
Where the soles of her feet met the earth.
The energy she exuded and how it cycled between her body and the realm.
“Now… while feeling that calm and that warmth and letting it fill you, weave that feeling before you using your fingers. Like this.”
I looked up at her and she summoned beautiful solar magic, weaving things in the air with it that shimmered and faded a heartbeat later, the life of the patterns she made so short but so incredible.
“Stand.” She offered her hand to me and I took it, still feeling that flow of energy—of magic—in her as I rose to my feet. “Focus on the point where you connect to the land, draw up that calming, warming energy so it fills you.”
I closed my eyes and did as she instructed, pushing aside the part of me that felt a little ridiculous. I had seen her weave magic. I had witnessed how it could create or destroy. I had seen the power of it and felt it all around me. It was real, and it was in me. I just had to let it out.
I breathed slowly and deeply, focusing on remaining calm as I wriggled my toes in the grass, letting that connection that was still there flow into me, just as she had instructed. Energy rose up my legs, feeling as if it was swirling through me.
“Now focus on your hands, on nudging that energy towards your fingertips, and how it will manifest before you in a wave of solar light,” she said.
I silenced my doubts and visualised that energy she spoke of, drawing it up through my body to my fingertips.
And opened my eyes and waved my hands through the air as she had.
Nothing happened.
“Not to worry.” Meiryn clasped my hands as I shook them out, pressing them together as she smiled brightly at me. “We’ll try again.”
I tried again.
Twenty times.
And every time, I failed to produce magic.
“Maybe Sylvan was wrong about me,” I muttered and stomped away from her.
“Maybe there isn’t a drop of magic in me.
” I turned back towards her and threw my hands up into the air.
“Or maybe I didn’t get that side of the genes.
I mean, I’ve spent my whole life thinking I was pure wolf.
Nothing before now has made me think I’m any different to the rest of my pack.
This connection to nature that I feel… it probably just comes from my wolf instincts. ”
She didn’t look convinced.
“Saphira.” She came to me and clasped my hands again, holding them between us. “You have a connection to this land. You can feel it. You know it. There is magic in you. You are a daughter of this court.”
I shook my head, not convinced.
She nodded and released me, backing off a few steps, giving me space as she said, “Very well. Instead of focusing on calm and warmth, try to narrow down that feeling you have when you connect with nature and this land, and where it came from the first time you felt it.”
My mind instantly leaped to home.
To the Shadow Court.
I had been in so much pain. Rejected and sold by my mate.
Tears stung my eyes. My wolf side howled with the agony I had felt in those dark days.
I had wanted to make Lucas pay and I had been so afraid.
I had been afraid of the faerie realm. Afraid I would never escape it.
Afraid I would never see my family again.
That connection had seemed to reach out to comfort me.
No, not comfort.
Make me feel stronger.
Strong enough to survive a court and its king, and return to my mate to make him pay.
The air before my hands glittered.
Chills skittered down my limbs as I held onto that feeling, pushing it to the tips of my fingers.
A wild bolt of golden energy entwined with shadow struck the grass between me and Meiryn, spraying dirt everywhere.
It flickered, the light and darkness snapping like lightning before it fizzled out.
Meiryn stared wide-eyed at the scorched patch of earth.
I did too.
“I wielded magic,” I whispered, not quite able to believe it even though I had seen it with my own eyes.
And gods, it had been incredible, felt incredible, but at the same time it filled me with dread.
“What sort of feeling created that?” Meiryn hissed.