Chapter 59
SAPHIRA
The elkyn stared at me from the lake, shimmering white above water and black below. I stared back at it, sinking into that strange connection I felt to it as I slowly padded towards it, my paws silent on the stony shore.
It dug at the surface with its right hoof, scattering the glow bugs.
Beyond the beautiful beast, solar magic erupted to blind me and hurl me backwards.
I sailed through the air, shifting form as I did so, and gasped when I suddenly came to a dead stop.
The earth beneath my bare feet was pitch black scattered with white snow.
It trembled as I stared down at them, shifting from solid to something ethereal.
Blazing light extended outwards from under my left foot, meeting with the violent darkness that filled the right side of my vision.
I stood at the point where they clashed, unable to move.
Only able to feel.
The light was searing yet cold. The shadows sharp yet soft.
And both sides called out to me.
Tearing me between them.
Tugging me harder and harder with every passing second, until I was sure I would be ripped in two.
Divided by them when they were not meant to be. Shadow couldn’t exist without light. Light couldn’t exist without casting shadow.
Yet they still pulled at my heart, trying to split it in two.
I curled my fingers into fists, summoning my strength so I could remain whole.
“By the howling goddess of the north. With your claws, cleave mountain and moon. With your fangs, tear shadows from light. With your heart, bend stars to your will. With your blade, sever all between you and eternity.”
Power surged through me, exploding from me in a bolt of twisting sun and night that streaked across the land in a web of roots. Shadow into shadow. Light into light. It fell away from me, or I rose away from it, until I was high above it, seeing that mirrored tree.
Only it wasn’t a tree.
The ley lines flowed from the point beneath me, branching outwards, perfectly mirrored. Shadow into the unseelie side of Lucia, and light into the seelie lands. It flickered, and with each stutter I saw the reverse.
Light into shadow. Shadow into light.
The magic that flowed through the land, connecting it to make it one.
Undivided.
The brightness of those roots of magic faded, revealing the lands of Lucia stretched below me. I hovered above them, able to see the whole of the realm.
Something called to me, as if that bolt of magic I had summoned to sever the noise of the light and shadow in my soul had given it voice.
One that beat within me.
The drumming of a heart, but not my own.
I looked for the source of the steady thumping that vibrated the soles of my bare feet, growing stronger and stronger with each breath I took as the lands calmed and the constant tugging of light and dark ceased.
I found it in the heart of a cluster of islands.
In the volcano nestled in their embrace.
It grew stronger still and something shifted inside me, something that made me feel I had been mistaken.
It was my heart.
Beating proudly within that fiery volcano.
The light and shadow returned, crashing across the lands below me to meet in the middle and surge violently towards me.
Tendrils of gold and onyx snared my ankles and dragged me down.
I shot up in bed, breaths bursting from my lips as my hands shook where they tightly gripped the covers I had twisted into my fists.
My fingers ached as my heart raced, as my uneven breaths filled the silence, loud against the faint birdsong that floated in through the arched windows of my room. Awareness of that room was slow to return to me as the dream haunted me. The same dream I’d had each night since the battle.
Since Arianell had spoken of her vision.
I managed to convince the fingers of my right hand to unfurl from the bedclothes, hating how it trembled as I turned it palm up.
The markings on it slowly faded, as they had each time I had woken from that dream, but awareness of them lingered, beating in my heart.
My wolf side prowled beneath my skin, pushing for freedom, aching for the feel of the leaf litter beneath my paws and the song of the trees around me.
Calling to me.
“I need to run.” I shoved from the bed, following that instinct, the only one that seemed to make any sense these days.
Five days had passed since those markings had awakened and the dreams had begun.
Five days of wondering what they meant.
Of trying to understand the visions of Neve, Vaeleryn and Arianell.
Kaeleron had called me blessed, and had told me that the goddess was guiding me, and Arianell had said the same thing. There was a path I was meant to be taking, and the more I thought about it, the more a feeling condensed inside me.
My heart wasn’t whole.
Not yet.
It was missing something.
I was missing something.
I bundled leathers and a blouse up into a thick roll and tied them with my belt, and let the shift come over me, some of the uneasiness I had felt in the last few days melting away as my wolf side came to the fore.
I picked my clothes up in my fangs and trotted from my room, down through the castle and out into the courtyard.
As I reached the garden, heading for the forest and the mountains that called to me, I felt that comforting touch of nature flowing through me, as if welcoming me with a warm embrace. I reached for it in return.
Several highborn nodded to me as I passed them, muttering words of greeting and blessings to me.
I had received a lot of blessings since Kaeleron had paraded Lorien’s head through the streets of Falkyr and we had celebrated my victory over the Summer Court.
I had also received an inordinate amount of gifts from the highborn houses, and some of the stores in the town.
As much as I tired of everyone trying to gain my favour, I had to admit it was a warmer and kinder welcome than I had expected to receive.
Kaeleron must have done a good job of weeding out any among his court who might have spoken out against me, because so far no one had muttered a single cruel or dissenting remark within earshot of me.
The only thing close to that I had heard was a female highborn whispering to another, asking whether any heirs we might have would be half-breeds.
I didn’t think she had been talking about my wolf blood.
If I had been full seelie, would our children have come out half-breeds? I wasn’t so sure. Not when the fae had been born of one piece of Lucia’s heart split into two. Not when they weren’t as different as centuries of hatred had taught them to believe.
Lucia had wanted children. She grieved when they fought—when they were divided. I wasn’t sure how the goddess felt about the vitriol they spread about each other, how they openly despised one another. I saw a flash of my dream. Blazing light. Violent shadow.
Was that what she had wanted when she had created them?
I didn’t think so.
I glanced at the glade as I neared it, at the banners that were being hung and the furniture that was being moved into place, ready for the feast that would follow my coronation.
A strange sort of dread filled me.
How could I be a good queen when I wasn’t sure who I was?
When I couldn’t understand what I was being shown each night?
I wished the goddess would just tell me the path I needed to take and the choice I had to make.
A breeze swept through the trees as they surrounded me and I broke into a run as the ground seemed to warm beneath my paws.
Nature curled around me, the pull of it growing stronger with each stride that carried me over the land, deeper into the woods.
I didn’t slow until I was in the heart of them, easing to a trot as the violet veins that crept up the bark of the trees glowed faintly to illuminate my path.
I shifted back when I reached the fringes of the forest at the foothills of Noainfir and pressed my hand to one of those trees, my brow furrowing as I stared at the violet veins, seeking answers I knew the tree couldn’t give me.
Rather than the veins dimming where I touched, the sap that ran through them moving away from me as it had the first time I had placed my hand against one of these trees back when I had first arrived in the Shadow Court, they grew brighter beneath my fingers and dimmer along the rest of the trunk.
As if this time the sap had all run towards me rather than away.
I closed my eyes and focused on that point where I touched the tree, feeling the flow of life through it as the bare soles of my feet warmed and that connection I felt with nature, one that had always been strongest in this court, bloomed inside me.
Comforting me.
Giving me strength.
I frowned at my hand against the tree. My right hand.
A glow emanated from beneath my palm and when I pulled it away from the trunk and turned it towards me, my markings shimmered on my skin. Like golden embers.
I stroked my fingers over the symbol for wolf that sat in the centre of my palm. I was a wolf, but that wasn’t all that I was. I was more than wolf.
This land spoke to me, the trees calling to me, the moon speaking to me, the stars and the aurora, and all of it touching my soul. Maybe it was my wolf nature that made me more open to those things, to feeling a connection to them, but what if it wasn’t?
What if that dream I kept having, the one that had started when I had awoken in this realm, and had evolved after these markings had appeared, meant something else?
I looked at my left palm, where the markings matched those the other fae in this realm had, ending near my palm.
Kaeleron had said he had never heard of a fae’s markings changing like mine had. He had said it was Lucia guiding me. She had shown me the words to summon a stronger connection to her, and she had marked me as a wolf.
But I felt now more than ever that I wasn’t just a wolf, not like I kept telling everyone, not like I wanted to pretend I was.
I was something else too.
But I wasn’t sure what that something else was yet.
Because I hadn’t decided what I was becoming, just as Arianell had said.
I had fought against the part of me that was seelie, had sought to push it down and ignore it, to deny it, wanting to remain just a wolf. When I had finally embraced and accepted it, I had expected to feel whole again—me again—but something was still missing. Something wasn’t right.
I still felt divided.
What had Neve meant when she had said I had to drink the water to drift in the dark and embrace all that I was, had been and ever would be?
I had been sheltered and innocent and weak, blind to the cruelty of fate, and I had been broken, but I had discovered my strength thanks to Kaeleron, and had embraced the adventure I had found here, and the courage he had awoken in me, and the strength to do what I had to do in order to protect my pack and those I loved.
All that I had been. That had been shattered in the mortal realm.
All that I was. I had been reforged stronger in this land.
All that I ever would be?
I would always be a wolf.
But was that the truth of my heart?
I shifted into a wolf and continued up the mountain, following a trail, sinking back into nature to banish my tumultuous thoughts that felt as if they were growing too heavy for me to carry, a weight that pressed down on my soul.
I halted on Dagger Overlook, gazing down at the beautiful court that stretched before me.
I focused on the divide I felt growing within me, sure that was what my dream was about. I felt torn between my seelie blood and my home—my heart.
I shifted back and dressed, and sat on the plateau, no longer afraid to sit right at the edge of it, above the steep drop to the cragged black rocks below.
I pressed my palms against the smooth onyx rock on either side of my hips, drinking in the sight of the court that was my home. I had felt it from the moment I had stepped into this court.
I had been born to be here and had finally found my way home.
My soul had recognised this court as something dear and vital to me, even before I had been aware of it.
And maybe the goddess had recognised it too and that was why my magic was part light and part shadow.
The perfect blend of the two.
Uniting them.
My heart warmed at the same time as my palms, as I felt that gentle touch of nature wrap around me, lifting me up with it.
I reached for the lands in return, deep into them as I had during the battle when I had felt the grief and the pain within the fabric of this realm.
The connection bloomed warm and fierce, yet tender within my heart, and I didn’t feel surprised when I looked at my hands and saw light, golden ribbons of it that danced around my right hand.
It was the shadows that swirled around my left one that drew a frown from me and had me lifting that hand to look at it.
I raised my right one too, bringing them both before me, and my frown deepened as the threads of light and shadow entwined.
Becoming one.
That magic had felt right when I had wielded it on the battlefield.
As if Kaeleron had been wrong about it and both sides of it had come from my heart, born from my wrath.
Not wrath born of a hunger for bloodshed or violence, but from a need to protect.
To keep safe. Lorien had threatened this court, had threatened everything I loved, and I had been consumed by a need to protect it all.
That need had fuelled my magic.
Emanating from my heart.
“What do you mean?” I whispered to the dancing threads of magic and tried to hold on to them as they flickered and faded.
Light and shadow.
Lucia light. Lucia shadow.
Two sides of a realm.
Two halves of a whole.
Two pieces of the same heart.
Lucia’s heart.
I reached for the answer, but the more I did, the more it drifted away from me, eluding me. A growl slipped from me, frustration mounting, and I pushed it away and blew out my breath. I wouldn’t find answers here, up on this mountain, and it was growing late.
Kaeleron would return from Wraith Wood soon.
And I wanted to be there when he came home.