Chapter Eighteen
THEA
T he grand room around Thea was no longer there.
The small silver sphere opened up an entirely different world before her eyes.
A world of warriors and monsters, and a glimpse of Great Rites long past. Through a vast projection of light, she saw them – past Warswords of Thezmarr, and the challenges they’d faced.
Whatever the silver ball was, it contained unimaginable power, magic that captured the pasts of Guardians that came before, magic that led her through each recollection as though she were following a thread through a maze.
It showed her a giant reef dweller, surging from the foaming sea towards a warrior of Thezmarr on the shore, poison seeping from its tentacles. The Guardian’s blade was drawn and he sliced at the first swipe of the monster, engaging in a deadly battle.
With a flare of light, the silver sphere revealed a lone figure, another Thezmarrian, trekking through a blizzard, the wind whipping snow and debris all around him, enough to draw blood from his exposed cheeks. His lips were black with frostbite, but his face was etched with determination.
The images shifted again, showing Thea a man standing before a vast spider’s web, someone trapped within its confines. With a roar, the warrior charged, cleaving through the sticky substance to get to the hostage inside…
The orb showed her as Guardians of Thezmarr were pitted against evil in all forms: cursed men they once knew, wraiths and reapers, howlers, frost giants, arachnes and basilisks…
It showed her the might of the Guardians – their mental fortitude, their strength as they battled monster after monster, their blades blurs of silver, blood spilling in their wake.
Thea recognised countless manoeuvres as ones she’d been taught by her mentor, as ones she’d used many times during her hunt for vengeance.
And it wasn’t just the monsters, but the horrific terrain, the extreme conditions… Each scene was more familiar than the last.
The sphere continued to play them out before her. It was a vision of the previous Guardians’ pain, and the deepest nightmares they faced during the sacred ritual of the Furies. The trials they confronted were within and without: mind, body, heart.
And beyond it all was golden light.
Wilder had given her decades – centuries of Great Rite experiences wrapped up in that tiny silver sphere.
And then, she saw him.
Thea watched as he travelled the midrealms and beyond, silver orb in hand, visiting those whose recollections she’d just witnessed.
Far and wide he trekked, across ice and snow, beyond stretches of desert and firestorms, through ragged ravines and a city among the treetops, all the while bartering with the former Guardians and Warswords of Thezmarr for their memories.
Thea observed each exchange with a lump in her throat as Wilder Hawthorne returned to the world as she knew it, armed with the knowledge to do exactly as he’d promised.
With fresh eyes, she saw him shape the past year – the punishing terrain, the monsters that had been thrown in her path… With every instance that flashed before her, Thea understood exactly what Wilder Hawthorne had been doing for the last twelve months.
He had fulfilled his vow to her.
He had been training her.
Wilder had never wanted to be her mentor, yet he’d spent the past year doing exactly that. He had recreated every Great Rite he knew of, every challenge he had seen in these memories, for her to master, to conquer, so that when her time came… she would be ready.
Wilder Hawthorne, her mentor, her friend, her love, had endured it all for her.
The Great Rites he’d seen poured forth, showing her more and more.
When it was done, Thea was sobbing from the force of it all.
And there was something else. She went to her pile of dirty clothes and pulled Audra’s cards from one of the pockets, finding the card she favoured instantly by its tattered edges.
Of the three trials every Warsword faced, there was a challenge for each of these. One to test the mind, one to test the body, one to test the heart.
Audra, too, had known, and prepared her the only way she could.
Strong of mind, strong of body, strong of heart.
And Wilder had shown her the rest.
Thea’s mind was unyielding, her body was strong, but her heart… It was her heart that needed mending.
When the light faded and Thea once more felt the cool marble beneath her feet, her eyes were wide open.
She told Cal and Kipp everything she had seen, and they listened in tense silence as the words poured out of her.
Facing the truth out loud, she could not deny how wrong she’d been all this time.
For a year, she had hunted and hated Wilder, and for a year, he’d been showing her how much he cared, how far he was willing to go to keep his promise to her.
She had been a fool. Now, he was trapped alongside innocent children in those dungeons, and she could have stopped it.
Regret threatened to consume her. But instead, she honed her focus.
Instead, she plotted how she’d get him out of Aveum’s ice prison.
‘I don’t expect you to risk yourselves,’ she told her friends. ‘It’s my fault he’s in there, my mess to clean up —’
Kipp gave a long-suffering sigh. ‘Don’t you get it by now?’
Thea looked at him blankly. ‘Get what?’
Cal shook his head as though she’d just asked what colour the sky was. ‘We’re not following the guild, Thea. We haven’t been for some time.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s you we’re following,’ Kipp said. ‘Though in this moment I have no idea why. You’re as thick as Cal’s skull.’
Cal rolled his eyes. ‘What he’s saying is that we’re with you. It’s you we’re loyal to, not some antiquated horseshit laws of Thezmarr.’
Thea’s eyes burned.
‘If you say we need to get Hawthorne out of the dungeons, then that’s what we do,’ Kipp added.
‘You know what will happen if you’re caught getting involved in this…?’ she ventured.
‘We’ll probably die long and painful deaths,’ Kipp offered helpfully.
Cal made a noise at the back of his throat. ‘Let’s try to avoid that.’
Thea shook her head. ‘I’m being serious.’
‘As are we, Your Royal Highness. We’re just glad you’ve seen the light,’ Kipp replied – then, more gently, ‘He loves you. That was never in any doubt. Not to us. I’ll wager that everything he does is for you.’
For the first time, Thea didn’t argue. She only vowed with that much more ferocity that she’d get him back.
As the sun passed over the mountains and lake beyond the floating domes, the trio strategised late into the day. They were going to get Wilder Hawthorne back, and they were going to use the masquerade ball to do it.