Chapter 9
Nine
Azurite
Stars shine all around me, as if I’m floating in the heavens. There’s nothing else but a dark, vast emptiness. It’s quiet. Peaceful.
Warmth presses against my skin, burning with a soft heat that feels…comfortable. Like home. My heart squeezes at the feeling, the warmth familiar and soothing.
“Little princess.”
The words float through the void, winding around the stars and circling me. Taunting me.
I spin around, the familiar warmth making sense now.
“Graylen?” I shout, but nothing comes out.
Only the stars twinkle back at me. I reach for the connection, the string that has always tugged me toward him—the one that’s been silent since I lost him. It isn’t silent anymore.
I gasp as I feel a faint whisper of his soul, a single thread that allows me to feel him. He’s alive—his emotions are there, faint but there.
“Do not come for me.”
My stomach clenches. Not a single part of me is surprised he’s telling me to not come after him. If anything, it solidifies that this is him. My Graylen.
Tears well in my eyes, because this time, I know it’s him. It’s his voice; I know it is.
I spin in circles, my body weightless as I float through the night sky. Graylen is nowhere to be found, but I heard him.
“I am coming for you,” I vow into my mind. “Tell me how to get to you.”
I wait for his answer, hoping he can hear me.
But I’m only met with more silence. More stars that stare at me, their light pulsing as if laughing at me.
I’m dreaming, my limbs feeling the same heaviness as when Annora was teaching me to dreamwalk. Is this just my mind telling me what I want to hear? Or is there a tether that binds us in my dreams, a connection that even the Vale can’t break?
“Graylen, please,” I scream into my mind. “Tell me you’re here—say anything.”
I hold my breath, praying to Eurydice that he’s there.
Once again, silence weighs like a thick blanket around me. If he were somehow able to communicate with me here, I might’ve just lost my only chance to get through to him.