Chapter 60
Sixty
Sunstone
This camp is disgusting.
I love it.
It’s the remnants of great warriors—a tale throughout the land through fireside song and bedtime stories. As a warrior, it’s everything I would want in a legacy.
Dirt is built up on the floor of Brielle’s old cabin. Chairs are broken, there’s holes in the ceiling and floor, and there’s a certainty that several rodents have taken up base in each of the rooms.
The space where the windowpane used to be is completely open to the outside world, my boots crunching on shattered glass as I walk up to it.
“It wasn’t always like this,” Brielle mumbles, and I turn back to where she stands in the center of the room.
Her eyes are distant as she runs a finger along the table in front of a moth-eaten couch.
The motion creates a line across the table, clearing a small path through the dirt, dust, and mold that has collected there.
“I wish I could’ve seen it in its prime,” I say softly, feeling a sort of reverence that demands for quiet words. “It must be hard to be back here now.”
Brielle nods, fisting her hand and straightening her spine to face me.
“We’ll get Calix and Maddox on fixing it up.” She forges ahead. “We might need all of Maddox’s water abilities to wash the grime from the place. It’s going to need a lot of work before anyone can sleep in here.
“There’s a place for the wyverns not too far from here. Zephyr will remember and it’ll help the others feel more comfortable.” She swallows, her gaze growing distant again.
It should be Lunaria here with Zephyr. Not me.
Brielle clears her throat and heads toward the doorway as she says, “Let’s go see how your mother’s cottage fared through the years.”
My brows raise. I had grown up on the stories of her being a healer in the war both from Brielle and from my mother. But I’ve never seen it. A flurry of excitement jolts my body forward as I follow behind Brielle out of the broken cabin.
The path to my mother’s cottage is quick—well, less of a path and more of an overgrown forest in between the two buildings. I imagine it used to be open, but there’s now trees taller than the wyverns that have grown between the two.
Fallen limbs and uprooted trees litter the ground, causing my attention to be downward to avoid falling. Brielle is silently taking it all in, likely lost in memories that war with the scene in front of us.
My mother’s cottage is visible through the overgrown forest, but the closer we get the more I see it isn’t any better off than Brielle’s.
A tree has landed over the roof, caving half of the building in on the back left side. Moss and ivy have overtaken what’s left of the outside, covering nearly every inch. Brielle’s jaw tenses as she looks at it.
“Come on,” I whisper. “Let’s see if there’s anything salvageable left in there.”
I try the door, but it’s wedged shut. With a few forceful slams of my shoulder against it, it flies open. I stumble in, catching myself on the first large object I see. A half turned-over shelf.
Old jars lay scattered around the floor, most of them broken.
I bend down, examining them and grabbing a few that look useful. I can almost imagine my mother in here, her soft brown hair folded on top of her head as she runs through tinctures and herbs.
“Leda,” a familiar musical voice whispers, the ghost of the voice I’m thinking about, so present that it almost sounds real.
“Leda, darling,” the voice says again.
Not my imagination. Real.
I whirl around, my breath quickening as my eyes land on the last person I expect to see standing in the doorway of the old healer’s cottage.
My jaw unhinges and I freeze. Because the Queen of Penyth is staring back at me.
“Mother,” I breathe.