11. Elorie
Elorie
Idunn’s steely eyes glow as the ground quakes beneath our feet.
“The realms are dying,” I tell her as a shudder racks my spine. “That’s what this is. They collided nearly three centuries ago, and now, they’re falling apart.”
“Yet you’re here.” Her head angles in assessment.
“I thought—” My throat tightens, and I pull my shoulders back. “I thought if I could better understand my magic—my bloodline—I could help.”
“Help do what?”
“Save the realm.”
An unsettling smile grows on her face. “You were outcast for so long, yet you wish to save the creatures who set you aside all those years when they thought you invaluable.”
“It’s not all their fault.”
“Ah, my daughter is a dreamer. Believing in the innocence of others.” Idunn paces her cell, not the least bit rattled as the realm shivers. “They would not do the same for you.”
“I don’t care. I have the magic to help, and I’m not going to sit by and not use it.”
Her eyes narrow, sliding to me. “What makes you think you can help?”
My fingers wring together behind my back. “The king. He said I wield the magic from the heart of the realm.”
“The magic of Voilene?”
I nod. “How did you know that?”
“That is what is at the heart of this realm. The magic of creation.” Her gaze drifts.
“He believes my magic is strong enough to heal what’s broken.” Not that healing the realm was how he intended to use it in the end. He wanted my magic to erase. To start over. Malachi wanted to be something greater than savior or king.
He wants to be a god.
I don’t share any of that with Idunn.
“Why didn’t you do as the king asked?” Idunn’s tone is dismissive. Irritated even.
“Things aren’t that simple anymore. The magic between Lyrichia and Vaelier is muddled. And then the orb—”
“The orb.” In a blink, Idunn moves from one end of the cell to the other, her palm pressing the barrier. Her skin flattens as if she’s touching invisible glass.
“You’ve heard of the orb?” Wilder said Malachi has worn it for at least a few centuries. But if Idunn knows of the orb’s presence before that, she might understand what we’re dealing with. “What do you know about it? It’s small. A necklace. But it contains something that’s—”
“Other.” Her voice is nearly a whisper.
“You’ve been around it then?”
She swallows, watching me. Her eyes assess as she reads my expression. There’s a beat of silence; her breath changes, and the only reason I notice is because of the dead quiet around us.
“Please tell me.” I shift closer, careful not to cross the runes. “What do you know about the orb?”
“That it will bring nothing but death to this realm. It cannot be contained. And if it is being wielded by another—” She shakes her head like she can’t stand the thought. Longing is heavy in her gaze.
“Another? You’ve wielded it?” I guess.
She simply nods.
“What is it? What can it do?”
Idunn closes her eyes, a faint smile playing on her lips.
“The orb belonged to the gods—to Voilene specifically. It’s said she wore it for millennia, searching the stars…
A gods-touched object. But as such, this realm cannot contain it.
No being lesser than that of gods blood can wield it without certain consequences.
If what you say is true and the realms have collided, you cannot heal what is broken with the orb fracturing what is left. ”
That explains why my and Wilder’s magic, no matter how strong together, did nothing against the Well at the Rite of Blood ceremony. The orb is tearing into something that is already broken. What we wield is not enough with Malachi harnessing something so powerful.
So destructive.
“But what if we destroy the orb?” I shift a step. “Can we heal the realms then?”
Idunn breathes out a laugh. “Destroy a gods-touched object? Ah, the hope that lives in you, daughter.”
“So it’s not possible?”
“Perhaps you could…” Idunn pauses, thinking for a moment. “No.”
“What?” I push, taking a step forward, toeing the edge of the searing-hot runes that mark her cell.
“It was just a thought, but I should know better. I’ve felt what that object can do. What it did.” She looks around. “Where it sent me.”
“The orb is the reason you’re here?”
“As I said, nothing of this realm can wield such power. To do so…” She clutches her chest, her freckles glowing. “It will drive one mad.”
That explains Malachi. While I never trusted him, he slowly changed during my time at the Ley Court. It must be the orb’s doing.
“What was your thought?” I ask anyway. “You were close to the object once. You know its power. Do you have an idea on how to destroy it?”
She’s hesitant as she looks at me. “As far as I know, nothing can destroy a gods-touched object. But that’s not to say it couldn’t be nullified. Muted perhaps. With the right counterpart.”
“Like shadow magic?” I consider Hazel’s ability to drain magic from others, and how that might affect the orb.
Idunn shakes her head. “Not magic. Any form of magic will simply feed it. Even that which drinks from a source. You need the opposite for the orb.”
“What’s the opposite of magic?”
“A void,” she answers plainly. “They exist in different forms throughout the realms, usually in a realm without much magic. If not properly contained, a void can drink a realm’s power with one touch.
” Idunn clears her throat. “And so the gods carved the first realm, flourishing in life and beauty. But forgetting to pluck the reaping rose. And so its darkness spread with the setting of the sun. Magic woke no more.”
“I’ve never heard that story.”
Idunn shakes her head. “It’s rare the priestesses would speak poorly of the gods. Some did once, but it seems that’s no more.”
I think back to Tempest—to the history of our realms and how many stories are left out of what was painted to be remembered by the Fae. As I’ve discovered from the early journals of the first humans on Alyssium, there is more that we haven’t been told.
“So you’re saying if I find this void, the orb can be nullified?”
“It does not exist in this realm. If it did, you would already know of it. The Fae would have already suffered.”
“But if I could find it…” I press, not ready to let that be the end.
“If you could find it and contain it, then maybe the orb could be nullified using its power. But if what you say is true, it doesn’t promise the realm can be fixed either way. There is only one thing stronger than the gods. One thing that determines all, regardless of how you tamper with it.”
“What is that?”
“Fate.” Idunn holds out her hands as if she envisions something between them.
“The Luminess does not simply weave fate; the Luminess is woven through the threads to ensure that if it is broken, the path will correct itself. What is fated by the Luminess will always come to pass. There is no way around it, even for the gods. If the realms are meant to die, they will die, no matter how you try and heal them.”
The rune on my chest sears as I think of Wilder.
I saw him in the threads, and I pulled him back.
Not once, not twice. But three times now I’ve stopped his death in one form or another.
A breaking of his fate. Except his heart continues to beat faster.
Is that what Idunn is warning me of? That fate will keep coming no matter how hard I try to save him.
Have I only delayed the inevitable?
My palm presses over the rune, and Idunn’s gaze moves with it.
“You will know if he’s gone,” she says. “A mate always knows.”
“Is that a feeling you’ve known?”
Idunn refuses to meet my gaze, her expression unreadable. At least her words offer a slight comfort. While I cannot hear Wilder, his presence is somewhere. He’s alive.
The prison quakes again, and Idunn closes her eyes, smiling. It’s almost as if she hopes the walls will crumble, letting her out. But when my gaze moves to the runes trapping her in place, they don’t flicker.
“Those bindings that contain me cannot be broken as easily as your mate’s. The prison does not wish it yet,” Idunn answers my silent question, and it surprises me how much she has heard through the walls if she knows how I saved Wilder.
“You’re saying the prison wished for me to get through Wilder’s runes?”
“The prison grows bored sometimes. We all do. But this place is a curious thing. It let him out, didn’t it?”
“Because he died.”
A laugh huffs from her lips. “The runes can break and bind. They can hold or release. But the prison decides in the end.”
“It could have decided to keep him here, even after death?”
“Just as it could have kept you for what is in your blood.”
A chill runs down my spine. “Then why didn’t it?”
The corner of her mouth tilts. “That is a question only the prison can answer.”
Unease pools in my belly. As icy cold as Idunn’s eyes as she watches me. If she’s right and the prison chooses, then my human blood means nothing for if I will leave here again. The prison will decide.
I glance around at the walls that contain us. Idunn might be the one trapped by runes, but I’m not free either. There is no path or staircase unless the prison creates one.
“How many prisoners are within these walls?”
Her gaze narrows. “Does it matter? We are but forgotten.”
“Not to me.”
She smirks. “Ah, you have the heart of your father. A human heart, blinded by compassion.”
“There’s nothing wrong with having compassion for others.”
She doesn’t respond, but her eyes gleam because she does not care either.
Idunn has made it clear she does not value human blood.
That only Fae mean anything to her. Which is why she can shame me for caring, but it means nothing.
I’d rather have my father’s heart than be whatever cold creature stands before me.
The prison shivers, pulling Idunn’s attention.
“It seems the time has come.” She closes her eyes, tipping her head back with a smile on her face.
Her feet don’t move, but she slips farther away, drifting into the shadows.
“Idunn,” I call out, darkness swallowing her. “Where are you going?”
Her voice is an echo in the descending night. “Do not worry; we shall meet again soon.”
The breath of a laugh turns to a hum as she sinks to her knees in the shadows.
The moonlight silk of her dress melts to the ground around her.
A falling star in her pitch-black cell as she begins to hum a familiar song.
One I heard on the beach when I was fishing with my father.
One I’ve heard since, calling me here. It wasn’t a song in my head.
It was my mother.
Idunn’s freckles flicker like stars in the night.
She is no longer the mirror of myself I thought she was when I arrived.
Physically, we are similar in most ways, but there’s nothing but cold emptiness in her eyes.
I’m her daughter, but it seems I could be any creature, and she would view me no differently.
She is not my mother in any way but by blood.
Her song is a taunt, echoing around me. But I don’t let it break me. I cling to the one thing I found here when answers were sparse: determination. She might think I’ll fail, but I refuse to give up that easily. I’ll fight the Luminess if it means restoring a fraction of what is lost.
Idunn’s eyes are the last of her to glow through the shadows. She closes them slowly. Two full moons winking out in the depths of the prison. The runes around her cell turn dark, and I wait for a path to be lit in the shadows. For the stairs to form. Or a door to open.
I wait for the prison to let me back out.
My fingers clutch the necklace Callum carved, and I wait for the sky to open overhead—to go home.
I wait. I wait. I wait.
Until the floor beneath my feet slips from under me, and I fall deeper.