14. Elorie
Elorie
Eucalyptus pulls me from my dream—my nightmare.
The scent of fresh rain and pine calms my senses. It’s the opposite of Alyssium, which is rotted and riddled with death. I breathe deeply, and the scent of damp soil fills my lungs. Soil with so much moisture, it must be crawling with roots.
Rich, endless.
I take another breath, and my body drinks it down like I’ve been starving for air.
For magic.
Blinking my eyes open, I wonder what vision the prison tempts me with now. What new tortures it has planned when my mind is a glass cage on the verge of shattering. My eyes focus, and I’m not met with the golden room Malachi dragged me into, but I’m somewhere just as grand.
The walls are gray stone, as if I’m underground or in a cave. Tucked in some corner of the realm. But when I turn my face, a wall opens to daylight. There is no glass to block out the warm kiss of air wafting through the rustling trees.
Trees.
I sit upright at how green they are. How alive.
A soft film of magic hums between the room and what’s outside. A protective barrier that lets in the sound of birds chirping. Animals skittering. It lets in a hint of flowers on a fresh breeze. So ripe I taste it on my tongue.
My body aches as I push to the edge of the large bed.
Here, there’s a fresh wave of pain, as if I’m waking from a dream within a dream.
My fingers skate over the silk sheets, and I take in the room’s size.
More than twice that of mine at the palace, although there is no endless sky or unsettling emptiness overhead.
The vines crawling the stone walls are comforting.
That scent is comforting.
“Wilder,” I whisper, standing.
There’s a crackle in the air. Aether stirring the ends of my hair. I turn in time to look into his sizzling golden eyes as he appears.
“You summoned me.” The caress of his voice in my mind nearly knocks me out at the knees.
It’s been so long since I’ve heard him. So long since the aether graze of his magic has embraced me.
“Wilder?” I take a step back, hesitant to trust what’s before me.
This is what the prison does. It tears apart the mind and fills the holes with hopes and dreams simply to rip them away.
Wilder’s smile is the most beautiful taunt.
He’s stunning. But the moment I back away, his smile slips.
His crackling eyes dim. Wilder’s golden-brown hair is a touch longer on top than it was when I last saw him.
Messy. His eyes are dark and tired. I search his face for proof he’s a figment of my imagination.
I trace every inch, from his strong jawline to the scar that cuts through his right eyebrow and then over the bridge of his nose, slicing a path down his left cheek where it forks out and fades.
It’s him, but it’s not.
Or I’m not me.
My palms press to my belly, and I realize I’m no longer wearing my leathers.
My skin is washed clean, and my hair breezes with the fresh scent of lavender.
I’m wearing a thin white dress that hooks at my neck and hangs loosely over my body.
While it’s not sheer, the fabric lets warm air through as if I’m wearing nothing.
“You’re not real.” I shake my head and close my eyes, refusing to give in to the prison’s manipulation, knowing all it wants to do is lure me into my cell and force me to watch my mate die again and again. “None of this is real.”
“Look at me, Elorie.” Wilder’s scent moves closer, and my heart races.
There’s a thundercloud brewing in my veins. Aether quivering through my bones.
“I can’t.” My voice shakes; a tear slips down my cheek.
Of all the things the prison has done to break me, seeing Wilder this close, his nearness and scent so visceral, I’m falling apart. This will be what unravels the rest.
For months, this emptiness has consumed me. The place he once held in the threads was a vacant abyss. I yearned for him—ached for him. I needed him as Alyssium crumbled, my hope along with it. It’s too much to believe he’s here when I know that’s exactly what the prison wants.
“Open your eyes, Starfire. Don’t get lost in there.
” His magic angles my chin up with the gentlest nudge as I nervously crack my eyes open.
“I understand why you don’t want to believe your eyes right now—I understand too well.
For nearly a hundred years, that place crept into every regret, every mistake, every doubt, and it played them back for me thousands of different ways. Then I heard your voice.”
He steps closer but has yet to pull his hands from his pockets, not daring to touch me with more than just his magic. Magic that wakes my body, prickles my skin, stirs in my belly.
“Your voice was the greatest comfort in the darkest place. It was the only star in the night sky, and I clung to it.” His golden eyes darken.
“Until the prison used that too. It took the comfort of you and twisted it. Made me believe I’d get no more than a flicker of your voice in my head before Sarrow claimed me.
It showed me your face just to take you away again and again. ”
Wilder’s voice cracks in a way that is so unlike the confidence usually bleeding from him.
“I watched you die so many times; I’d wait for your voice to echo through the thread so I would know the prison was lying. That you were still here. And even then, when you stepped over those runes, I didn’t know if I could actually believe what I was seeing.”
My heart aches with his confession. I knew Wilder endured great pain in the hundred years spent in the prison, but he’s never admitted this much. He never hinted that some of his torture involved me. If it was anything like his death cycling before me, over and over…
The thought alone is nearly unbearable.
“How did you know I was real?” My voice is nearly a whisper. “How did you know I wasn’t just another hallucination?”
A sad smile tilts in the corner of his mouth, brightening his aether-flecked golden eyes.
“You are my mate, Elorie. I just knew.” He inches closer.
“You are the warmth in my blood that had been missing. The light in the night sky, giving a hopeless male something to wish on. You are the reason for my existence, in this realm and beyond Sarrow. I knew.” He slips into my mind. “Look at me, Elorie. See me.”
As if his gaze opens, the golden light drags me under. I allow myself a single step, pausing as his scent floods my lungs again. Wilder has yet to reach for me but holds me tight. A blanket of warmth, of protection, of comfort.
A pinprick of light sparks along his scar, dripping like a running river over his cheek until every rune glows gold against his warm bronze skin.
My gaze falls to one rune in particular, perfectly framed by how his shirt hangs open halfway down his chest. The four-pointed star with four moons glows the brightest. A rune matching my own.
I press my palm at the center of my chest. Light blooms beneath it, and while Wilder’s glows gold, mine is white starlight. It floods out of the rune and bathes my skin as my magic grows.
The tether between us snaps taut, clicking in place like it never darkened. Like he was never out of my reach.
My mate.
His smile grows. “There you are.”
“Wilder.” I reach for him.
My fingers find the searing runes on his chest hot and swimming with magic. His skin warm and his eyes desperate as I close the distance. My arms wrap his shoulders, and he binds his around my waist, lifting me off my feet as I sink against him.
Beneath his ribs, his heart hammers. It drums in my ear as he hugs me tighter.
“I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again.” I pull back as he sets me on my feet.
His hands find the sides of my face, his thumb grazing my freckles. “That was never going to happen.”
“But I was in the prison. How—oh gods, did you go inside?”
His jaw clenches as he nods.
“But it let you out. How is it possible? How are we here? Where are we?” Panic swells with all the impossibilities; my grip on his arms tightens as if at any moment he’ll float away on the wind. “Callum, Letia, Greer. I was supposed to meet them—”
“They’re here.” He grazes his thumb over my cheek again. “You need to sit down.”
Wilder guides me back to the bed, urging me to sit while he squats before me.
“I’ve been searching for you since we split ways at the Ley Court, but I couldn’t find you.
At times, I’d feel you on the other end of the thread, and I’d whisper for you, but then it would close, and I don’t know if you heard me. ”
“I think I did once,” I admit, glancing down when his hand rests over mine.
“A few days ago, something opened—a door where there wasn’t one before—and I felt you again. With the Arches being fickle, it took time to get one to open on our end, but when it did, I stepped through to Alyssium.”
“At my mother’s sword?”
He nods.
“It worked.”
“Callum and Greer were there, and they told me you’d gone into the prison.”
“The people from my village—the rings—”
“They’re here too. Your plan worked. At least, for now. We don’t know how long the effects of the aeraliss will last. Perame brought your people to Vaelier while I went in search of you.”
I shake my head, trying to process everything he’s saying. “Why would you risk stepping into the prison again? It could have locked you inside.”
“It didn’t.”
“But how?” My eyebrows pinch. “Because you died already within the walls?”
“I don’t know. It wasn’t the same this time when I stepped through the prison arch.”
My mind trails to what Idunn told me of the prison growing bored, of it making its own decisions. The fact that it let us out might have nothing to do with Fae spells at all. What if it wanted us here instead?
If that’s the case, what do the fates have planned?
I shake that thought. “It was too big of a risk; you could have been stuck there.”
“Then we would have been locked in there together.” He says it with so little care for his well-being.
“You need to think about yourself—about your kingdom.”
“I was thinking of my kingdom. Of my realm.” He lifts my hand, pressing a kiss to the back of it. “How can I be a male fit to wear my crown if I don’t do everything in my power to save their future queen?”
A laugh bursts out of me, so sudden it surprises even me. “Your queen? I’m still processing being your mate. I think we’re far from discussing kingdoms and crowns. You’ve never so much as taken me on a date, King Riven.”
His eyes heat with the choice of name, even as amusement plays in the corners of his mouth. “Difficult and beautiful as ever, I see. Would you like me to woo you, Starfire?”
“It’s a start.” I bite my lower lip at the surge of static between us.
“Fair enough.” Wilder sets my hand down on the bed. “After I claim my crown—”
“What do you mean after?” I cut him off. “You haven’t already?”
His gaze drifts to the open window, a wave of tension rolling off him. “Things are complicated with the state of the realms. Quietus blooms, but that’s not the case in many places stretching the western border of Vaelier.”
“We’re in Quietus?”
“At my court.” He nods.
“It’s lovely here.” A bird’s song heightens as it flutters nearby. A hauntingly beautiful sound. The opposite of home. “Is this your room?”
“Our room.”
My eyes snap to his. Each time, my breath catches as if he’s nearly impossible to take in.
“I know the feeling.” He hums in my mind.
“I don’t think you do.”
After all, Wilder is gorgeous. Solid muscle. Perfect apart from that single scar on his face. An imperfection that somehow makes him even more stunning. How does a male like him find any interest in me?
His magic grazes my chin, forcing my stare to his, and when our eyes lock, he responds to my thoughts with a few of his own. Only, his answer does not come in the form of words. A sensation moves through the thread between us. A vision. Assurance. Solace.
Beauty.
Comfort.
“You.” He tucks my hair behind my ear, dragging his fingers through the strands and toying with the blue ends. “That feeling—that sight—is what you are to me.”
I shift closer. His scent overwhelms my senses. His eyes burn into mine. Our lips are a breath apart, my blood bubbling, as a knock comes at the door.
“I’m going to kill Atlas,” Wilder grumbles through clenched teeth.
I pull back. “You can sense who’s out there?”
“I hear him.” Wilder taps the side of his head. “Correction. I’m going to kill all of them.”
My gaze moves to the door. “How many are there?”
“Just him letting me know everyone is ready if you’re up for it.”
“Up for what?”
Wilder stands, holding out his hand. “Meeting my court.”