32. Elorie
Elorie
My feet ache. My legs burn with each step.
Callum has managed to summon one Gate to cut down on the distance between us and the void, but we can only go as far as places he knows out of an abundance of caution, so for the past three days, we’ve continued on foot.
We’ve come across fewer villages than I expected, and we’ve avoided them entirely, sticking to the forest and staying mostly out of sight.
Thankfully, the few humans we’ve crossed paths with have worn similar clothes to the ones we brought here, so they thought nothing of our attire as they waved hello and walked by.
With each step through the realm, the intensity of the dark pulse surges stronger.
At moments, there’s relief, and the void quiets.
We stop when that happens, wondering if we’ve lost it.
But each time it eventually starts again.
So we trudge forward, sick to our stomachs from the thrum of darkness ahead.
Nights and days roll into each other. We move in the darkness, settling when the sun breaks through the trees, taking turns sleeping and keeping watch. It’s easier to go unnoticed at night. The moon is only a sliver of light. Enough to find our way but allowing us to stay hidden.
Perame slows her stride to walk beside me more often than not. We didn’t talk much in Vaelier, but here, there’s nothing but time to get to know each other.
“I’ve never met anyone capable of convincing Wilder of something he doesn’t want to do.
” She smirks, glancing around us. “Gods, the anger he let out on Rior in the ring when you swore you were going to the Mortal Realm without him… The fact that you won that battle is impressive. You have to share your secrets.”
“I have my ways.” I smirk, and Perame laughs.
“I have no doubt.” One hand spins a dagger as she walks beside me. “Still, I’m surprised you got him to this point.”
“Agreeing to let me go?”
“Accepting what he needs to do,” she clarifies. “Atlas said he’s finally considering claiming his crown.”
My gaze falls to the ground. During our last night together, Wilder said as much. He knows his people need him, and that he needs to stop putting off the inevitable. I just hope I’m back in time to witness him take his place on the throne.
“I have to admit, I was surprised he hadn’t claimed his crown yet when I arrived in Vaelier. He was always the heir, was he not?” I ask.
“Yes, as the oldest, it was always his place. But you know Wilder, more content in battle than in playing politics in the court. That’s why he spent so long in Andare.
Fighting, distracting himself…” She rolls her eyes.
“Running from the inevitable. Even before the war, I honestly didn’t know if he’d ever be ready to accept the responsibility. ”
“Do you think he’s unfit to rule?”
She shakes her head. “The opposite, though he doesn’t see it.”
“But you do?”
“In battle, you get to know the heart of a person.” Her gaze drifts to the distance.
“Many warriors lead with survival first, and I don’t blame them.
Self-preservation is a powerful thing. It’s easy to say you’d sacrifice it all, but it isn’t until things go terribly wrong that you learn what you’re actually willing to fall for.
But Wilder… he’d sacrifice it all for his people in a heartbeat.
He doesn’t just care about the outcome but about who walks off the battlefield beside him.
It made him reckless at times. Misunderstood even.
But he’ll be the ruler his mother never was.
Fair but caring. May the gods see her soul to the After. ”
Perame places a hand on her heart in respect.
“You didn’t agree with how his mother ruled?”
She shakes her head. “I respected Queen Delayna. She led with wisdom and strength. But she sacrificed her own people to achieve what was needed. She was ruthless, and not in the same way as her son.”
“I hear she was ruthless even with them.”
“She was.” Perame frowns. “I wasn’t close with Selia, but I understand why she left Vaelier.
I even understand why she did what she did, although I wish she’d gone about it differently.
Our people may never forgive her, but I see why Wilder suffers.
Her death hurt him, and I think he’s far from healed from that. ”
I clutch my stomach, remembering Wilder’s grief bursting out of him upon Selia’s death. The intensity rattled me to my core.
“You understand him too.” Perame nudges my arm. “More importantly, you give him hope. You help him see possibility again. He’ll need that to lead his kingdom.”
“I’m not fit to guide him in leading a kingdom.” My gaze falls to the leaves crunching beneath my boots. “Not like Aurora.”
“That’s not true. Aurora represents a different time under a different Crown. She fights for what our realm has been. But you and Wilder fight for the future. You see beyond how things have been done, and you fight for what comes next. No matter what Aurora wants, you’re what’s best for him.”
“I think Aurora wants me out of the picture.”
Perame frowns. “It’s not personal with Aurora. It’s just difficult for her to warm up to people. Her life before the court was not a pleasant one. Her resentment has nothing to do with you.”
Perame doesn’t elaborate, and I’m curious what Aurora might have gone through before Queen Delayna took her in that made her the female she became.
Callum holds up a hand, cutting off our conversation and stopping us. He glances around, listening for a moment before urging us forward again.
I look at Perame, who has been spinning her daggers between her fingers all morning like a nervous twitch. “Are you worried about Atlas?”
She shrugs. “My brother can take care of himself.”
“Still…”
“I’ll always worry. He and my father are all I have. All I’ve ever had. My mother died birthing us, so I never met her.”
Losing a parent is a unique kind of pain. Especially losing one before you have the chance to get to know them. It’s an emptiness that can’t be matched, and one I understood before I learned the truth about my mother.
“I was raised by only my father as well. We were close.” Emotion clogs in my throat as Perame glances at me.
“I heard you lost him the same day you found Wilder. I can’t imagine.” She reaches for my hand, squeezing, and I believe she truly means it.
“There’s a graveyard up ahead,” Callum says, his back straightening.
Perame drops my hand, spotting the grieving pillars through the trees. “This is it. I recognize that pillar from my vision, even though… everything is getting blurry.”
Her eyebrows furrow like she’s trying to recall what she saw, but it’s getting farther away the longer she stares at it.
“It must be the void,” I say. “If it mutes all magic, then it could be affecting us the closer we get.”
“So much for having that on our side should things go south,” Callum grumbles.
There was always a possibility that the void would strip us of our magic, but I’d hoped we’d find a way to contain it before that was the case.
“At least there’s some magic in the realm.” I stretch my fingers, feeling the stir. “Idunn made it sound like a realm couldn’t survive the touch of the void, but the Mortal Realm has. Maybe the void is already contained in something that will allow us to bring it back and use it.”
“Let’s hope you’re right.” Perame steps forward, leading the way.
With no one around, she pulls off her hood, revealing her ears to listen closer. We follow silently, trying not to break her focus.
Glancing up, another raven watches us, and a chill skitters down my spine.
“That crypt is the one from my vision.” Perame freezes at the stone structure towering ahead.
Shadows draw a dark path along the ground before us.
The closer we get, the heavier the throb of the void becomes. Only, instead of pushing us away as it once did, now it tugs. It latches somewhere deep in my belly, snagging like a siren’s song and urging me toward it.
Glancing up at Callum, whose eyebrows pinch in worry, I sense he feels the same.
Perame leads the way as we weave through the graves. Most of the names on the stones are dull from weather and time. Only a few are fresh.
I tread carefully, my stomach lurching with the thought of the bodies buried beneath my feet. It’s so unlike the rituals we adopted from the Fae on the island. Here, their souls are trapped, never to be set free.
I pause at one grieving pillar, reading the name of the deceased.
Laef Tanner
It’s not my father’s name exactly, but it’s close enough to make me queasy. Bile meets my throat, but I swallow it down when Callum nudges me forward. I don’t take my eyes off the stone until we pass.
It’s as if I’m peering into an alternate version of what could have been my life.
When we reach the door to the crypt, Perame pauses, tracing her finger along a symbol etched in it.
“Another raven,” she whispers, tracing her fingers over the stone marking of a raven seated atop a crescent moon.
Four lines drip from the moon, reminding me of the four gods, even if that’s likely not what they represent here.
“What do you think the void will be?” Perame asks, glancing over. “A ring? A statue?”
“I guess we’ll find out.” Callum tugs the door, but it doesn’t budge.
Propping his foot beside it, he pulls with the weight of his body, and it’s yet to rattle.
Shoving his shoulder against it a few times, dust loosens, and finally, when he pulls again, it creaks open slowly.
The hinges scream with the movement. Stone scrapes the ground, which is when I notice there are no leaves in its path; they’ve already been brushed aside.
“Wait.” I hold out my hand, stopping Callum.
He follows my gaze to the ground.
“Someone’s been here.” My stare moves to the pile where the door was pulled wide open. “These leaves are freshly fallen, but they’ve been moved.”
“Careful. Step back.” Callum angles his body between us and the crypt.
The door opens to pure darkness. The kind that has no end, even though the moon casts a glow over the graveyard. Without windows, the only light is what streams in behind us.
Callum is the first to go inside, waving us in once it’s clear.
My nose twitches with the dust clouding the air. A stale stench of death hangs heavy. That, and rotted vines. A cool chill whispers from the depths, warning me to run. But I ignore it, pulling my cloak tighter.
On the outside, the crypt appeared smaller than it is. But inside, there’s a walkway that slowly sinks into the ground. Callum snags a torch from the wall, striking it between the lighting stones until a flame blooms at the tip, casting a warm glow on the walls.
We’re surrounded by names carved into stone. My stomach turns at the thought of how many bodies surround us.
Ahead of us is a staircase leading deeper into the ground.
“The void is down there. I feel it.” The back of my neck prickles.
“Me too,” Perame whispers on an exhale.
The stairwell is narrow, so we stay in a single line until we reach a room larger than the one above. This room isn’t like the other. Instead of names on the stones, there are cups holding dead flowers. A long corridor leads to a series of doors.
“Do you think it’s in one of these rooms?” I eye the first door.
We don’t know what we’re looking for, but I’m hoping that the tension in the object will make it easy to find.
“It must be—” Something rattles, cutting Perame off. “What was that?”
A scratching sound comes from behind one of the doors, followed by shoes sliding over stone. The slow drag has the hair on my arms standing on its ends.
Callum steps in front of me and Perame, but I shift to see what he’s blocking. A door at the far end of the crypt screeches open, and a female steps out.
Her hood hides the majority of her face, revealing only her pink lips and ivory skin, but from what I can tell, she must be around my age.
There’s no smile in the corner of her lips.
She doesn’t speak. Her black wool dress brushes the ground with every step.
A fine bone corset hugs her ribs, pushing her breasts higher and revealing her clavicle through the parted cloak.
Callum moves half a step and freezes.
Everything freezes.
The air, which I thought was still, is now unmoving in every way. I can hardly breathe. Thickness settles around us as my magic halts in my veins.
“Who are you?” I barely choke out. “What are you?”
The woman peels her hood back, revealing round cheeks and rich dark-green eyes.
She must be barely over twenty. Her light-brown hair is chopped jaggedly to her chin, with a single braid that hangs at her temple.
And along the side of her face is a spiderweb of black veins that start at her forehead and crawl down one side of her face, fading when they reach the pulse on her neck.
The woman’s eyebrows pinch as she looks us over, but when I open my mouth again, the room fills with a choking shadow that reminds me of the first time I met Hazel. Only this doesn’t drain the magic that is around; it turns it to nothing.
I cannot move, cannot think, cannot access my magic. It is as if there is no more air in the crypt—in this realm. In a blink, we’re bathed in inky darkness, and then the hold is gone.
Shadows cease, and the woman vanishes. The air lightens.
I cough, holding my chest. “That was a person. It’s not possible.”
Perame is frozen where she stands, but her head is shaking. “I—”
“How is the void a person?”
Her purple gaze meets mine, sliding to Callum and then to where the woman once stood. “I don’t know.”