Chapter 2
Elora
Elora didn’t know how many days had passed. Only that no one had tried to kill her.
The first day had blurred into the same muted nothing she’d carried from Kilfaire.
Someone had led her from the cavern. She remembered being guided down a narrow corridor.
Given a space. Not a cell. Not quite a room either.
The walls curved too naturally for that, the floor uneven beneath her feet like roots pushing up through soil.
There had been food. Water. Clothes.
She hadn’t asked for any of it.
She hadn’t refused it either.
After that, things settled into a pattern she didn’t track closely enough to measure.
Light filtered through the lattice above in shifting patterns, dimming and brightening with the passing of time.
Someone showed up and left. Sometimes it was Viliam.
Sometimes his companion, that had once tried to kill her.
She learned that the woman’s name was Kaela.
The first day or two they said little. Brought water. Left without explanation. No one restrained her. No one comforted her. They simply… allowed her to exist.
The numbness thinned during the first few days. She paid more attention to the wood grain beneath her fingers, the ache along her back from sleeping in a hammock, the feeling of tears stinging her eyes but not letting them fall.
She hadn’t glanced outside the window yet.
She intended to uphold the illusion that she was in some tiny, secluded room where the walls kept everything she didn’t want to feel at bay.
The sounds were an unwelcome distraction.
Water, somewhere distant. A constant drip, then an occasional splash.
Voices—sharp and uneven compared to the common tongue—flowed in from outside.
When she did leave the room, it was not by choice. Kaela had stood at the threshold, waiting patiently but refusing to be ignored.
Eventually, Elora stood.
The walkway curved along the inside of the tree, wide enough for several people to pass but empty at that hour.
The wood beneath her feet was warm. Alive.
Light pulsed faintly through veins in the bark, a soft glow that followed the path like a line of lumi flowers that marked the trails back at The Institute.
That was where the comparisons stopped. This world she had been flown into was nothing like the one she’d known.
It was open. Uncontained. Her gaze caught on everything and nothing all at once.
The way the structure welcomed its inhabitants, with curved walls and perfectly placed outcroppings, it was meant to be shared.
The people, moving through the space without urgency, without hierarchy etched into every step.
They noticed her.
Eyes followed her as she passed—some curious, some guarded, some openly hostile. She didn’t need to understand the language to read that much. They all knew of her. She couldn’t hide her pale skin or the clunkiness of her stride.
She learned some words quickly, hearing them from nearly everyone she passed. “kor’upish” stood for corruption. “Skar’grorn” was monster.
They didn’t bother her.
Kaela led her to a narrow platform that opened outward, the interior of the tree giving way to open air. She didn’t see the city when they flew her in. It sprawled beneath the tree in a series of concentric rings, and beyond it was a lake that separated it from the jungle.
Elora stepped closer to edge. The height should have mattered. It didn’t.
What caught her attention was the movement. The life. The way everything seemed to exist without being forced into place. No guards. No commands. It felt wrong. Not dangerous. Not what she knew.
“You are steadier.” Kaela’s voice came from behind her.
“Am I?”
The female thrask nodded. “You stand without being told.”
That wasn’t exactly true. But she didn’t argue.
The wind brushed against her skin, a ripple of goosebumps following in its wake. She stared at the raised bumps, wondering when the world had become not so distant. When her shield of numbing void cracked.
They stood in silence for a while, or what passed for silence. The world below rang in a rhythm like a song. The insects buzzing, the clamor of hurried steps, the rustle of leaves overhead.
She blocked it all out, her mind repeating the same question it had for days.
“If not death… then what?” The words left her before she decided to ask them.
“We leave it up to the mother. Nyt’morah will decide.”
That word again. It shifted in her mind without context.
“A tree? I thought—”
“Yes,” Kaela cut her off. “The mother speaks through her daughters.” She paused, her mouth parting then closing again. “They hope to complete you.”
“Complete? Me?” Elora frowned.
Kaela stepped closer, but not enough to crowd her. “What is broken must be made whole.”
Broken.
Whole.
Her hand instinctively rested on her shoulder, finger tracing the raised scars Thorn had carved into her. “You mean complete this?”
Kaela bowed her head.
Something splintered in Elora’s chest. Not painful. Just… there.
She exhaled slowly and let her hand fall.
“What happens if it doesn’t work?” she asked.
Kaela didn’t answer immediately.
When she did, her voice was the same as it had been before. Calm. Certain. “Then it will choose another way.”
Elora nodded once.
That didn’t help, but she understood she wasn’t waiting to die anymore.
She was waiting to complete what Thorn started.