Chapter 3
Chapter Three
EIRA
LUANA’S CASTLE
The temple wall refused to stay together.
Eira took a step back and placed her hands on her hips.
She glared at the stones as though they would bond from her sheer willpower alone.
For the past several hours Eira had covered it with ice, darkness, and starlight and with each attempt when it seemed like the stones were finally clicking into place and staying where they should, they’d fall apart once again.
It didn’t help that the spirit of a former queen hovered off in the corner among the clouds of starlight.
Eira looked at Malle’s ghost out of the corner of her eye.
Early in the morning she’d had an outburst that had woken everyone in the castle and left a pile of rubble at the entrance of the temple.
It was now evening, and there hadn’t been destructive activity from the spirit since.
Malle floated by one of the wall length windows and stared out at the setting sun.
At least Eira assumed it was setting if the magical fake sun and moon here inside the mountains was accurate.
From what she’d learned and observed, it was designed to simulate the times of day it was outside of the mountain.
Her shoulders relaxed and her head swayed back and forth as though listening to a song only she could hear.
, even when Malle appeared peaceful, she never wore a smile on her transparent face but either a scowl or a frown or no expression at all, as though she was staring out at something none of them could see.
She turned to look back at Eira. Her eyes were oddly focused today but her mouth formed a thin tight line as usual.
Eira stared at her right back. Having someone — even if it was a ghost — looking over your shoulder wasn’t conducive to good work.
“This is partly your fault you know,” she said. “You and Aytigin could have found another place to hide and live out your life away from politics and court. But you decided to come here and now look at where we are.”
The moment the words came out of her mouth Eira regretted it, because it wasn’t entirely true.
This was more Aytigin’s fault for playing with Stulan magic all those centuries ago when he shouldn’t have.
Even so, he didn’t expect the priests he’d been spending time with to betray them both and kill Malle during an experiment.
Malle was the true victim in this whole situation.
Eira’s frustration grew with each passing day.
For the better part of a year, she’d been trying to break this curse on Luana’s Castle in the Paravian Mountains.
She’d journeyed here to find Gallis’ Chalice to break her father’s sleeping curse.
While she’d succeeded in doing so, she’d gotten herself cursed too. Or at least tied to a curse.
Luana, the goddess of the moon, gave Eira unimaginable power, and with it she was tied to the castle and the dragon who lived within it.
Centuries ago, the dragon — Aytigin — had toyed with dark magic and it caused his lover, Malle to be killed.
Discovering what had happened, Luana cursed Aytigin and the castle.
Now, it was Eira’s task to break it. Then, during the Winter Solstice, Eira had awakened Malle’s spirit, whose goal in her afterlife was to make as much of a disturbance as possible.
The moment Eira thought she grew close to breaking this curse on the castle, Malle had an outburst and undid all her hard work.
“Malle, I didn’t mean…”
Malle’s lips turned into a scowl, and she took a swift turn to face away from Eira and back out the window again.
Eira shook her head. “Fine, maybe I can focus now.”
She rolled her shoulders to shake the feeling off and clear her mind.
Which wasn’t the easiest task considering everything going on in the kingdom and realm.
Amelia on the move, Grandmother’s death, Rose becoming the new Minister, her title being stripped due to running off with her betrothed’s brother, most nights Eira couldn’t sleep and roamed the halls of the castle trying to find a way to break the curse or wear herself out enough where there was no option but to sleep.
With a deep breath in through her nostrils and out through her mouth, Eira closed her eyes and summoned the magic flowing through her veins.
Her crescent moon tattoo glowed through the thin fabric of her blue dress and the calming cool of darkness and ice swept through her.
When she opened her eyes clouds of shadows had formed across the wall of the temple, filling in the large cracks and crevices and holes.
Eira twisted her fingers as though grasping the shadows and pulled them to draw the broken stones together like the pieces of a puzzle.
She could feel them clicking into place as though they never broke apart at all.
At last. Maybe finally?—
Something crashed behind her and the connection to her magic and the temple repairs vanished.
The stones crumbled apart and fell to the ground in a loud heap.
A sound almost like laughter echoed from the other side of the room near the stone table where Malle now floated.
The spirit’s eyes made contact with Eira’s then drifted away until she vanished.
Eira sighed and sank to the cool floor. She rested her back against the stone, her skirt hitched up around her thighs so her body could have more contact with the cold and let it seep into her skin.
Now being touched by Luana and having her magic, Eira found more comfort and relaxation in the cold than she did warmth.
How Cadeyrn dealt with sleeping at her side each night she never understood but was glad for it.
She never would have gotten through all this without him.
“Everything all right in here?”
Speaking of. Cadeyrn stepped around the massive temple doors still dressed in his fighting leathers.
He must have just gotten back from a training session in the village.
Ever since their encounter with Amelia in Eral Forest, Cadeyrn was working even harder with the locals to build a small military presence in case of the worst. And Eira got to enjoy looking at him in his leathers.
The way they wrapped around the hard muscles of his arms sent all new kinds of shivers across her body.
Even after months of living together here in the mountains, the thrill never went away.
“I heard a crash. Although if it gives me this view I won’t complain.” His eyes raked over her bare legs. Apparently, the thrill of her hadn’t gone away for Cadeyrn either.
Eira smiled and waved a lazy hand over to the wall where she’d been working. “Just the usual. I was making progress and then…”
“Malle?”
She nodded.
Cadeyrn joined her on the ground, and they lay side by side.
She rolled so she tugged against him and rested her head on his chest. “She seemed to be calm today but kept staring at me.
I got upset and then something crashed… it was my fault really.
I blamed her for all this, and it must have made her upset.
Which I would be upset me too if I were her.
“How did you awaken Malle again?”
Eira sighed. They’d gone over the event countless times in hopes that it would spark an idea as to how to put her to rest and complete the castle repairs to break the curse. Reviewing it again would likely prove to be useless, but maybe they’d figure something out today.
“I was over at the stone table finishing the repairs on it.” She pushed herself back onto her feet and made her way to the place where Malle had died, and from her limited knowledge of ghosts, it wasn’t surprising it was what triggered the former queen’s awakening.
Eira shivered thinking about the visions she’d had about Malle’s life.
She did need to have more compassion for the spirit.
She’d had a difficult life and a traumatizing death. It was no wonder she was so angry.
Eira traced her fingers over the engravings of stars and moons etched into the stone stable.
There were words carved into the stone too, but in a language she didn’t recognize.
Even Aytigin said he didn’t know what they meant.
Considering he was as old as dirt, it must truly have been an ancient language.
Cadeyrn stood and followed her and looked over the places Eira showed him.
“It was around here near the top,” Eira said and pointed toward a large crescent moon engraving surrounded by stars.
She wondered if this was where Malle’s head would have lain the night she died.
“The engravings glowed and filled with starlight. The stardust hovered all around and made it feel like I was floating in the night sky. I thought I was making progress. I put my hands onto the table where it glowed the most and put all my magic into it, and it got so cold. More than usual. I couldn’t help but think about what I’d seen in this temple in the visions Luana gave me.
That must have been what triggered Malle’s return.
” She walked around the table with Cadeyrn close behind as though if she looked at it from another angle, some sort of answer would reveal itself.
There were engravings everywhere that Eira had seen dozens of times but couldn’t make sense of.
Stars, moons, weapons, hearts, the deities, and dragons all mixed with words she didn’t understand.
“Then everything shook like there was an earthquake, and the stardust circled around me. It went pitch black and all of a sudden, a silvery white cloud drifted out of the table, and Malle was in front of me.”
The scream Malle let out that night still rang in Eira’s ears in her dreams. It was one full of anger and horror and pain and…
heartbreak, Eira now realized. Malle had been betrayed by the one person she loved and trusted.
Her life ended because of it. Guilt washed over Eira, and she sat on the table.
“I shouldn’t get angry with her. She’s even more than a victim than any of us,” she said.
Cadeyrn sat at her side and rubbed her back in slow soothing circles. “We’ve all been frustrated. It’s not as though times are easy right now.”
Eira nodded. “I know. I just… I love this place, and I want it to be the way Luana and Ray envisioned it.”
“Perhaps we can encourage Alvis and Myra to join us here sooner rather than later. Myra did promise she’d assist with Malle, and if anyone can figure it out, it’s her,” Cadeyrn reminded Eira.
It wasn’t a terrible idea. She knew the newly engaged couple had much to handle at the moment with Myra needing to adjust to court life, showing the kingdom that a descendent of the goddess of death was a suitable future queen along with defending their own borders and searching for Amelia.
Then, even if they were to send them a letter this moment, it would take ages for it to reach Oxare and the journey would take several days if not weeks.
“We can send them notice today, and they can’t come soon enough,” Eira said. “But I do want to try and make some progress before they arrive.”
This was her task entrusted to her by Luana after all. The goddess bestowed power and magic onto Eira trusting that she would be able to use it well and wisely.
Eira shifted in her seat and her foot hit what felt like a lump of rock underneath the table. “What’s that? There’s never been anything under here before.”
Cadeyrn pinched his brows together. “What?”
“My foot hit something.” She slid off the table and crouched to the ground to peer underneath.
Amid a small heap of rocks a hole formed in the ground.
A shadow loomed inside, a mystery waiting to be revealed.
Eira reached into the darkness and groped around until her fingers brushed against a rectangular item, soft and leathery.
A book. She grasped it and pulled it out so they could inspect it more.
The book was covered in a thick layer of dirt and stardust and she blew on it.
The dust formed a small shimmering cloud and revealed a plain black cover.
There were no words or images embossed into it and it smelled like the library in the Golden Palace with its old pages.
That indescribable and wonderful smell of an old book that was full of secrets and ideas.
“We’ve never seen that before,” Cadeyrn said. “It was buried under the table?”
Eira nodded. “I wonder if it was the crash from before. Maybe Malle knew about it and uncovered it for us.”
Now she felt even worse. The ghost had been trying to help her. She carefully opened the cover to reveal yellow aged pages with words she didn’t recognize alongside her own language.
“It’s the same lettering that’s on the table,” Cadeyrn said in a low voice.
He was right. Eira lay the tome onto the table and compared the words.
While she couldn’t tell what it said, the markings looked to be the same style.
Hope filled Eira’s chest and she gripped the book tight.
“Cadeyrn, this could be the key. What if we can use this book to interpret the words on the table? At the very least, maybe we can put Malle to rest.”
Cadeyrn wrapped his arm around Eira and kissed the top of her head. “See? There’s hope yet, and then we’ll be able to leave and get your crown back. Things will be as they should be.”
Eira smiled up at him, but a small part of her wavered. Something about his words made her heart heavy, but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was. But he was right about one thing, there was hope yet.