Chapter 13 Aurelia
Aurelia
The air held a heavy quiet, yet it pulsed with energy—humming beneath my skin.
I stood barefoot on nothing and everything at once, the ground a vast stretch of star-kissed dark that rippled like water but held firm beneath my feet.
Constellations shimmered below the surface, their glow shifting through colors I couldn’t name. Warm one moment, icy the next.
Above me—no, below—Nyxarra sprawled across the horizon like a blackened crown nestled in endless dusk. Fog coiled at its border, thick tendrils curling and shifting, circling the city. Its towers rose like jagged teeth, obsidian spires reaching toward the sky with desperate hunger.
From this height, Nyxarra looked like a wound carved into the world.
A shiver ran down my spine, and I turned.
To the south, Synnex, home to Nerissa’s tides, rose in a burst of color and warmth.
Pale stone buildings with terracotta roofs hugged the cliffs above a sapphire sea, golden vines blooming along their balconies and winding streets.
Lanterns hung between buildings, casting a soft amber glow that wrapped around the city.
I could almost hear laughter—faint and distant, but real.
Alive. The sound stirred an ache in me, for a wholeness I’d only ever imagined but still somehow mourned as though it had once been mine.
Home.
The place where Mama taught me to braid my hair, and where Pa read to us beneath the lemon trees. Where Aeryn and I chased fireflies in the garden before the night everything changed.
I stepped forward, and the sky beneath me rippled in response. Another realm came into view.
A land scorched in fire and ruin—yet scattered with fields of flowers that glimmered faintly against the blackened earth, their silver-red petals trembling as if caught between bloom and ash.
This had to be Kaerani’s realm.
I could feel her essence woven into every flame, every jagged stone. She was the destroyer and the rebuilder. The fire that burned away weakness and left only what was strong enough to survive.
To the west bloomed another realm, so ethereal I almost doubted it was real.
Sylvara’s Wilds pulsed with magic unlike anything I’d ever known. Archaic, quiet, deeply alive. I heard no voices, but felt the thrum of life in the leaves, the soil, the very air. The scent of moss and wild jasmine filled my lungs, and a warm breeze kissed my skin.
Something caught my eye further northwest, between Nyxarra to the north and the Wilds to the west.
A fifth realm.
Unlike the others, it didn’t scream its nature. It whispered.
Its borders shimmered, flickering like candlelight in the wind. One moment it looked lush, fertile, even beautiful—twisting vines and silver streams beneath a golden sky. The next, it was hollow and haunting—fog swallowing the trees, the streams dried to dust, and the vines curling in decay.
Its light dimmed, wavered, and threatened to extinguish.
I stepped closer, my heart thudding with quiet recognition. This place… it didn’t feel foreign. It felt familiar in a way that sank into my bones.
The shadows here didn’t threaten. They welcomed. The light didn’t blind. It warmed.
Something ancient stirred beneath the surface of this place. Not a goddess like the others, but something that felt older. Something forgotten.
I thought of the myths—those whispered stories Mama used to tell when the lamps burned low, the ones she warned us never to repeat outside our walls. Stories of things erased from history altogether.
Eryndis. The goddess of thresholds and secrets. Once upon a time, Nyxarra was her home. Until she was pushed out.
My hand drifted to my chest, fingers brushing the scar that created a map around my body. It ached now, faintly.
Truth is not given freely. It is earned. It is bled for.
“I see you,” I whispered, though I didn’t know who or what I was speaking to.
A gust of wind answered me, carrying with it a soft chime, like distant bells echoing across time. The light in the realm glowed unsteady. A stubborn flame refusing to be extinguished.
I felt a pull. Like the tide answering the moon. And then I fell.
The sky beneath me shattered, and I plummeted through stars and fog and memory, my heartbeat a war drum in my ears. The constellations blurred, the realms spinning past in streaks of color and light.
Just before I hit the ground, I saw her—eyes cloaked in shadow, lips curled in the faintest smile.
Eryndis.
My scar seared, the ache flaring into fire, and pain lanced through my chest, dragging me back into my body and out of the dream.
I jolted upright with a gasp, breath ragged as the remnants of the dream slipped from my grasp. Disoriented, I blinked against the dimness, trying to make sense of the heavy stone walls and the towering canopy above me.
Right. I wasn’t home. Not anymore. The truth scraped raw as I swallowed it. No salt-kissed breeze, no Aeryn within reach, just stone walls that felt more like a tomb than a room.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed, the tall frame making the motion clumsy. My bare toes met the cool marble floor, and I braced myself against the edge of the mattress as I tested my strength, not eager to collapse again.
I had to move. I had to find the Etherblooms. I had to get back to Aeryn.
A voice cut through the silence. “What are you doing?”
I flinched, heart lurching. “Goddess—don’t scare me like that,” I snapped, turning toward the sound.
Santiago lounged in an oversized chaise near the hearth, a book resting in his lap and a half-empty glass of amber liquid beside him. He looked far too at ease for someone who’d recently been shackled in a cell.
“Apologies,” he said, mildly amused. “Do you need something? Are you feeling alright?”
A fragmented memory surfaced—blurred voices, fever heat. A woman bending over me, eyes too pale, a strange creature buzzing at her shoulder. And him, this healer, his hand pressed firm against my chest, warmth flooding through me until the darkness receded.
My throat tightened, suspicion prickling beneath my skin. He’d kept me alive, maybe. But I didn’t know him.
“I’m fine,” I muttered. “I need to get out of here.”
He shifted to rise, looking slightly ridiculous in comparison to the massive chair made for at least three men his size.
The scale of everything here unsettled me—built to make people feel small, maybe on purpose.
“I think we’re allowed to walk around, so long as we stay on this floor,” he offered, already setting his book aside.
I didn’t answer. I didn’t want his company. I didn’t trust him. He might have kept me alive, but in my experience, no one did anything without a price. And the way his eyes lingered on me… as though he were piecing together a memory and deciding what to do with it.
Still, I pushed to my feet. My gaze snagged on the iron poker leaning by the hearth, and before he could comment, I took it. Santiago’s brow arched, but he didn’t argue. If this place was a cage, then I wasn’t walking it unarmed.
Every step felt like walking deeper into a trap, but standing still wasn’t an option. Every moment wasted here was another piece of Aeryn slipping further from me.
So I followed him into the corridor, the iron cool and solid in my grip.
Vaulted ceilings loomed overhead, etched with runes long forgotten. The walls were lined with faded velvet tapestries—depictions of the three goddesses in triumphant poses, their faces serene and divine while mortals knelt at their feet.
Shadows pooled in every corner, flickering gently under the glow of enchanted sconces. The flames burned gold but emitted no warmth. An eerie mimicry of light, cold and beautiful.
“This place feels like it’s holding its breath,” I said, more to myself than him.
“It is,” Santiago replied quietly. “It always is. Kaelith’s castle is more of a tomb than a home. Nothing here is alive unless he wills it to be.”
I glanced toward one of the high-arched windows. Beyond the thick glass, the fog circled the city. The sky remained in that strange in-between—neither day nor night, just endless twilight pressing down on the world.
“Why are you even here?” I asked suddenly, not bothering to mask my irritation. “You’re free of the chains. No one’s forcing you to follow me.”
He hesitated, then sighed. “Malachi’s shadows don’t just bind,” he said quietly. “They tether. To the mind. To the body. To whatever he chooses.”
“And you’re still… tethered?”
“Yes.” His jaw flexed. “Enough that I can’t wander far from you. Whether it’s to monitor your healing or because he hasn’t bothered to release me—I don’t know.”
He glanced away, irritation tightening his voice. “But trust me, it isn’t by choice.”
This close to him, I could finally take in the details of his face.
They were sharper than I’d realized before.
High cheekbones and a strong, squared jaw, softened just slightly by the curve of his mouth.
His skin was sun-warmed, tanned from sunlight I almost forgot the feel of, and a faint scar traced along the left side of his brow, nearly hidden beneath the unruly sweep of golden hair.
But it was his eyes that caught me. There was something unreadable in them, a depth that didn’t quite match the ease of his expression.
“This way,” Santiago murmured. “The library.”
The moment we stepped inside, I stopped cold.
It was breathtaking.
A vast cathedral of knowledge stretched before us. Books stacked in endless columns disappeared into the shadowed heights above, where a domed skylight crowned the ceiling. The scent—leather, parchment, ink, and magic—wrapped around me.
I kept close to the shelves, fingers grazing the spines of books that looked older than the stones beneath my feet.
I was mapping, memorizing, searching for exits even in the quiet.
Every gilded binding, every whisper of parchment reminded me that I was deep in the heart of a place that wasn’t mine.
A place I needed to get out of. Aeryn didn’t have time for me to linger.
Behind me, Santiago’s voice broke the silence. “You talk in your sleep.”
I turned, my shoulders tightening, gaze narrowing. “What?”
“You were murmuring. Something about stars and thresholds and flame. It was… poetic.”
I let my expression flatten, unreadable. “I didn’t know I did that.”
“It sounds like you have very lucid dreams.”
My grip on the iron poker tightened. “They’ve always felt… more real than they should.” The admission slipped out sharper than I intended, and I hated myself for giving him even that much.
“Maybe they are,” he said quietly, with a weight that made me want to demand what he knew.
I turned away before he could see the flicker of unease in my eyes. I wasn’t unpacking this with someone I barely trusted.
A movement snapped at the corner of my vision. I spun, heart slamming, poker raised.
Small fingers curled around the edge of a nearby shelf—delicate, trembling. Someone, or something, was watching us.
I stepped forward carefully. “It’s alright, little one. We’re just here to browse. Stretch our legs a bit.”
The creature emerged in a flutter of wings. I knew her instantly. The same violet eyes that had hovered over me when I first woke blinked, wide and indignant. Her skin caught the light in a shimmer of onyx and gold, wings humming so fast they seemed frozen midair.
She wore a fitted tunic made of gossamer fabric that shimmered with every shift of her body, cinched at the waist with strands of crystal thread. Silver beads dangled from her sleeves and hem, chiming faintly with her movements.
“Excuse me,” she said, voice sharp and indignant. “I am not a child.”
“I remember you, Seraphine,” I said before I could stop myself. She looked almost pleased by the acknowledgment.
She floated higher, placing her tiny hands on her hips, unimpressed. “Good. Now, if you’re going to wander the archives, don’t touch anything unless you know what it is. Some of the books bite.”
Santiago coughed to hide a laugh.
I ignored him, eyes still on Seraphine. “And what exactly do you do here?” I asked instead, narrowing my gaze.
“I’m the Keeper of this dusty little treasure trove,” she replied with a flick of her wrist, as if it were obvious. “Books, secrets, absurdly long staircases—I hoard them all. Think of me as a very glamorous dragon.” She preened, clearly pleased with the comparison.
She spun in the air once, then zipped away toward the far end of the library, muttering something under her breath about mortals and their manners—never changing, no matter how many centuries passed.