Chapter 11 #2
After rushing through Azmeer’s winding halls, feeling every bit of muscle I’d gained from the gym these past months, I was finally here—only to find a scribe barring my entrance. Just one step. I just needed to get through the threshold.
“I told you, sir…”
Sir? Since when had anyone here addressed me with anything other than an indifferent “you”? But then I remembered—the vibrant red pulsing through my hair marked me as a member of the Court now, someone who had proven his place here. My heart quickened. Azmeer had claimed me as her own.
“Yes, I know you said that it’s closed, but I left something inside.” I was desperate to get in there. There had to be something that Addie had left behind. A clue, any idea of where Lil and Brida had gone. To why the weddings had been called off. Something.
“You will have to come back tomorrow evening; the monthly bookkeeping will be finished by then. It is just one day, besides, no one has been in or out. Whatever it is you left here…” It was clear the scribe didn’t believe anything I’d said, I didn’t look like the type of guy who would leave something in a library, let alone be in one.
Little did he know, a library was to become my new home, the bane of my existence.
“It will be here tomorrow. Now, have a good evening.”
Sighing, I rubbed my hand over my face. I was so tired. Not just the aches and spasms that pulsed in my legs as I’d made my way here faster than I’d ever moved in my life, but in my soul, I was tired.
“Do you believe we possess a soul?” Brida had asked me. We had been in her room, huddled under a blanket. Vale had cried himself to sleep that night, just like he had all the others since Aela’s death.
I had no idea. I’d never given it any thought before. “A soul,” I’d said to her, “what do you mean?”
Brida’s tears had been silent, unlike her father’s, she bore what had happened stoically. She knew they couldn’t both break. The pieces of Vale were strewn across the house, and Brida was determined to put them back together. Even at the cost of herself.
“A soul, the essence of who you are.” She placed her hand over my heart, resting it there.
“This body, it’s yours, but it’s not you.
I have to believe that what makes you, you, and what made Mom, Mom, that it lives on somehow.
Out there.” She pointed to the star filled sky visible from her bedroom window, “Or maybe even in there,” and then to the cracks on her walls.
Nodding, I understood. “Yes, Brida,” I said. “I think we have a soul.”
“Part of mine will always belong to you, you know.” She smiled as she nestled her head on the pillow, her eyelids had grown heavy.
“And part of mine to you.” I laid down next to her, watching her breath deepen, allowing herself to give in to sleep.
“How did I get so lucky to have you in my life, Kadian Taldot?” Her voice faded.
My gaze returned to the window, “It must have been written in the stars.”
I made my way back to the inductees’ quarters, lost in the memory of that conversation and all the nights that had followed. Only to discover that I was barred access.
What now…
“Your room is no longer here. Make your way to your House,” the guard said. When a look of confusion crested my brow, he continued, “you’re a court member, no longer an inductee. Your new room awaits you in…” he paused to assess me, “I assume the House of Shadows.”
A new room, one that was away from Oz, Brida, Lil, Tamra… isolated. Turning on my heel, the slight echo of my shoe tapping against the limestone kept me company as I navigated my way back to the House of Shadows, but I was in no rush.
Before I knew it, I wandered a familiar path.
The limestone changed from its tanned coloration to stark white, and I found myself before two pools of water.
The Mirrors of Reflection. I had guessed when I’d looked into them the first time that I would have seen the Eternal Court, but instead, the waters rippled until I saw the most beautiful smile staring back at me.
I didn’t know where we were in the vision, it was nowhere I’d ever been before.
Lil offered her hand to me and led me towards the shore, her smile lighting her face and her laugh greeting the stars.
The pool was said to show you your greatest desire, or fear. I lamented that she was both.
Lowering myself, I leaned against the edge of the pool, hoping, praying to any god, any Primal that would listen that the image hadn’t changed, that in some way I would be able to see her, touch her, just one more time.
I closed my eyes and sighed before opening them again, and waited for the water to transform.
The first vibrations of the pool were subtle, as if the smallest fish swam just beneath the water’s surface. With each tiny ripple, my heart thudded louder. The ache that lived in my chest bloomed like a flower in springtime. I just want to see her.
“Please,” I whispered. Before I knew it, a tear escaped my cheek, causing the latest ripple in the water. As soon as the tear met the water of the pool, a blue flashing light coursed through it, surging to the middle of the mirrors where I saw her.
“I promise I’ll come back to you, Kad,” Lil said. And then, she was gone, moving down a beach I couldn’t follow, her figure fading with the dawn. I watched, holding on to the memory, letting it sink deep.
I knew the pools weren’t really a way to connect to her, to reach out. But part of me had hoped. Sighing, I ran a hand through my hair before raising myself upwards.
Looking back over my shoulder at the glistening white marble, I shook my head. A Court of Shadows member pining for the wife of a prince…the king, and a member of a different court. Oh, what would the courts say?
“They’d say fuck it and do what you want.” Lil’s voice echoed in my mind.
I promise I’ll come back to you, Kad. Those were the words she had whispered just now.
Despite everything that had happened, every obstacle we would have to overcome, I would have to overcome, I believed her.
She would find her way back to me. And when she did, I would hold onto her as long as she’d let me.
The walk back to my new home was long and lonely, but each step carried purpose. Tomorrow I would make my way to the scribes’ quarters and find the answers I needed. Nothing would keep me from discovering where she was.