Chapter 14
Chapter
Fourteen
-LIL-
“You know of a talking door?”
“I do.” Dainan closed the cobalt one to our apartment behind us.
“Is it friendly?” I hoped for our sake that the doors of The Home of Souls would be.
“When it wants to be.”
Images continued to flash on the walls: people, animals, places, and colors. And again, a small girl with blonde hair, winking at me before she faded into the cascading water.
Who are you? And why are you following me?
Dainan paused in front of the image of a young woman, hair the color of blazing fire. She fell to her knees, crying before fading into the current.
“We’re being watched,” I whispered, imagining our faces on walls somewhere in the palace.
“We most certainly are.” Dainan’s dark eyes found mine, “But it’s better we appear unafraid.” He offered me his arm, and after pausing for only a moment, I took it, a sign of trust.
There was tranquility here, even factoring in the flashing images. No people were bustling about, the empty halls echoed with the soft current of water pulsing beside you with each step. The mother-of-pearl floor shimmered in a way I found mesmerizing, color and beauty in its depth.
“Where would you like to go?” Dainan asked.
We’d stopped where the hall divided itself in two. The path to the right was brighter than the left, and I had a feeling I knew which Dainan would prefer.
“I’m not sure it matters. This is a labyrinth, of sorts. No matter which we decide, it’s possible we’ll end up in the same place.” Dainan inclined his head down the hall. “My vote is to the left.”
“Of course it is, Lord Dark One.”
Dainan’s chuckle was low and mysterious. So unlike the maniacal laughter of his brother. “Well naturally, Miss Sunshine, you would prefer to go to the right, despite my having asked you. Are you trying to provoke me? Even after I have been so gracious enough as to guide us through this …”
“Please, don’t let me stop you.”
The lines between his eyes deepened, his jaw tightening.
“If you wish, I can address you as Master Wordsmith from here on out.”
His sigh was exacerbated, the sound of trees groaning in the wind during a storm. “Do you wish to go to the right?”
“The left is fine.”
Without saying another word, Dainan led us down the hall. As we ventured deeper into the twinkling expanse, the tranquil, almost clear blue water of the walls darkened, shifting subtly from its serene hue to a more profound, inky shade.
The soothing murmur of the waves, once a reassuring presence, gradually gave way to something more ethereal. What was once a calming background noise evolved into a melodious, haunting song.
The transition was imperceptible at first, like the slow unfurling of a delicate flower. It beckoned us further into the shadows.
In depths where stars and oceans meet,
A haunting call, a voice so sweet.
In mournful tones, a love is grieved,
A bond once soared, now lost, deceived.
Through waves of time, the echoes sound,
A love once found, now ocean-bound.
The sea laments, the night does know,
For love’s departure brings endless woe.
In shadows deep where dreams entwine,
The call persists through endless night.
From hidden depths where sorrow sleeps,
A mystery in the darkness keeps.
“Dainan.”
He released my arm and strode toward a cascading wall, the color of which had transformed to midnight.
“Dainan,” I said again, with more urgency.
Dainan turned to face me. The darkness of his eyes was gone, they glowed a pale blue similar to my own.
His gaze returned to the water that was parting for him.
A door appeared in the middle of a seabed, water draped around it like curtains on a window.
Dainan’s arm rose, his fingers gliding towards the edge of the water.
The doors deceive.
But he might be called to this one.
The music lingered in the air, the notes pulsating with each step he took towards the door.
Glinting eyes and a sinister smile disappeared as quickly as it had shown itself in the water above the doorway.
This is wrong. A sensation prickled on the back of my neck.
This was not the correct path.
Damnit. Throwing myself between him and the door, I did the only thing I could think of, and slapped him.
“Fuck, this isn’t how I wanted to be spending my day.” Pain seared through my hand as I shook it, trying to calm the burning sensation.
Slowly, Dainan’s expression sobered, the pale blue draining from his eyes through tears that trailed down his cheeks.
“Did you slap me?”
I sighed in relief. Whatever it was that had taken hold of him, he’d broken out of it.
“Yes.” I placed my hands on my hips, “And I’d do it again if it would get us out of here.”
Dainan rubbed his cheek, “You put good weight behind that.” Approval danced in his eyes.
“Yeah, well.” I pulled him to the middle of the hall, angling him from where we were. “It’s not my first time slapping a prince.”
Nodding, Dainan said nothing as we attempted to navigate our way throughout the palace. Halls curved and snaked like riverbeds, the sounds of a steady current beside us. The water was ever changing, brimming with life, and then a door.
Each door in the palace was unique, as Thetius said. The materials, the composition, no two were alike.
“We’ll have to start opening them.” I murmured as we passed a door with four orbs engraved on its surface. One purple, one black, one red, one green.
Dainan nodded in agreement, insisting we follow our instincts, only opening specific doors—the ones that called to us.
We soon learned that the doors symbolized what the rooms contained. Wooden doors led us into a jungle. Something I had never heard of, but Dainan enlightened me to.
“You’ve never heard of a jungle?”
“It’s not as if Eldara is riddled with them.
The majority of the landscape remains barren outside of the cities.
More desert than anything else.” Of course there were forests—I loved the wooded areas surrounding the Court of Reflection, but they had been nothing like this.
Trees with canopies that were thousands of feet high, the screeches of unfamiliar animals that sent the hair on my arms to attention, the oppressive heat whose mission it was to press you down into the ground and suffocate you.
“We need to get you to a library,” Dainan muttered as we closed the door behind us, ascertaining that nothing awaited either of us in the sweltering humidity.
Glowing doors, doors made from moss, doors with dark, smooth circles that possessed a sulfurous smell.
Thetius said they were the gateways to long-forgotten worlds.
What about the people who had lived there?
Were those the faces of the people we had seen since our arrival?
Had they been erased? What could erase a world? Was it coming for Eldara?
Then, in the water, fading in and out of focus, there stood a door. It shone with the stars from the sky and smelled like the forest in winter.
“Is that one speaking to you?”
“Literally or figuratively?” I heard nothing, but the door was a deep green, a color I knew so well. I stepped forward, an invisible tether pulling me toward it.
“There is… something.”
“I trust you,” Dainan said as he moved behind me. The simple act of allowing me to take the lead, knowing that he was ceding control—it did not go amiss.
The handle was cold as I turned it, a breeze brushing against my face as I strode through the entryway. My eyes closed, and I inhaled deeply. The scent, comfort wrapping around me, transporting me to a pine forest in the dead of eventide.
When I opened my eyes, Dainan was gone. My shoes, too, had disappeared. My toes wriggled in the sand, and I listened to the tide crashing on the beach. In the distance, I saw him. Waiting for me in the dunes. My steps were hurried, my pulse racing. Get to him.
I sank with each step I took. A feeling I loved and had missed these past months. The sand between my toes, the initial sting of the water as it glided over my feet. The smell of the sea. All of it was perfect. All of it was mine. Things that no one, despite how hard they tried, could take from me.
“Was wondering when you’d show up.”
Hours earlier, it felt as if I had been pulled into the depths of the sea, unable to break the surface. With those words and that voice, I was gasping for air, at last able to breathe.
“Always expected me to show up, did you?”
“I never doubted it,” Kadian said, patting the spot next to him, close enough that we would be near each other, but far enough away that he was offering me space.
“Where are we?” Kadian asked, a smile plastered to his face as he turned to look at me. It was so tempting to reach out and touch him to pull him close, to allow him to comfort me.
“Be strong, Lilianna. Never show weakness. They won’t want you if you do.”
“I can honestly say I have no idea. I don’t know much of what’s going on right now.” I leaned back on my hands, allowing my fingers to roam freely.
The lapping of the water, the salt of the sea.
Each breath was a life force, revitalizing me in a way I had never experienced.
Will I require this now? Do Court of Reflection members need to be reenergized by the water?
No one ever told me what it was to be a member of the Court of Reflection.
What I might be able to do one day. Members guarded their secrets more carefully than the vaults in Azmeer.
I scoffed, recalling that Oz had said “there’s no way they exist.” But Rai had dragged me there… more than once.
“I can’t say I have much of an idea of what’s going on either. The only thing I know is that I’m somehow still in Azmeer and you and Brida are both gone. Oz is here, but he has no idea what’s going on.”
“At least you have him. And he is a beacon of hope and inspiration.” I offered him a smile. “It’s important you have someone. I never want you to feel alone.” They were the words I’d hoped someone would have said to me. Just once.
“What of Tamra?”