Chapter 4 #2
“I’ve followed you here before,” he admitted. “Couldn’t let you see me until I was sure.”
“You followed me?”
“I saw you making it a few months back. Tried my hand at it afterward. Not as good as yours, I’m sure but . . . it worked.”
Gisela stared at him, watching him shift his weight. The words landed in her ears, but her brain refused to accept them—impossible.
“I’m a Mystic too,” he added casually, shrugging like it were the most mundane of admissions.
Gisela covered her mouth as the reality of his words sank in. Then, to her own surprise, she burst into laughter, clutching her stomach. “You’re full of shit,” she said between gasps.
His face fell flat. “I wish I was. You think I want this?” he said, crossing his arms.
“Prove it,” she said. “Show me your mark.”
He smirked. “You’d like to see where it is wouldn’t you? Mind if I—” His hands moved toward the waist of his pants.
“Stop,” she interrupted. She wanted to test him, to call him on his potential bluff but her cheeks flushed. “Even if you were a Mystic and you’re using the putty correctly, I wouldn’t be able to see it anyway.”
She paced the mossy ground, fingers rubbing her temples, debating whether to believe Thorne. Why should she? He had never given her a reason to trust him in all the years they had known each other.
Crossing her arms, she eyed him warily. “But your father . . .”
“Doesn’t know,” he cut in. “No one does. Other than you, now. I don’t want to risk anyone going down for me.”
“Oh, so you tell me instead?”
Thorne’s expression softened, and he sighed heavily. “Like I said, I wasn’t going to involve you at all until I was sure you were one too. I started noticing a strange feeling when you were around. After the mark appeared.”
“A chill?” she asked.
“No,” he replied. “A burn.”
She blinked, struggling to process it all. The icy chills down her spine suddenly made sense. Thorne had always been nearby, except during some of her secret trips to the forest.
“Why haven’t you turned yourself in?” she asked, her voice laced with sarcasm. “Do your duty to the King?”
“Because I’m not an idiot.” He ran his hand through his hair, eyes flicking toward the tree. “Something’s wrong. There’s more we don’t know.”
“Isn’t your father the King’s best friend? You’re telling me you haven’t heard him talk?”
Thorne hesitated and dropped his eyes to the ground before looking back at her. “I’ve heard enough. He was furious when he lost the assembly vote. Thought the King would never let it happen.”
Gisela frowned. “But he did.”
“Yeah,” Thorne said. “And then the King came for the announcement. After that, my father stopped raging about it. Now he says it’s for the best. And maybe it is. Maybe now he’ll stop taking it out on my mother and me.”
She clasped her hands together to fight the urge to reach out and comfort him, cursing the nurturing instincts she’d inherited from her mother. “What else do you know?”
“Other than my father not caring at all about the Stones being taken . . . nothing.”
Gisela recoiled, her face scrunching in confusion.
Cillian’s indifference suggested a level of trust or knowledge far beyond what she could fathom. Whatever the reason for his blind faith in King Ravenor, it made the situation even more curious.
Her thoughts wandered back to Elder Aldric’s strange encounter. “The plants are wilting already,” she said, breaking the long silence.
Thorne glanced around, brow furrowing. “What does that mean?”
“You know . . . wilting. Like dying.”
He shot her a flat look. “I know what wilting means.”
She bit back a smile, though the weight in her chest didn’t lift. “It’s the Stone . . . its absence is already showing. The land isn’t right. The balance has been disrupted.”
“Balance . . .” Thorne echoed.
Gisela turned Thorne’s words over in her mind, unease tugging at her ribs. Telling him about the Village Elder would change things. There would be no taking it back.
She studied him, searching for something solid to hold on to, but trust didn’t come easily.
They had grown up in the same village, attended the same school, yet she could barely remember a conversation between them that wasn’t edged with teasing. She’d spoken to him more today than she had in all the years she’d known him. Whether that made him an ally—or a complication—she couldn’t tell.
If he trusted her enough to tell her his secret, she supposed she could share hers.
“I went to the tailor to pick up dresses today, and Elder Aldric . . . he . . . he stared right into my eyes and rattled off some message, but he didn’t sound like himself. It sounded like some sort of prophecy, or maybe not. I don’t know.”
“Only a Seer can give a prophecy. What did he say?”
Gisela closed her eyes, recalling the Elder’s voice clearly. She recited the words from memory.
“In times of dire, the balance shall break,
Six elements lost, a world at stake.
To mend the divide, the willing must find,
The six that unite, in heart and mind.
By trials endured and elements’ might,
The Great Guardian Tree shall rise in sight.
When darkness looms and hope is thin,
The power within shall new life begin.”
She caught Thorne staring at her like she’d grown a second head.
“Are you sure that old man isn’t off his rocker? He’s on death’s door.”
“Thorne, I’m serious. It was really weird.”
He smirked in acknowledgment and crouched on the forest floor in thought. “Alright, I’ll play along. The six that unite. Is that the Stones?”
Gisela shook her head. “I’m not sure. It all felt like a warning.”
“And The Great Guardian Tree . . . is it this one?” he asked.
“Maybe? I thought I made up the name,” she replied, more to herself than to him.
Thorne sighed and stood up. “Well, this was enlightening.” He turned to leave the clearing.
“That’s it? You’re leaving?”
“Yeah, I have to get back before my father notices I’m gone.”
She muttered to herself, annoyed at Thorne’s abrupt departure. She had been vulnerable, and he treated the conversation as ordinary. “You’re just going to pretend this conversation didn’t happen?”
“Shouldn’t we? Things are stable right now. Plants wilting could easily mean winter is coming early. I’ll keep your secret if you keep mine.”
She nodded and bit back her argument. The Stone kept the crops alive through harsher chills than this. If they were failing now, it wasn’t the weather’s doing.
Before he left the clearing, she called out, “Thorne!”
He paused and turned around.
“Do you have Mystic lineage?” she asked.
“Not that I know of. I can’t ask anyone though. What about you?”
She shook her head. “No.”
He disappeared between the trees, leaving her alone in the clearing.
In the quiet that followed, a single aether leaf drifted from the Guardian Tree and landed silently at her feet.