Chapter 31
Chapter thirty-one
“How did Marina take the news?” Gisela asked as Thorne stepped into their palace room. He gave her a weak smile, closing the door behind him with a soft click that echoed through the quiet chamber.
“Silas explained as best he could,” Thorne said. “She’s upset. Leaving Bjorn again too. But the pool helped. She sprayed me with water as soon as I walked into her room. Very Marina of her.”
She let out a quiet laugh. “Maybe I should’ve gone with Silas instead. I’ll go talk to her.”
“No, you need rest. You should already be sleeping.”
Sleep. How could she close her eyes when all she would see was Mystralos teetering on the brink of ruin?
People were dying. Magic was weakening. And in the midst of it all, her own identity had begun to unravel.
Had her parents hidden the truth from her?
Were Noah and Vivi her siblings? Was she living a complete lie?
The question anchored itself in her chest, heavy and jagged. Impossible to shake.
Turmoil etched in her face and Thorne crawled across the bed, placing his hands on her shoulders. “Whatever you’re feeling, Gisela, we’ll face it together. You don’t have to carry this alone.”
She looked up at him, searching for some reassurance in his eyes but the weight of everything was too much. “I don’t know who I am anymore, Thorne. If everything I believed about myself was a lie, then who am I?”
“You’re Gisela,” he said. “No prophecy or hidden bloodline changes who you’ve been. Even if it changes what you are.”
A brief solace warmed her chest. She reached up, touching his cheek, letting her fingers linger.
This troublesome boy, the one who tested her patience at every turn, who had taken a strange pleasure in getting under her skin, now a man she couldn’t bear to lose.
“You’re everything to me,” he said. “Ever since the awakening . . . I physically ache for you, Gisela. I don’t know where I stop, and you begin.”
She felt it too. A tether stretched thin whenever they were apart. The further they were from each other, the more it tugged at her heart, a constant reminder that they were bound together in ways neither of them fully understood yet.
“I feel it,” she whispered. “I don’t want to be away from you either. For any amount of time. But it’s the only way.”
“I know you’ll be tempted to go to Frosthaven,” Thorne said.
Gisela averted her gaze. The pull of her home was a quiet ache. “I would never lie to you. It’s hard not to think about going back and seeing it for myself.”
“You can’t risk it, Gisela, promise me,” he begged, taking her hands in his and holding them. “If something happened to you . . .” He kissed her knuckles. “I know your strength, but I couldn’t bear it. It would destroy me.”
She leaned forward, kissing him softly, letting her hands trail along the back of his head. When she pulled away, shadows of pain reflected in his eyes, as if he had already imagined losing her and couldn’t shake the thought.
“I promise,” she said, her voice firm. “I’ll go straight to Aquamere. No detours. No risks.”
Gisela surrendered to the pull of sleep, sinking deeper into its hold until her dreams became memories.
She was back in the familiar warmth of her childhood home, the one before her father became Village Lord.
Candlelight flickered across the low beams, casting the hanging dried herbs in golden halos.
She was ten years old again, sitting cross-legged on the earthy floor, her knees dusted brown. In front of her lay an old, leather-bound journal, its spine cracked from use, its pages filled with meticulous handwriting.
She ran her small fingers over the yellowed parchment, her eyes drawn to a word that leapt off the page: Guardian Tree. Beneath it, a list of ingredients she knew too well—bark, root, aether leaf, silver sap, dreamberries.
The herbs above her stirred.
A cold breeze swept the room, snuffing out the candles. Darkness rushed in and the dream twisted abruptly.
She was even younger now. A mere infant—too young to remember this, yet the certainty of it was undeniable—crying in a small cot, swaddled in a thin blanket. Fever raged through her tiny body. The world around her was a blur of light and shadow.
Then the cold came.
Frost unfurled around her in careful layers, cocooning her tiny form. The fever broke beneath it, soothed by the chill, her frantic cries softening.
A figure stood nearby, hidden in the shadows. Before she could make out any details, the figure turned and rushed out of the door.
The dream twisted again, pulling her forward through her memories like pages turning too fast to read.
She was much older now, walking home from work on the cobblestone streets of Frosthaven as dusk fell. The cold bit at her nose as she drew her cloak tighter. Her breath fogged the air.
A memory she knew well.
Then and now, folded together.
The past carried a weight she hadn’t felt at the time.
Her mother, Ivy, stood outside their home, speaking in hushed tones with a woman she didn’t recognize. The stranger’s face was obscured under a hood, her posture tight and her hands clasped at her sides.
Gisela drew nearer and the woman glanced up. Panic flashed across her features before she could hide it. She grabbed Ivy’s hand, gave it a brief squeeze, and hurried away, disappearing into the fog that crept along the street.
Gisela’s sight was fixed on the retreating figure, until her attention was pulled to someone else. Across the street, Selene Alderose stood at the corner, bags of fruit hanging from her hands. She was watching them with intensity, and the weight of her stare made Gisela’s stomach churn.
Gisela bolted upright, scanning the palace room, reorienting herself. Her fingers twisted through her tangled hair. The phantom sting of frost in her cradle, the prickling sense of being watched by Selene . . . she couldn’t shake it.
Thorne stirred, eyes still heavy with sleep. “Bad dream?” he murmured, sitting up beside her.
Gisela managed to put on a soft smile. “I’m okay. Go back to sleep.” Her hands trembled.
There was a quiet reach from him in her mind, concern bleeding through the bond—and without thinking, she pulled back, shielding him from her emotions.
He gave a small nod and went back to sleep.
But Gisela’s mind refused to rest.
The dream replayed in a relentless loop.
Her dreams had never been directed before. This one followed a will beyond her own.
It wasn’t imagination. The pieces fit too cleanly for that. The truth lay scattered, revealed out of order.
Whatever waited for her in Frosthaven, she knew one thing—she couldn’t keep herself from knowing much longer.
Were they safe?
Were they even alive?
The thoughts of empty streets, of her village stripped bare like Thunderpeak, kept sleep at bay.