Chapter 34
Aella
The blight had gotten much worse around the Fionbar portal.
As we moved down the road, we walked past blackened trees, crumbling to dust, with only parts of their trunks lingering as decaying tombstones.
None of the other vegetation remained. My skin felt tight and prickly, and my stomach twisted at the sense of wrongness in the air.
By my estimation, they had days remaining before it turned into a dead zone.
I could only sense a trickle of magic left.
Everyone grumbled with discomfort, but we silently agreed to move as quickly as possible. Every warning bell in my head rang to flee immediately. I had no doubt they felt the same by the strain on their faces. Jax looked like he would throw up at any moment.
Darrow grimaced as he looked at me. “I suspect they will gladly take up your offer to relocate the ring. If they could have afforded to move it themselves, they would have by now.”
“Yes,” I said, keeping up with his quick pace. I was glad I had long legs. “After our last visit, I’d planned to offer help anyway, but then everything fell apart, and I forgot about it.”
“War and torture can be distracting,” Jax said from behind us.
I glanced back and caught Loden elbowing him in the ribs. “Can you be a little more sensitive?”
“What?” Jax rubbed his side. “Pretending something didn’t happen doesn’t fix it. I think airing our grievances helps get them off our chests and lightens the load.”
“More like you enjoy sharing your troubles to make everyone else miserable with you,” Loden replied.
“That’s not true.” He sighed. “I’m so misunderstood.”
Jax said it so dramatically that I had to fight a smile. He just saw the world differently.
Darrow gestured ahead. “There’s the village, and it appears the blight has moved closer to it.”
My chest tightened, and I had to force myself to breathe.
Only a couple of hundred feet of space remained between the edge of the decay and where the quaint homes with thatched roofs began.
At this rate, they only had a couple of months before they’d have to evacuate the druids living on the east end.
I’d been visiting Fionbar my whole life and couldn’t imagine it turning to dust.
Despite my fears for the people, a sense of relief filled me as soon as we entered healthy land again. The knot in my stomach loosened, and I lost the painful prickly sensation burning my skin. Everyone else’s expressions relaxed as well.
We breathed in the floral and pine scents as if we’d been starved of life and relished the tweeting birds as they sang their melodic songs.
They perched in the grassy pillar trees, which were turning golden now that we were midway through autumn.
An army of brown spurmels raced across the ground as they gathered nuts to store for the winter.
Their long, fluffy tails twitched as they kept one eye on us, perhaps worried we might steal their stashes.
I loved how active and visible they became at this time of year.
We stayed on the main dirt road through the village, passing stone cottages painted in neutral tones with thatched roofs, and headed toward the sea at the end.
My grandmother’s house was the last in the row, a couple of hundred feet from the gentle waves lapping at the shore.
It would have been peaceful if not for the building dread I felt with every step as we came closer.
My stomach was threatening to crawl out of my body and take a vacation far from here.
Darrow attempted to grasp my hand, but I pulled away. Though I’d been weak yesterday evening and let him offer me some comfort, I needed to face this without him as a crutch. I could handle my grandmother, considering I had no choice.
Idamay’s home was two stories tall, with a whitewashed exterior, and she had large windows framed with natural wood.
We walked beside the picket fence until reaching a small gate.
When I was a child, it had seemed much larger, but now the top barely reached my waist. I pushed it open.
It didn’t squeak because my grandmother would never allow such a crime.
Even after my grandfather passed about twelve years ago, she managed to keep up with all the maintenance.
Druids had similar lifespans to elves, perhaps a little longer, but my grandmother had been about sixty-five years younger than her husband when they married.
I missed him deeply since he’d always favored me even after the “incident.”
“Well, it’s about time you showed up,” Idamay said, stepping onto her small covered porch with a broom. She had her gray hair pulled back tightly in a bun. Aside from that and a few lines around her eyes, she didn’t appear old. In truth, she was pushing a century and a half.
I lifted my brows. “You were expecting me?”
She gripped her broom like she might use it as a weapon, which I’d seen her do before, so I wouldn’t put it past her. “I figured you’d come here with all the strife in Zadrya, but I see you brought your own dark elf. Trouble always follows you, girl.”
The story of my life.
“He’s half, grandmother, and my husband. You can call him Darrow.”
“Priyya told me as much,” she said, narrowing her eyes on the man beside me. “Well, at least he’s fine to look at, so you got something right. I always figured it doesn’t matter what they say or do if they’re fuckable. The rest can be sorted.”
I buried my face in my hands and mumbled between my palms. “Maybe I’ll just go feed myself to the sharks. I probably should have warned you all that she’s also very blunt and vulgar.”
“Now I see where you get your filthy mouth from,” Darrow said, light dancing in his eyes. Through our bond, I could feel how hard he was trying not to laugh.
I dropped my hands and gaped at him. “Maybe I flirt with you sometimes, but I never talk that way to strangers.”
“You don’t hold back from saying what you want in front of the rest of us, though,” Jax said with a bemused expression on his face.
“Stop prattling and come inside,” Idamay ordered, then honed her gaze on me. “And Aella, you better not have brought any beetles with you.”
“Honestly, grandmother, it’s been twenty-three years. Can we move past it?”
“Not a chance!” She huffed and headed into the dark interior. Left with no choice, we followed her.
Inside the cottage, we entered the living area.
It had two small green couches facing each other to the left with a dormant fireplace at the end.
On the right, she had a round wooden table with four chairs.
The back wall had always been my favorite part.
Except for a central doorway, it was covered by built-in bookshelves.
She’d kept every available inch packed with a variety of tomes for as long as I could remember.
Darrow and I took one couch, while Loden and Jax settled on the one across from us.
My grandmother had disappeared into the kitchen at the rear of the cottage.
We waited in tense silence for about ten minutes until she returned with a tea service.
Usually, she’d make me prepare my own cup, but she handled all of ours this time.
“Drink up, girl. You’re going to need it,” she said, wagging a finger at me.
I frowned. “Did you fall and hit your head?”
Jax let out a choked cough.
“No, Aella, but I have some idea why you’re here.”
Idamay had the sight. It wasn’t as powerful as some, but she caught glimpses of near-future events and could sense trouble coming—aside from beetles, apparently. She also had an uncanny ability to identify bad people, no matter how they presented themselves.
A salesman once came through Fionbar, who brought what appeared to be the finest cloth made up north. He wore a nice suit and treated everyone with the utmost respect. The first few people he met gladly bought his wares.
Then, my grandmother saw him. She tore into him right away, saying the cloth wouldn’t last a week.
No one could believe her, considering how lovely it looked.
Half the town bought from him, but sure enough, six days later, the clothing everyone made from it fell apart.
It was a temporary spell to make it appear higher quality.
My mother had relayed the story since it happened when she was a child, but she added that no one questioned Idamay again.
Except me, though I couldn’t say why. She affected me the same way as Darrow, so I was always braver to say what was on my mind, rather than hiding it. That made every visit here unpleasant, to say the least.
“You know I’ve come to help with the portal ring,” I said, then sipped my tea. It had a rich flavor with a minty aftertaste.
She pulled a chair from the nearby table and settled it before us.
“Yes, but I saw something else as well.” She looked at Loden.
“You coming here was the real surprise because until today, I didn’t know you existed.
Well, to be fair, Priyya mentioned you and the others from when you visited her last, but I didn’t connect it then. ”
“I don’t understand,” Loden said, frowning.
We were all looking at my grandmother, each with a confused expression.
She gave him a patient look. “Tell me your father’s name, child.”
Loden’s brows drew together. “I never met him, but my mother told me his name was Yorick.”
“No.” I choked on my tea, and it took a moment to catch my breath. “But how?”
Idamay nodded at me sagely. “He only ever made one trip to Zadrya almost forty-four years ago. Gone just a few weeks, but apparently more happened there than he told me.”
“Uncle Yorick never knew?” I asked as everyone gaped at me.
I was just as shocked. Yorick was my mother’s older brother, who was married for about twenty-five years, and had one daughter almost my age. He was a good man, though, and he would have taken care of Loden if he’d known about him.