27. Keira
T he shadows thicken as I extinguish the fire orbs illuminating my bedchamber in the palace. The only light is the silvery moonbeams entering through the barred window. I tap my foot against the ground as I sit on the edge of my armchair, waiting. The minutes roll by, seeming like an eternity.
It was only yesterday that I last saw Aldrin before the nymphs’ burnt-out florist shop, and he promised me he would come for me tonight when the clock struck eight, but so much can change in a day. I watch the ornate timepiece on my counter, noting he is already ten minutes late.
The fact that we revealed his return to the city unsettled me the moment I returned to my bed at daybreak and the adrenaline of the fight wore off.How far and fast can word spread among the people?
Titania will either come for him, or she will disregard it as rumor. As for my use of magic last night, and my presence outside the palace, I am sure she is arrogant enough to dismiss both as lies. To believe I couldn’t possibly outsmart her and work against her right under her nose.
The shadows thrash in the corner of the room, thickening to the blackest void. My body tenses up as I remember the monsters that stepped out of the darkness in the ballroom. It doesn’t matter that they are supposed to be our allies—they are still terrifying.
Aldrin and Valentine materialize from the shadows’ midst. I suck in a sharp breath as my heart misses a beat, the shock of two men suddenly appearing in my bedroom quickly replaced by the thrill of seeing my mate again. I throw myself into his muscular arms, which wrap tightly around me.
“Hold on, dear heart,” Aldrin murmurs in my ear. “It is a rough ride.”
My stomach bottoms out and my head spins as the shadows engulf us, moving through space. The sensation is like free-falling, weightless, through the blackest abyss. I cling to Aldrin for dear life, my fists bunching up the fabric of his tunic.
I don’t know how he did this for hours or maybe even days on end when he traveled to the Assassins of Belladonna’s Haven of Death. Bile rises up my throat to an unbearable point, but when I think I can take it no longer, our feet finally hit the ground.
Alone, I would have fallen ungracefully on my ass.
Aldrin lands with his legs spread and knees bent to take the impact, holding me up by the waist. He delicately places me on my feet like I am the most precious thing in the world, then puts a hand on either side of my face and lifts my chin so I look up into his eyes.
“In the next days and weeks, we will face our greatest battles, but tonight is just for us.” He leans down and places the softest kiss on my lips.
I want to deepen it, to slide my tongue into his mouth and taste him fully, but he pulls away and glances at Valentine, who raps his fingers against the tree he leans against with impatience.
“I will return to collect you at midnight sharp.” Valentine pulls out his pocket watch, glimpses the time, then snaps it shut.
“And for the love of darkness, please make sure you are wearing clothes.” Inky tendrils materialize around him, rapidly growing then constricting all at once around his form, and he disappears.
I give Aldrin a questioning look, but he just tips his head to indicate our surroundings, a smug grin filling his face. I drag my eyes from him for the first time since arriving and my brain stutters to a stop, trying to process the sight.
A shallow creek gurgles over smoothly polished black stones, steam curling off its surface. The crystal-clear water is illuminated cyan by the many tiny water sprites buzzing through it. The crash of a small waterfall in the near distance promises a deeper pool just beyond the treeline.
Both banks of the slowly flowing creek are covered with pink-capped mushrooms of varying sizes, some as small as my hand and others taller than a building.
I marvel at the megastructures, feeling dwarfed by them.
A constant stream of silvery glitter seems to fall from the burgundy gills of their undersides, clogging the air and floating away on the breeze.
I blink multiple times at all the colors and lights.
Aldrin pulls off his boots and steps into the creek, letting out a small sigh and tipping his head back as the water laps around his ankles. I remove my shoes, wrap my skirts around my arm and join him.
The water is the perfect temperature; warm enough to melt the tension from my sore feet. There is power brimming through it, but the sprites that dart away from my every step are not its source.
“Are these healing waters?” I ask, remembering the pool he brought me to after we first met during a battle.
“You feel it too?” He takes my hand in his. “It is said that the power of the gods hums through these waters.”
“The true gods or the fae gods?” I mock.
“The Tuatha Dé Danann may be lesser gods, shaped and given life by the Creator, ruled over by the Eternals and eventually consumed by the Soul Ripper, but they are still gods,” he chides.
I scrunch up my face. My biological paternal grandfather, Nissien, was Tuatha Dé Danann and it is too much to believe I descend from a deity, even a lesser one.
It feels like a betrayal to my human grandfather Ronan, who raised us, to think of Nissien in that way.
“They are just some powerful, twisted beings that cast themselves as gods and demanded to be worshipped because they kidnapped some humans and bred with them, creating a new race.”
“They did more than that,” Aldrin laughs.
“Yes, perhaps the birth of the high fae was a simple mixing of races, but what about the low fae? The Tuatha Dé Danann combined their essence, maybe even part of their souls, with the waters, trees, forests, the darkness itself, to bring them about. This world was formed from nothing but their magic, and as their power fades from here, this land crumbles to nothingness in great voids.”
The creak deepens and the sound of rushing water intensifies, but I can’t drag my eyes away from Aldrin as he speaks.
“The Tuatha Dé Danann may not be a non-sentient superpower like the Creator that births stars, worlds and life from nothing but raw matter—or its equal counterpart the Soul Ripper, that devours worlds and entire civilizations when it is their time to go, turning them into nothing but fodder for the Creator—but they do have true power. Many who actually believe that our realm is dying think the Tuatha Dé Danann can save us. I’m not so sure it would be worth the price it came with. Come, I want to show you something.”
We crest a rise and the full view of the small valley opens up before us. The sight is breathtakingly beautiful. A smile forms on my lips alongside a lightness in my heart.
There isn’t one tall waterfall dropping into a pool, but many crashing in tiers where multiple creeks combine and drop down a stairway of platforms. There must be a hundred in total, illuminated with that cyan light of the sprites.
The color is even reflected by the steam that rolls off the surface.
More immense pink mushrooms dot the space like oversized umbrellas, but my attention is stolen by the crystals scattered around the shore.
They are long, thin shards with pointed tips, growing in clusters.
The largest is taller than me. A rainbow of colors ripples up and down their surfaces, a hum of power radiating off them.
I turn to Aldrin in wonder. “What are they?”
“Naturally growing plinths. These ones are diamond and can store immense amounts of magic,” he says, tugging me along.
“Why has no one harvested them?” I crane my neck to view more.
Aldrin gives me a sidelong look. “Have you ever tried to break diamond? Let alone magic-reinforced diamond charged by the gods themselves. We have no technology that can do it.”
As we reach the base of the valley, the creek never becomes deeper than the middle of my calves, but Aldrin leads me out of the magical water and along a stone path that is warm beneath my bare feet. There is a trail of fae runes cut into the stone, illuminated green with raw magic.
A low, ornate railing brackets one side of the path and the slate platforms of the hill close in the other side.
Small, domed pavilions dot the pathway that leads to a temple obscured by trees, each housing a large bronze bowl burning with eternal flames.
Those fires are like nothing I can wield.
The magic within them is foreign to me. The yellow tongues within flicker green and purple at their edges.
We cross over an arching bridge that spans the widest river funneling into the main pool and step onto the large stone island that holds the temple.
I expected more from a structure dedicated to the fae gods—something with many great tall rooms, spires and towers, the size of a castle—but this one is just large enough to house a portal and all its plinths within.
It is certainly decorative, with gilded surfaces and rows of open arches and columns.
We enter the temple in silence and pause in the doorway to gaze upon the portal within.
A sense of foreboding creeps over me. This gateway dwarfs its moonstone cousins that lead to the human realm or transport fae within their own.
It is constructed entirely of glittering diamond, with many smooth facets picking up the light, like a gemstone in a ring.
A stone path leads through the chamber to the mouth of the portal, cutting through dense clusters of tall plinth spikes that occupy every available space, covering the entire floor and climbing up the walls. It is like I am standing inside a massive rainbow geode.
I turn to Aldrin. “Why are the plinths so vibrantly colorful and the portal only faintly shimmers, if they are both cut from the same gemstone?”