But I’d not look back.
Having been introduced to Nerys and Rowan, as we made our way toward the Gate, I watched them interact. All three couples—my brother and Mev, along with the two Thalassari and human couples, the queen with her partner and their escorts—appeared very much in love.
And then there was Lyra and I, at opposite ends of the chamber.
King Galfrid stood before the Gate, every inch the king he had always been, his silver hair gleaming as the last rays of sun filtered through the high-arched windows of the Temple. The carved runes pulsed faintly, as though stirred from centuries of slumber, and the chamber seemed to hold its breath.
“Bring them forth,” Galfrid commanded.
At his word, the relics were carried forward one by one. The Tidal Pearl, shimmering with a light that rolled like waves across its surface, placed reverently into a shallow basin that hadn’t been there earlier. The Wind Crystal, catching even the smallest draft of air, spun with a soft hum as though recognizing the Temple’s vaulted heights.
I closed my hand over the Stone of Mor’Vallis, its weight far heavier than the leather pouch that concealed it. For days, it had whispered to me… but now, in this place, it was utterly silent.
A murmur swept through the gathered delegation. Kael caught my eye beside me and nodded. I took the Stone from its pouch, said a silent apology to the king who had raised us, though not the one who currently ruled Gyoria, and stepped forward.
Reaching Galfrid, about to take Kael’s label of “traitor to Gyoria” a large leap forward in branding myself the same, I handed it over.
Taking it, the Aetherian King Galfrid lifted his hands.
“By the blood of kings and queens, with the artifacts of each clan and the memory of the first sealing, I call balance once more. Let the Gate be opened, that Elydor and the world of humans might be joined.”
The relics answered first. Light sparking from crystal to pearl, pearl to stone, threads of energy weaving a lattice that climbed the arch of the Gate itself. The runes ignited, one after the other, until the ancient doorway blazed with firelight.
My breath caught, though not with awe. The wrongness in my chest grew.
The human, Sir Rowan watched me. He knew something the rest of us did not. What I felt but could not put into words. Something was… amiss.
The chamber filled with light, and then with sound, an unearthly keening, as if the Gate itself cried out against being forced awake, the glow faltered. Stuttered. Sparks leaped from the runes and seared across the floor, scattering the delegation into panicked shouts.
“Hold!” Galfrid roared, straining to keep his hands raised, though the backlash drove him nearly to his knees. “Hold!”
But the Gate would not.
The lattice collapsed in a shiver of sparks, the relics dimmed and silence slammed into the chamber. The door to the human world remained shut, its arch of runes now nothing more than cold marble.
Galfrid lowered his hands, his breath ragged. “It should have worked.”
His eyes swept the assembly, searching for answers.
But none were offered.
I had only questions, but was not the only one. Everyone began to speak at once, asking Galfrid what he had done differently this time. He insisted the ritual was exactly the same. But then his gaze rested on me.
“Your father offered an imitation when he returned the stolen Wind Crystal to Aetheria.”
Anger coursed through me at the unveiled accusation, but Kael moved before I could respond. He stood at my side, his hand on my wrist, steadying it.
“My brother did not bring an imitation Stone. I can verify that it is the real one.”
Galfrid’s eyes softened, though slightly. “He fooled you once.”
While it was true our father had sent Kael on a mission to return the Crystal with a fake, my brother not knowing it at the time, his accusation resonated as another insult.
“You malign us both?—”
This time, it was Lyra who interrupted.
“I was with him,” she said on the other side of me. “When he retried it. That is the real Stone.”
