Yet there was a time we were not together.
I could have swapped the real one for a fake before reuniting with Lyra on the coast. She knew it, and took the chance I had not. That alone should have abated at least some of my anger—toward her, toward Galfrid—but it did not.
“I betray my own father,” I ground out, “to be accused of treachery?”
The Aetherian king’s shoulders sagged. “I should not have done so.”
My eyes widened in surprise. My father would never admit wrongdoing.
Ever.
“I could see her,” he said to his daughter. “I could see her, and nearly touch her, so sure I was that it would work precisely as it had done before.”
Her.
His queen. Mevlida’s mother.
When I thought of her in the past, I had never let myself feel sorry. She had been taken from the king just as our mother had been.
Nay. Not just the same.
Father’s actions were deliberate. More brutal in their intentions, and with the queen enceinte.
“What could have happened?” Marek, the sea captain, asked.
None had any answers.
One by one, we stepped forward. I took the Stone. Queen Nerys took the Pearl. But Galfrid hung back, clearly as devastated as his daughter, who was now in tears in my brother’s arms.
It had not worked.
The Aetherian Gate and portal to the human world remained closed.
31
LYRA
After the chaos of the Gate’s continued closure, the Starfall Glade was precisely what I needed.
A hidden meadow deep in the forest on the edge of Aethralis, some said the veil between realms shimmered in this place at night. At the mountain’s foothills, it was often empty. Aetherians liked to be higher up most often, closer to the sky. As did I, before him…
It only occurred to me that this spot was one of a few on the same elevation as much of Gyoria, as I looked up. The Glade, glowing faintly with falling motes of starfire, remnants of Aetherian energy bleeding into the world, was recreated in the palace. But no recreation could compare to this. The real thing.
“It was not easy to find you.”
I whipped around, not expecting another’s presence. Certainly not his.
I left the Temple first, feeling oddly out of place. As Mev broke down, her hope of returning home, even if temporarily, ensuring her mother knew she was alive and well, dashed, I left word with Issa in case I was needed.
“I told Issa where I was headed.”
He followed my gaze, and though Terran would never admit it, I could tell he was as impressed by the Glade as all those who entered it.
“Elydor’s magic is strong here.”
His tone lacked the edge of anger it had at the Temple.
“There is a history in this place that, any other time, I would share.”
