I felt rather than saw Torin do the same with his Water Magic. Immediately, the pressure in the air abated, and the wind died with a satisfied sigh.
Cracking my eyes open, I gazed at the sky just as a drop of water hit my exposed skin. I flinched, surprised to see I was able to withdraw my hands from the ground.
Searching deep inside my soul, I still felt four wells of power, though they were considerably less bright and much shallower than before.
I feltright. Whole. Like the deepest wells were never meant to belong to me—that I’d borrowed them for a time and was finally able to give them back to their rightful master.
Meru agreed, a rumble of thunder accompanying the pounding rain as the godly plane was revived once more.
Torin crawled across the ground until we were shoulder to shoulder. He reached out an arm and pulled me desperately to his side, nuzzling his face into my neck as we watched Meru heal.
Green returned, the once-cracked landscape now teeming with life. The forest that was once sticks and calcified trunks shed its disease and flourishedonce more. The sky brightened to reveal stars and constellations I’d never seen before. I gasped at the changes; at the beasts of legend that seemed to appear from nowhere, at the mountain as it healed, at the lake at the mountain’s base that filled with water so crystal it was nearly translucent.
“Well done, my Children,” Fate remarked with a rumble that I felt in the ground. The enigmatic immortal being was nowhere to be found, and I released a breath I didn’t realize I’d held.
I’d had enough of Fate for the rest of my lifetime.
“Stay for as long as you need, my Children. Once you leave this place, you will not come back. Meru is healed, Elyria is safe, the magic is repaired. You have earned your rest, godlings.Thank you.”
His words hung in the air that was simultaneously cold and warm. Like the afternoon of a spring day as it bleeds into early summer.
With a sigh, I placed my palm on Torin’s leg, both of us silent as we basked in the beauty of Meru and remembered the sacrifices made to make it so.
“Where to now?” Torin asked after a time, pressing a delicate kiss behind my ear. I shivered at the contact, yet was still unable to pull my eyes from the nearly unbelievable scene.
“Home,” I said.
“And where is that, El?”
I paused, lost in thought, my nails lightly scratching Torin’s beard. “Wherever you are,” I admitted softly. “Perhaps a place that needs to be healed like this. A place where we can simply be, can rest. A place with no more heartbreak, no more war. A home so far away from everything that it feels like we’re here—in another realm entirely.”
“A place where you can have that goat you asked for?” he teased lightly.
I laughed long and loud at that—pleased that he remembered an offhanded drunken admittance.
“Yes. And a goat,” I conceded, my body still vibrating with mirth.
“Sounds like a dream,” Torin whispered against my skin, peppering it with kisses once more.
It did. But, for the first time ever, it felt obtainable.
There, surrounded by a world teeming with new life while the stench of death still clung to my skin, I celebrated with my husband, our bodies singing a symphony only we could hear, and desperately clung to the hope of my dreams.
After all, Torin was once just that.
Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Two
Folami
At the behest of an exhausted Faylinn and Rohak, Ilyas, Lex, and I reluctantly left behind the bloodied and pockmarked hills of Deucena in favor of a trek northward to Alvor in search of the missing member of our quad.
And my daughter.
Despite the anticipation that hung heavy between us during our silent return, I was under no illusion that the people that we’d find in Alvor were the same as those we left behind.
War changed everyone—some in ways that were more obvious than others.
All I wanted was to clutch my little girl to me once more; to feel her soft breath against my neck as her ear pressed against my heart to lull her into a soft and peaceful sleep. To feel her little arms as they stretched around my back and stroked my skin in comfort; to stick my nose into her small, coarse braids and inhale the scent of lavender and oat—the smell of home.
