“Good.” Keena smiled as she flew up the stone steps of the circular platform. “Then we must call on House Norrlen.”
“Call?” Dyna followed her.
Keena landed on the podium and nodded to the small golden plate in the middle, affixed with a perfect circular groove. “The White Woods is a haven to all elves, and here they call for aid.”
“How?” he asked.
“With their signet.”
Gasping softly, Lucenna glanced down at Rawn’s ring.
“Put it in, lass,” Klyde suggested.
Zev held his breath as they watched her press the ring into the groove. It flared green with magic and lit up the runes carved into the stone circle. The light pulsed three times before fading away.
All fell silent but the trickle of water and the distant chirp of birds.
“What now?” he asked.
Keena nodded. “Now we wait.”
Zev had been thinkinga lot about fate lately. He questioned the future and how much of it was determined by what steps they took versus divine intervention. As they sat around the fire listening to Dyna share what she had been up to since she jumped through the Druid’s Door, Zev didn’t feel as though he was any closer to an answer.
He traced the faded illustration of an ancient key on the scroll she had shown him. The Druid knew this would happen. He knew Rawn would be captured and that they would go after him. But was it because he gave this task to Dyna, or had he merely taken advantage of this outcome?
Thinking about it only made Zev’s head spin.
The others had not known how to react to it either. Klyde and Lucenna had long fallen asleep after their meal as the sun began to descend. Keena had flown off somewhere to sleep in the trees.
Zev was too restless to sleep, but he could see the exhaustion weighing on his cousin. It hovered over her slumped shoulders and in the line of her features. “Rest,” he told her softly. We will need it for the journey to come.”
Whoever they were waiting on was going to arrive by sunrise.
Dyna laid down on her side in the plush bedding of moss and stared at the fire. “Tarn is dead,” she whispered.
Zev had wondered. That meant Von succeeded.
Good riddance.
“I … tried to kill him,” Dyna continued. “I wanted it to be me. After everything he had done, I wanted to watch the life bleed out of his eyes. I thought if I took his life, I could become something different. Someone stronger. Someone who wasn’t afraid of ever being hurt again. It took holding a dagger at his neck to realize Tarn’s path wasn’t my own. Yet I still left him to burn alive … because a quick death would have been too easy.”
Well, he couldn’t fault her for that. Zev wouldn’t have made a dissimilar choice.
“I’m a monster now, aren’t I?” She stared at the fire blankly. “I have claws and fangs, and it’s made me bloodthirsty.”
It wasn’t that it made her bloodthirsty, but that she had to fall back on the part of her that was pure preservation.
As Zev had to do when he brought out the Other. A prickling sensation crawled over his skin at the reminder. He had yet to really process that he had been able to do that.
To call out the beast from within.
And it had answered.
“You’re not a monster, Dyna,” Zev said, draping a blanket around her. He sighed, and she read the guilt on his face. He should have known she was suffering. “You want to kill something inside of you. That perhaps will be your greatest enemy … and your best friend. With time, you will come to realize it’s the one thing that is keeping you going.”
That’s what his Madness had been, in a sense.
It kept him alive.
