Let the panic begin.
All desire I’d felt immediately evaporated as the nerves Braxton had originally expected to find in me crashed into my chest like a wild sea storm. My stomach tightened when our ride landed, and my pulse began to race. I wasn’t really scared, but I was meeting the woman who had given birth not only to the salvation of Caelisium, the only person who could finally help me bring freedom to our realm, but to the man I loved more than anything.
A man who proved to me, without even knowing it, that true love not only existed, but it was worth everything. A love that came to me after I vowed never to seek it… One that I secretly never believed I deserved.
She wasthePrincess of Caelisium, and thanks to her and the Harbinger of Justice, the Gods’ chosen royal line was secure with Braxton—the first pure-hearted Devenish in over two centuries. All my hopes for a new world rested on him fighting this war until the end with me.
At the very least, I owed her my deepest thanks; at the most, I owed her my very future and happiness. A future I fought for but was never certain I could have, and never wanted as desperately as I did now.
Taking a settling breath, I stood on Tharion’s talon, letting him lower Braxton and me to the ground while both Kingston and Imogen jumped off his back, bouncing onto the sand. The small lake where I found my mate after he discovered his father was the Harbinger reflected the moonlight before us, surrounded by a small sand shore at the edge of the forest.
“Is this the entrance to theLake of Tranquility?” Imogen asked, her voice holding a hint of confusion while she walked with my guardian to our side. Tharion stretched behind us, shaking the kinks off his back.
“Not exactly.” Braxton’s brow furrowed. “There isn’t a physical entrance to it. This just feels like the most natural place to transition… You’ll see,” he added when we all frowned at him, and then his attention shifted to his Dragon. “Protect their bodies while they are invited. With your life if necessary.”
Concern tightened my stomach even more with his words, especially when Tharion nodded and curled around us, his immense form half lying on the entrance to the forest and half on the sandy shore as he closed the circle—his head resting over the tip of his tail.
Braxton turned to the lake, his hand holding mine as he did. “Mom, I’m here.” After a few moon-seconds, a loving smile captured his face, the only indication that something had changed. “I need to talk to you, and I’d like them with us. Can you invite them in?”
Our gazes curiously searched the space he focused on, yet once Kingston, Imogen, and I exchanged a glance, we confirmed none of us saw anything more than sparkling water under the darkened sky.
“Thank you, Mom.” Tuning to face us once more, Brax addressed the others. “Please sit and rest your backs against Tharion’s side. You’ll feel lightheaded at first, like everything is spinning around you and lose consciousness after that, but it is only temporary. I promise. That’s why it’s better if you sit down,” he specified, noticing the hesitance in all of our faces.
With a nod, my guardian finally conceded, taking his place against Tharion’s side. Imogen followed, but before I could try to sit, the trees and lake whirled before my eyes. An uncomfortable heat flushed my skin, causing dizziness to rush through me, and the floor was suddenly pulled from under me. I instinctively tried to hold on to something, to regain my balance, but soon I realized I didn’t need to…
I was already secure in Braxton’s strong embrace.
“I’ve got you,” he promised with a sexy tilt of his mouth, brushing it against mine. “I always will.”
The words echoed through my mind with his kiss, and my fingers dug into the muscles of his arms, trying desperately to hold on because I was falling. My mind knew he was still holding me fiercely to him, and yet, I was tumbling into the darkness. Pulled out of my body by a force I wasn’t strong enough to fight.
Just when I expected my back to hit the ground, I woke up on the sandy beach, but my mate was nowhere to be found.
The lulling sound of waves washing over the shore reached me while my senses adjusted to my new reality, except, I couldn’t really call it that. The sky above me was light as morning, white and pink-hued clouds slowly drifting along when I blinked, but a soft, almost hazy glaze covered everything I saw. Like a dream.
Was this a dream? My mind seemed clear enough, so it couldn’t be. Could it?
Placing my hands on the buttery sand, I pushed myself up, glancing around me. The landscape staring back at me wasn’t the same beach where we had just stood, no. It was the most beautiful place I’d ever seen, and that was saying something when your homeland was Caelisium.
Slowly, I stood, testing my balance, but the dizziness that had pulled me under was fully gone. So was the weight of my body. I could stand, I could walk, but the weight of my muscles, the density my form usually carried was missing. Maybe this was in fact a fantasy.
Or perhaps, right now, I was just a spirit. A soul that could feel the blessings this place exuded.
This was it. The one place we all hoped to be worthy enough to reach after our lives were over.The Lake of Tranquility. The place where I was certain my parents, my aunt, and everyone we had ever loved and lost now found peace.
The soft lulling of the waves became louder the more I immersed myself in it, a gentle breeze caressing my skin as a sliver of the same peace my loved ones felt coursed through me. For a moment, all the burden was taken from my soul. The weight of responsibility I had long carried lifted from my shoulders. All buried sadness and repressed sorrow vanished, letting the hardened parts of my heart soften once more, giving way to a version of myself I hadn’t yet had the privilege of meeting.
I was justme.
ThemeI longed to one day become and nurture, until the time arrived when I could no longer remember who I was once forced to be.
Serene and soothing, the wind swirled around me again, and I welcomed it. Lifting my gaze to the untroubled sky, I breathed the scent of salt and sea deeply, feeling its lighthearted warmth reach the forgotten corners of my being. Feeling lighter than I had ever felt.
“Welcome, Evanna Skyborne. Queen of the People and daughter of my dear, dear friends.”
The voice rang like soft bells in the distance, and I opened my eyes, turning around to find an ethereal figure standing before me.
A goddess. She had to be.
