The Obsidian Crown sits atop a twisted pedestal of onyx forged from the trees themselves, wrapped and pinned by vines. It's as dark as a starless night and looks almost identical to the weapons we source from the volcanic forges of Vyrhal. The crown is inlaid with three starlit shards, like something adorned by gods and goddesses.
Elyssara steps closer, unafraid and commanding. As if sensing her arrival, the vines unbind from the crown and slip down the onyx pedestal.
I’m frozen, not out of fear or apprehension but out of reverence for her sheer power. It’s as if her body remembers something her mind hasn’t caught up to. She reaches out, wrapping her hands gently, humbly, around the crown.
Her hands don’t tremble. She simply lifts the crown without ceremony or fanfare and places it atop her head.She’s fucking beautiful.
Instantly, the grove groans again, but this time, it doesn’t lash out. Every tree bows inward. Every light flares. The groan turns to a rumble—the very ground reorganizing itself in her presence. Even the air crackles in celebration. As if nature itself is kneeling to her.
She turns to me, eyes wide with awe, and light flares from them. Brilliant. Blinding. Divine.
The air ripples with a deluge of energy, fanning out from Elyssara and expanding through The Grove.
Then, she’s gone.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
ELYSSARA
I’m falling.
Tumbling through the sky, free-falling through worlds. Time. Sound. Space. Light.Reality.
All I see is an endless expanse of night sky with a spattering of Stars.
I’m falling, floating through a void, a horizon-less expanse of dark and light, neither here nor there.
Where am I?
I can feel something—someone—brushing at the edges of my mind, trying desperately to find me. But I can’t reach, I can’t find my way to them.
A spark erupts around me, bright and blinding.
The void begins to change, expanding and transforming around me into a scene.
I’m no longer falling—I’mwatching.
The scene comes to life before my eyes.
A young woman—barefoot, hair like mine—runs through a darkened forest. She carries a young child in her arms. The child’s wild russet hair whips in the wind, sticking to the tears on the child’scheek. The woman wears a beautiful gown, smeared with dirt and blood, ripped and tattered. Her eyes dart behind her, her breath panicked and shallow.She’s being hunted.
She stumbles, tripping on the forest floor. She crashes to the ground, holding her child to her chest, and whispers, “Lesara, run. You must run.” She sets the child down with urgency and frantically takes off her silver marriage cuff, shoving it into the child’s hands. “He won’t stop hunting us. The monarchy has fallen—we are a threat to his reign as long as we live. You must disappear. Take this,” she wraps her hands around the child's, cupping the cuff between them. “Keep it. You’ll know when to use it.”
A chill runs through me. The cuff looks like?—
“Now, run! Do not look back, Lesara!”
Lesara. My mother. This is my mother.
My mother looks into the eyes of her own mother, tears running like a stream down her swollen cheeks, but she nods and tucks the cuff into the folds of her dress, lifts her skirts, and runs through the forest without glancing back.
My mother was a Dravari princess. Which makes me?—
The vision shifts.
A great stone chamber unfurls around me—walls carved from black rock veined with silver, lit by the glow of a floating ring of symbols suspended in the air like a constellation. At its center stands a man cloaked in royal violet and ash-gray—Thalmyr. I’d know his face anywhere.The villain of Virellin.
Younger than I expected. And devastatingly handsome.
