Exhausted, Taryn sat slumped against a tree across from Airess later that night. He took out one of those cigars he had stolen and lit the butt with thefyre he had made.
Airess leaned against her own tree as she looked at him, a sly smile on her face. “Still don’t believe in dark spirits now?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Taryn said, eyes rolling as he exhaled a plume of smoke into the night. “Very funny, Haeleth.”
Chapter 21
‘I heard the Lucien twins attempted to recreate their own version of Tevye after what you did, but the spell went wrong. The Gods turned them into demons as retribution.’
— Written correspondence from Pierce Moros to Evyen Deyanira
Airess
It was entirely too ironic that they had no trouble finding their way out of The Twins after Taryn’s horrible dream and the fight with the beast. It was as if they were being held there by a force, waiting to show him the vision he saw while dreamwalking, only letting them out once he had awoken.
She had seen the fear in Taryn’s eyes upon his waking, knowing something had truly terrified him.
“It was – it wasinsane,” Taryn said as he relayed the contents of his dream with a shaky breath. “It was a memory, but it wasn’t mine. And thetwin demons–they touched my fuckingfaceand I couldn’t do a thingabout it. I was completely paralyzed in my dreamform.”
“What did you see? Who’s memory?” Airess pressed, her voice low as their horses trekked through the jagged switchbacks of the unfamiliar mountainland. The air was thick with the scent of damp moss, and fresh rainfall dripped off the canopy of leaves overhead. Never once had she ever been paralyzed in her dreamform. It sounded terrifying.
“I don’t know who they were, but they were dressed in ancient robes. There were two people. One was an Elven male–Evyen was his name, I believe. The other was a Fae female. He called her Tinyrah. It seemed as if… they were lovers, and Evyen betrayed her. He pulled out this freshly bloodied crystal blade, stabbed it into the ground, and the world exploded. I don’t know how else to describe it.”
Airess had never heard of those names before, but she wasn’t surprised the dreamworld had shown him something like this. It wasn’t uncommon to observe random memories while dreamwalking.
“What do you mean the world exploded?”
Taryn shook his head. “Evyen had done something dark. Something powerful, and Tinyrah didn’t want it to happen. He had done it anyway. He said–” Taryn looked up to the sky and bit his lip, as if recalling the memory. “He saidwe can create a world we both want to live in.”
“Do you think they were The Twin demons?” Airess asked, trying her best to piece together his dream.
“No,” Taryn answered assuredly. “I don’t think they were. At the end of my dream, those demons were trying to emulate what Evyen had done. It was as if they were trying to recreate whatever dark Magick he had attained.”
Airess’ intuition told her that this memory was important, something she needed to pay attention to. If The Twins were able to dreamwalk, what were they trying to tell Taryn?
“What do you think it means?”
“I don’t know,” Taryn said. “But it felt like a warning.”
Over the following week, Airess and Taryn had traveled from dusk until dawn to put as much distance as they could from The Guild and the Lucien soldiers who were no doubt also on their trail.
In her spare time, she tried wielding her Magick when she could, but it felt impossible. This left her more frustrated, how was she able to wield so much power when they were bound in chains, or when she felt extreme fear?
At this point, Airess would do more damage with a dagger than her own power, and that wasn’t saying much, considering Taryn was still only verbally teaching herthe basics.
During their travels she had learned more about Taryn. Slowly, he began to open up to her. She still didn’t know much about his past or how he came to live in Luciena, but she did learn his affinity for science and the heavens above.
At night before they fell asleep, they would lay on their backs so they could face the moon and stars. Every night Taryn would share stories he knew about the constellations. Some nights, he would retell facts he had learned previously from the library books he’d read in the past. Other nights he would stare at the moon and question their vast existence. Whatever it was he had to say, Airess found herself looking forward to his little lessons.
Tonight he pointed to the stars. “You see that one? Just a little to the left.”
“I see it. The stars that look like a half circle?”
“Yes.” Taryn nodded in Airess’ peripheral, his deep voice rich. “But look closer. It’s not just a half circle, there are points on the top that resemble a crown.Yuleon’s Crown, my grandmother called it. Legend says it’s the crown of the five main Gods written in the stars, hence all five points of the crown. Yuleon, the God of Gods, froze the Originals within time and space as a result of the five God’s catastrophic rule here on earth.”
“I’ve never heard of that story or theGod of Gods. Is that another part of unspoken lore within Luciena?”
Taryn turned his head to look at her, his silver eyes glowing in the night. “It’s unspoken in LucienaandRune. My grandmother told me it is a long-forgotten history.”
