The irony of it all was that she spent her days diagnosing pain and injury in others.
Yet she missed the freakin’ gospel in her face, mistaking his snake oil salesman glam for commitment and his sweet-talking for eternal promises.
Talk about being blind to his game.
This hard fact stabbed at her heart deeper than the breakup.
Before Leon, she’d endured three disastrous relationships.
Back then, Sheba swore she would never be that woman again, the one who fell for the instant high of a love-bombing handsome man.
She’d vowed never to waste months of energy on a man who didn’t respect her enough to keep his hands to himself.
Her soul burned, scorched by yet another failed attempt at finding her forever love.
She pressed her forehead to the plexiglass as the cruiser soared, banking over a glittering dark blue sea, slicing through the clouds.
Sheba wiped the hot, angry tracks of tears from her cheeks.
She swore one last oath, a promise to her broken spirit: never would she be a fool in love, and never would she let her guard and her heart down again.
2
The Echo of Ages
Hestood on the edge of the plateau, eyes on the morning star searing through the velvet dark, its singular light piercing the dawn skyline.
A brutal wind tore across the high grass at the foot of the cliffs, slicing and flattening the hills in rolling, violent swells.
The land heaved between mountain and sea, feral and wild.
Bluffs and precipices jutted under the surf like broken teeth, blackened and slick with spray, while gulls screamed themselves hoarse into the salted air.
Farther inland, ridge lines whetted into pointed blue spines, each peak carved by wild storms, every hollow a trap where water turned into ice overnight.
Autumn held the rugged coastline in a hard, freezing grip.
The waters beyond the beach stretched out as a shattered crystal world, a vast ice mosaic where the sea ice had splintered into panes of teal and translucent white, stacking against the shore like the ruins of a fallen winter cathedral.
Far beyond to the north, the ocean hammered the bedrock in a relentless cadence, each strike detonating into white plumes that rose along the cliff face before tearing apart.
The wind blew with relentless force; the cold burned, lips went numb, and cheeks stung raw beneath it.
This was a terrain that took payment in small wounds, from salt on the tongue, to gales scraping skin.
It forged strength without ceremony.
You either braced against it and survived, or you bent and broke.
Hislone figure moved through the gale, a dark, sinewed silhouette slipping over the landscape like a wraith between gusts as if the wind parted for him.
Long, black hair streamed loose to his waist, the strands stiff, matching his beard, threaded with frost.
Leather necklaces creaked at his throat and wrapped his veined wrists.
Slow-moving gold glyphs ghosted over his shoulders beneath a heavy ash-gray cloak, darkened by ocean spray.
The staff in his hand rested there in his grip, his expression serene though nothing about him was careless; each step and every pause made with intention.
