I do not need him.Which was precisely what I had said when I started out from our room. His room. The one where I was held pseudo-captive.
Isanara had laughed at me. Or whatever word there was for an adolescent dragon’s sound of absolute mockery.
Should I stay close in case you get lost?
I wanted her to stay close because she chose to. She had been gone more than with me in the last few days. At first, I’d done exactly as the Dark God said and lied to myself. But it was getting harder to disguise the feeling in my chest when Isanara disappeared through the window each morning and didnot return until nightfall. In the forest between the gates, she’d scarcely left my side. Since we’d arrived at Balar Shan, I’d barely seen her.
I hoped she was not regretting choosing me.
The bond between familiar and witch was eternal, and Isanara was little more than a child. If she decided she’d chosen poorly, the next few thousand years would be torture for both of us.
And my heart would break.
Are you hungry?I asked her.
Always.
Then do not come back yet,I told her, even though it made my chest ache.
At least when she was not in the castle, I did not worry about her as much. There were plenty of terrors left in Velora, but Isanara’s fangs and talons were bigger than most of them.
She did not speak again. With her went the distraction she’d provided. I’d navigated a few more turns by instinct. Now I had the attention to question myself again. Was this really the way we’d gone? The pull of power had been so intense that I had barely been able to walk, let alone remember the route. But the corridor looked vaguely familiar.
My foot caught on a broken brick, and I stumbled forward, crashing into the wall. At least now I knew that I was going in the right direction.
Another turn, one more, and I was there, staring down the golden filigree door with its demolished locking mechanism. It had not been repaired. I wondered if there were any fae in the castle with enough magic left to manage it. Gold was an ore; manipulating it was within both Aurienna and Elodie’s earth bind. All it would have taken was a well-crafted spell. Yet it was still broken.
I pushed gently on the door. It gave easily.
Either my sister witches were too busy to spare the time, or Maura felt it was not necessary. The fae were usually the ones accused of hubris… but maybe the witches had more in common with them than we liked to admit.
The pentagram was still there, but the blood was gone. Nobody lay in the center. The candles that had encircled the perimeter of the suite’s antechamber were dark. No one spoke. In the Coven Lands, we would all be asleep. But as I moved deeper into the set of connecting rooms, I heard none of the telltale markers of sleep.
Only after my resurrection did I realize that the idea of silence in sleep was a lie. My sharpened senses picked up every rustle of a bedsheet, the crack of a joint as someone shifted positions. The only true silence came from death—and for the resurrected, there was no escape at all.
But as I listened at one doorway and then the next, I heard only one sound. It started as a faint hiss, then became a rustle. By the time I reached the last of the four connected rooms—a bedroom with a small table and two chairs before a tiny fire—I knew what I would see.
Aurienna might be in a room without sunlight, on the edge of a continent cursed to wither away in an eternal winter. But she had summoned spring.
She sat in one of the chairs at the center of an oasis of green. Thick vines encircled the wooden legs, only to spurt thick, rustling leaves and then, a moment later, bursting, vibrant blooms.
I took a deep breath, inhaling the precious scent of flowers and life. Auri’s power had always been so beautiful. Logically, I knew it could be dangerous as well. She could strangle someone with those same vines that decorated the chairs. But after nearly four hundred years on Velora, the oasis of life was beautifully overwhelming.
“Do you have a favorite?”
I blinked. “A favorite?”
Auri remained in her chair, surrounded by her flowers. Unthreatened by my arrival. Or maybe all of these blooms and vines would turn on me if I tried anything.
“A favorite flower,” Auri clarified.
“Oh.” I had not seen a flower growing naturally in hundreds of years. My mother had kept a garden. Like my childhood, it had been left fallow with her death. But there were a few flowers that came back year after year. I remembered asking my elder sister, Rylynn, if they were magic. “Tulips,” I said.
A smile curved Auri’s generous mouth. She twirled her finger, gently coaxing a vine forward from where it had spread across the small, round tabletop. Her dark auburn brows knit together as she concentrated. Slowly, the shape of the vine changed. The deep emerald paled to a softer green. Long, elegant leaves stretch upward, and a single bud emerged from between them. Before my eyes, she grew a single, perfect, pink tulip.
“Oh.” This time, the word felt different. Fragile. Suddenly, I felt fragile, too. I crossed the room to the table, careful to avoid stepping on any of the vines she’d grown.
I stared at the bloom. The ones in my mother’s garden had been like this in the beginning. I remembered the vibrant blooms in early spring, the size of my entire young hand. By the time I stumbled into the woods and met my death in a frozen stream, they were scraggly, said buds no bigger than my thumb.
