Braelynn was never going to college now. She had lost that opportunity when she came with me into the Maison realm to see what my dreams were about.
I had known she was following her own path, figuring out why she felt as if she didn’t belong either. But in the end…in the end, it was my fault that she was dead. Or at least changed. And my ex?
She was never coming back either.
She couldn’t.
Brae bumped my chin with the top of her head, and I looked down to see her glaring at me as if she knew where my thoughts had gone.
“You can’t really read my thoughts, can you?” I asked.
She just gave me a look that said she could do whatever she wanted and to bow before her regalness. Okay, maybe that was just the look of a cat in general. I liked felines, though the idea that this cat happened to be my best friend was still a little weird.
I mean, once you clean your bestie’s litter box, there’s no going back. And let’s not get started on the hairballs and the self-cleaning, and everything else that comes with being a cat.
I didn’t think Braelynn as a cat could actually read my thoughts, but sometimes it sure seemed like it. I forgot, when I wasn’t thinking too closely about it, that she wasn’t actually a cat. Nor was she human anymore. It was this weird dichotomy where I felt like I was still speaking to my friend even though she couldn’t talk back.
I slipped my go-bag into the closet, wondering when I would finally come back for it. It wasn’t like I could just venture into the Maison realm and know that I would be safe. When Easton had dropped me off here, he hadn’t told me how I could get in contact with him again, only that he would be here for me when I was ready.
That was so not helpful, but I had been a little shaken about the fact that not only was my best friend dead, at least as I had known her, I had died. Though the Spirit Wielders had somehow helped me out of that.
Oh, and the boy that I had thought was my soulmate, Rhodes? As it turned out, he wasn’t my soulmate at all, and that meant he couldn’t actually be with me. Or maybe he could be with me, but we weren’t actually talking to each other beyond the letters that he wrote to me that Alura brought. I wrote him too, and Alura passed the messages on, as well as the ones I wrote to Rosamond, though I had no idea how she did it.
It was all so confusing, and I hadn’t asked Easton more about the rules. I only knew that I could go back. I just didn’t know how or when.
When Alura had come to the house a week after I came home, devastated, broken, and having to act like everything was normal, I had taken it as par for the course. Of course, a Wielder would be watching over me, making sure I didn’t end up in harm’s way like I tended to do these days.
She had been the one I’d seen the day before everything changed. She’d been talking to Rhodes and Rosamond about something—me, most likely—and hadn’t gone hiking with us when the Neg had tried to kill me, thus starting everything. She’d stayed behind, saying that it wasn’t her time yet. She was the most mystical girl I’d ever met, with long hair that seemed to flow in the wind just like Rosamond’s did. I didn’t know what kind of Wielder Alura was, only that she was one, and have been living in the human realm for some time. I didn’t know why she was here. And, honestly, I didn’t know if I should or would ask.
With the way the Maison realm was breaking, each territory slowly fighting each other before they fought against the kingdom itself, I knew there had to be people fleeing. It wasn’t safe for everybody back there anymore. So, retreating to a realm where there wasn’t any magic or Wielding might be the safest place for them.
But when Alura had shown up on my doorstep with a note from Rosamond in her hands, saying that, yes, she was a Wielder and that she was here to answer my questions, I figured I should listen. Not that Alura had answered any of my inquiries. Not really. She was good at mumbling and going on and on about history and random things, but she didn’t really answer any specific queries I made.
It was like one of those mystical orbs that told you things in riddles and fortunes and then left you to try and figure them out on your own.
I’d never been good with riddles, but I had a feeling if I were going to continue down this path, I should figure out exactly how to learn that talent.
I hadn’t been sitting on my hands the entire year, though.
Easton had spelled my parents to make them think that I hadn’t been gone for as long as I had. I didn’t know how he’d done it, but he’d explained that he had extra gifts that came with his bloodline. The same with Rosamond and the others since they were of the Lumiére Kingdom. Easton had made it seem to my mom and dad like I had been gone for a weekend with the girls, and that everything was just fine. He’d also spelled Emory’s and Braelynn’s parents so they wouldn’t miss their daughters because Braelynn wasn’t the same as she had been before, and I knew there was no going back to the girl with the soft smiles. The one that had started to fall in love with a Lumiére warrior named Luken.
And Emory…I tried not to think about Emory.
She had been my ex-girlfriend, and then my friend, but had slowly turned into my enemy. That process had begun long before we learned that there were such things as Wielders and realms and the fact that I was the prophesied Spirit Priestess.
She had begun to hate me and tried to control me way before we stepped into the Maison realm.
When she tried to go off on her own, attempted to come back home because she hadn’t liked what I was becoming—or so she’d said—she had been kidnapped. Taken.
I sucked in a breath and tried not to think about that. Except it was all I thought about sometimes. I hadn’t known what had happened to her, and I didn’t know where she was now. I only knew that once we entered the Fire territory and met with the lord and lady of that estate, Emory had shown up, chained and screaming profanities and evil things. At me.
She’d seemed to truly hate me, and clearly wanted me dead. I just didn’t know why.
Someone had thrust Wielding magic into her, and it had twisted her. She might’ve started warping on her own, but the magic had secured that final lock, turned that last key. Now, she was some sort of being that could suck out Wielding and hurt others.
The last time I saw her, I had thought she died. Instead, she’d just been poofed into the dungeon of the Fire Estate.
I had been fighting my own war at the time, my own battles, and I hadn’t been able to go back for her—not that I thought she would have accepted my help.
Though getting a sword thrust through your gut so you could feel every single slice of the blade, every bit of heat and tiny fraction of change and movement sort of made it so that you didn’t think about much of anything except for the pain.
After, I had run away because I didn’t know how to save her. And, honestly, I hadn’t known how to save myself either.
But in the year that I’d been back, I had studied the large tome that Rhodes’ older sister—by at least a couple of centuries—had given me. Rosamond had told me to learn my history, and so I had.
I shook my head. “Sometimes, it kind of blows my mind that everybody is so much older than us,” I said quietly. “Don’t you think, Braelynn?”
Braelynn gave me sort of a nod. I had to think it was a nod and not just like a cat sneeze or something. Yes, I was talking to my cat, like people with normal cats did every day. And those cats answered back with meows and gestures. My cat just happened to be a former human.