Rosamond had been the whole reason that we had gone into the Maison realm a year ago in the first place. And once we found her, I woke after healing to find her sitting on my bed petting Braelynn.
I still remembered my shock at seeing a cat with wings, one that I would learn was actually my best friend. Rosamond had given me a book and basically told me that knowledge was power. Or something like that. My mind had been a little full and bleary at that point after coming back from the dead. And so, I had read up on the history of the Maisons.
At least, the one the Lumiére wrote. I didn’t know where Rosamond had gotten such a book since we had been in the Obscurité Kingdom when I saw her last.
The Lumiére and the Obscurité were two halves of a whole. Once, they had been one realm of five territories, five elements. As time passed, those territories had turned into two large kingdoms with the Spirit territory slicing between them. Those kingdoms had warred, and during the Great Fall, a war to end all wars, the kings of each kingdom had died, leaving their power to their children.
I had met one of those children, Cameo, the former queen of the Obscurité.
She had died to protect me. I could still remember the look in her eyes at the sacrifice I knew she had made. Because she hadn’t been a bad person. She had just been trying to save her people in the only way she knew how, even if she hadn’t seen the betrayal right in front of her that undermined every move she made. And when she died, she did so because her knight had thrust power into her, a blow meant to kill me. She had sacrificed herself for me, and I would never forget that.
Sometimes, I woke up screaming, thinking that the power was inside me. Watching as Cameo stood over my corpse. I lay blinking, wondering why I was there at all.
But I remembered that queen, and I would always do so. And I would never forget her son, the current king of the Obscurité.
Easton.
The boy who had saved my life. The one I knew would probably never forgive me for what had happened to his mother. But he was the one who had made me a promise to come back as soon as I needed him.
I just didn’t know what any of that meant.
The Maison realm was fracturing. The crystals that made up each realm and helped to bring in the Wielding powers of the elements and then push them out into the realm’s people had either been ill-used or broken during the Fall. The history had written it one way, but I had seen them another when I watched the knight manifest his magic in an evil and putrid way.
Again, I didn’t know if what Rosamond’s history book said was the actual truth or just one side of the war.
Wasn’t there a saying that the truth of history is only with those who wrote it? Because there’s always another side to the story.
It was said that the King of Obscurité—the old one, Cameo’s father and Easton’s grandfather—had broken many rules. That he had tried to take over the entire realm and forced the King of Lumiére into fighting when he didn’t want to. The resulting war had killed thousands—maybe even millions in the end.
And since the Maisons were long-lived, a lot of the warriors who had been alive during the Fall over five hundred years ago were still around. That history was always within them.
It was a lot for me to take in and deal with, yet I was smack in the center of it.
Because that was another tale, another myth. A story of someone called the Spirit Priestess. One who was supposed to unite the kingdoms and the territories under one banner. The history just didn’t actually lay out how that should happen.
As the supposedly foretold Spirit Priestess, I would’ve liked some instruction. Maybe even a note. A to-do list of what I was supposed to accomplish in order to save my friends and so many people that I did not know.
Because with every single day that passed as I sat in my university classes, working towards my history major—one that I didn’t even know I really wanted—I knew I didn’t belong. I had only picked the major because I hadn’t been able to choose anything else. I wasn’t going to be a scientist, I wasn’t going to be a doctor. I wasn’t going to be a lawyer. The only thing I could do was look back. Pore over the histories and wonder how people got through such tragedies, overcame the wars that devastated civilizations. Because maybe there was an answer for me with regards to the Maison realm in what the people of my world had done. Maybe there was something in what was already written that could tell me what was to come.
Or maybe I was just losing my mind and needed to go back to the place I thought would be the end of me.
Braelynn tapped my chin again, and I looked down at her.
“What?”
In answer, the doorbell rang, and I shook my head.
“You’re scaring me now.” I swore Braelynn shrugged, not that a cat could actually shrug, but her little tail twitch thing told me something. I ignored her and went to the door, knowing who it would be.
Because, after all, I only had one friend these days.
“Alura.”
“It’s time.”
I blinked.
“It’s time?”
“Do you remember what Rosamond said? She told you to trust me.”
I nodded, letting Alura in.
Rhodes had written to me, telling me what he was doing in his realm. After the fight with the knight in the Obscurité Kingdom, he had gone back to his court, called by his father and uncle. His uncle was the king of the Lumiére, his father the Lord of Water. And, apparently, his grandfather, his mother’s father, was the Lord of Air. Rhodes, the boy I had fallen for, the one who was apparently not my soulmate despite what I had thought, despite what he’d thought, had some major connections.
He was royal blood, through and through.
And I was just human. A human who had unlocked two of the five elements within herself.
My hands twitched, and I looked down at my fingertips. I could still Wield in this realm and had been practicing with Alura for the past year.
It wasn’t the training that I truly needed, though, since she wasn’t an Air or an Earth Wielder. Those were the two elements I had, and that meant that Alura had one of the other three Wielding elements. Not that she told me what they were. She didn’t show me anything, just helped me focus so I didn’t blow anything up while we were in the forest of the foothills on the Rocky Mountains. It was the only place I could safely practice my Wielding without anyone seeing.
It just wasn’t the same as in the Maison realm.
Alura tapped my bracelet, the one she had given me. It was a silver chain with tiny little charms on it. Each one represented an element. Alura had told me it was for protection, but I didn’t know exactly what that meant.
Rosamond had written to me, just like Rhodes had, and told me to trust Alura. So, I did. And I wore the bracelet. And packed and repacked, knowing that I would be going back to the Maison realm any day now.
When Alura looked me in the eyes, I knew that day was today.
I had to go back to the Maison realm. Maybe I would be going back to Rhodes. Perhaps I would be going back to Easton’s kingdom.
Two kingdoms needed me, and I had friends—or at least people I knew—in each.
The time had come.
There was no holding back any longer.
Chapter Three
I didn’t know exactly where we were going or who we were about to meet, only that this was the start of a new beginning. Or perhaps it was the continuation of the start I had run from when I needed to learn to breathe again.