It might seem odd for me to so blindly trust Alura after everything that had happened. But then again, when I truly thought about it, it didn’t. I knew Alura was a Wielder and someone that Rosamond trusted. I had almost sacrificed everything to find Rosamond after the Obscurité knight and his Negs had taken her, and I would still do whatever I could to help her.
I trusted her because her mere presence demanded it. She’d saved me, even if I hadn’t known it at the time. It had been a year since I saw any of the others. Nearly a full three hundred and sixty-five days, yet I could still feel the connection that I had to Rhodes and even Rosamond.
I rubbed my hand on my chest, annoyed with myself for even thinking about that connection to Rhodes. Because it wasn’t really true, was it?
Maybe it was because the others thought I was the prophesied Spirit Priestess. Something I was beginning to believe myself. That could have been why I’d felt such a strong pull towards Rhodes at the beginning. And maybe that was why I felt like I could truly trust and be friends with Rosamond.
Before I found out about any of the world beyond mine, I had been inexplicably pulled to Rosamond. Emory and Braelynn had been ready to move on with the rest of their lives. They had made choices about colleges and majors that had nothing to do with me. And I had understood that. Because growing up meant making the hard choices and figuring out who you were as an adult.
But I hadn’t figured out what path I needed to be on. Until I discovered that there was a darkness beneath my skin—and perhaps a lightness, as well. I hadn’t truly found my path until I found out that I wasn’t who I thought I was. And, yes, I had run from that also, but it was because I had been forced into it. No, that wasn’t right. I ran because I was scared. Because I needed time. And I wasn’t going to get that time sitting in a realm that I wasn’t sure even wanted me.
Oh, they may say that they wanted the Spirit Priestess to save the day, but what did that really even mean?
Did they really want change to happen?
Because the knight of the Obscurité Kingdom hadn’t wanted me to help anyone. He’d wanted the power for himself. Lore had threatened the entire realm because of his greed and his anger towards everyone that he thought had slighted him. He had stolen the Wielding power from those he thought weaker. He’d either killed them or forced them to become weaker shells of themselves until they couldn’t fight back.
Thinking about him, thinking about what he’d stood for, I wasn’t sure that anybody really wanted me to come back and save the world.
I huffed out a laugh, shaking my head.
Save the world? Sometimes, I wasn’t even sure I could save myself. I couldn’t do it when that sword had slid into my belly, and I had seen the horror in Easton’s and Rhodes’ gazes. They had tried to keep me from sliding down onto that blade, kept it from cutting even deeper. But I had been impaled against the stone wall behind me because of Lore’s Wielding.
It had been Rhodes who kept me still, and Easton who had slid the sword back out with a fire so hot that it scorched both of us as he pulled the blade from my skin.
Both Rhodes and Easton had tried to save me, but it hadn’t been enough.
I wasn’t Rhodes’ soulmate, that much I now knew. Because if I had been, he would have been able to heal my mortal wound. That was what soulmates did, after all. At least one of the many things they did according to myths and legends.
But he hadn’t been able to do it.
Nobody had.
I had been alone until the Spirit Wielders had connected to me from wherever they were on whatever realm and found a way to heal me. They had brought me back, and even though I was weak, we had found a way to save the realm. If even for a day.
Lore was no more. The knight had faded into the darkness.
Now, Easton was the King of Obscurité, and Rhodes was gone.
When I woke up with Braelynn biting at my hair, I had known that things would be different.
But I trusted Rosamond. I put my faith in her because she was a Seer and had never led me astray. And maybe that was stupid. Perhaps I was just naïve. But I needed to trust in something. Because if I didn’t, I wasn’t sure I could take any of the next steps that I needed to.
So, I let out a breath and packed my bags again, ensuring that I had everything I might need.
“Are you ready?” Alura asked, stepping into my bedroom. I was on the top floor, my bedroom still looking like it had throughout high school. With white drapes and a huge duvet, delicate furniture, and books that I had read before but hadn’t picked up since I came back. I’d focused on what I could learn about the other part of myself and the classes I knew I wouldn’t be going back to.
I held back a shiver as I looked at the bed. I’d had so many nightmares here, I couldn’t even count them all. The dreams had to be because of who I was, but no one had ever been able to explain them to me. And believe me, I had asked.
I had written to Rosamond, asking her why I had the dreams, why they seemed to torture me, but she hadn’t given me any details I could use. She hadn’t said much of anything, so I didn’t know if she actually knew. She’d told me before that sometimes being a Seer meant knowing things and determining when to tell others about them.
Lore had even been able to slice into one of my dreams at one point, and he had burned Rhodes in the process because Rhodes had been sleeping next to me in a tent at the time.
The dreams had to mean something, but nobody would tell me what.
Either they didn’t know, or they didn’t think I should know.
Because Rosamond was a Seer, I had a feeling it was the latter. And since Alura seemed to like being mysterious and didn’t like telling me things, that made them not wanting me to know ring true even more. The dreams had to mean something, that much I knew. They had rattled my entire being while I slept in this room and when I’d been fully human—or at least thought I was—but I hadn’t known that there was anything more to them.
“Where am I going?” I had asked this before, and I wanted the answer. Just saying, “the Maison realm,” fractured as it was, wasn’t really helpful. I knew that there was an entryway near my house up in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. That would get me into the southern Spirit territory. I had only ever been there, and to the Fire and Earth territories. I hadn’t ventured into the Lumiére Kingdom at all, nor had I ever been to the northern Spirit territory.
I had spent most of my time in the Earth territory. Because between the actual pirates that had kidnapped us, and the Lord and Lady of Earth’s sentries and guards, I had been on multiple journeys across the whole territory. I had seen so much of it and had even fallen in love with parts because of the sheer beauty of the place. It hadn’t mattered that my feet were sore, or that I had blisters on my blisters, it had still felt like I was part of something. I had only been in the border territories for a little bit, and in the Fire territory for an even shorter period of time. We hadn’t had to walk long distances, not like we did in the Earth territory. Others’ Wieldings had brought us from one place to the other.
I didn’t think I would be able to use Wielding like that anytime soon, not until I trained more. And maybe not ever since I knew that not everyone could do that.
So, wherever I was going, I knew I would have to walk. A lot.