I lowered my hand and stared at her. “Yes. She said it was for protection and other things she didn’t elaborate on. She doesn’t seem to tell me much.”
Wyn’s shoulders dropped as if she were releasing tension. “That’s good. Protection is good.”
“What did you think it was?” I asked.
“Oh, it could have been anything when it comes to Alura. But if she says it’s for protection, then it’s for protection. She would never lie about that.”
I swallowed hard. “So you’re saying she would lie about something else?”
Teagan let out a gruff laugh. “Great job, Wyn, you’re making sure that you stress her out and make her not want to trust us at all.”
“Oh, shut up. I’m sorry, Lyric. It’s been a long journey, and we still have a longer one to go. Easton would have opened a portal through the crystal to get us back quickly, but none of us wanted to waste the energy. I hope you understand. We’re going to have to make our way back to the court on foot.”
I nodded, having expected that—only with Rhodes to the Lumiére, and not Easton or his people to the Obscurité. “I figured. And I don’t want to use any more energy than we need to. I know that the land needs the crystal. That the people need it. And I’m going to do whatever I can to help fix that. Not that I actually know what I’m doing,” I added when all of their eyes warmed just a bit as if they were waiting for me to come out with all the answers. I had none. And from what I could see, they didn’t have any answers either.
“Well, let’s be off. We’re going straight north instead of through one of the other territories. We should be fine, but we’re going to move quickly. It’ll take a couple days, mostly because we’re going on foot. But then we’ll make it to the Obscurité Kingdom, and we’ll be able to see Easton. And then he’ll tell us exactly what we’re doing.”
I nodded at Wyn’s words and then followed them as they turned back to where they had stashed their packs.
It seemed the four of us were going on a journey, something that reminded me of my first trip here.
Braelynn nuzzled my neck, and I blinked, having forgotten about my best friend on my shoulder.
The fact that the others hadn’t commented on the cat with wings stashed in my pack told me that either she had hidden the whole time during the conversation or Easton had warned them.
“Is your friend going to be okay during the journey?” Wyn asked, seeming genuinely interested. She reached out a hand, and Braelynn sniffed it before nuzzling her. Such a typical cat gesture. I was actually surprised that she didn’t lash out. Braelynn wasn’t violent, but if somebody came at her a little too quickly, she got startled and used her claws rather than her purrs.
“Alura said she would be fine and hooked up this whole harness thing.”
“If she gets too heavy for you, one of us can carry her. I don’t think those wings of hers are ready for flight just yet.” Teagan winked as he said it, and Braelynn let out a little mewling sound.
Yet? Would Braelynn ever be able to fly?
I pondered that as Braelynn let Teagan pet her before doing the same with Arwin. Then the five of us were off for our long walk up the Spirit territory towards the Obscurité Court.
I had been here before, though I hadn’t been in this part of the territory. The closer we got to the Obscurité Kingdom, the more rock faces there were. There weren’t ruins or evidence of large civilizations. It was as if all of that had been erased from the face of the territory altogether.
It probably should have worried me, wondering where all the Spirit Wielders once lived. But after five hundred years, half a millennium of harsh winds and even harsher sunlight, maybe none of that survived. Perhaps the evidence of who those people were had gotten just as lost as the people themselves.
“So, do you all work for Easton?”
Teagan laughed again but nodded.
“Sort of. Easton and I have been best friends since we were kids. He’s an asshole, but he’s my king.” Teagan did a sort of bow thing as we kept going, and I snorted.
“Well, Easton was kind of a butthead to me, but he did save my life.” I paused at that, remembering the pain, the Fire. But he had tried to protect me, and he had watched as his mother died as she sacrificed herself to save me. I didn’t think I would ever be able to find a way to repay that selflessness. And I didn’t imagine the boy I had seen would ever be able to forgive me for what his mother had done.
But that was something I would have to face soon. We were only a couple of days’ journey from where Easton was, where the King of Obscurité was. I would have to face him sooner rather than later and confront exactly what it meant to see the boy who might blame me for his mother’s death.
Maybe I shouldn’t have come with these people after all.
“He doesn’t blame you,” Wyn said softly as the others moved forward. Braelynn was now on Teagan’s shoulder, her little harness attached to his bag. Braelynn hadn’t been too heavy for me, but Teagan had said that he didn’t want me to tire out. In fact, he’d been kind of gruff about it, mumbling about how weak I would be if I kept moving at this pace while holding a cat. I couldn’t make any sense of it, but I let him take her away because she seemed to trust him. Brae was my barometer of trust these days. As were most cats.
If a cat didn’t like you, there was likely a good reason.
Or maybe that was dogs.
Either way, Brae was my test, and I was sticking to it.
“What?” I asked as Wyn nudged me.
“I said, Easton doesn’t blame you.”
I swallowed hard. “How did you know what I was thinking about?”
Wyn just sighed. “I can’t read minds, and I’m not a Seer. But I know when people are feeling guilt or something painful. It almost hits me. Maybe I’m an emotional Seer. Who knows? But I know that you’re in pain. And it’s not just from what happened to you when Lore betrayed us. I know it has to do with what you saw, and what Queen Cameo did. Easton doesn’t blame you. How could he? You’re the Spirit Priestess.”
I didn’t flinch at Wyn’s use of the title. That had to count for progress, right? “You say that, yet I can blame myself for it. She didn’t have to do that. Yes, I will always blame Lore for what happened, but I had some role in it, too. If I had been fast enough, if I had found a way, maybe it wouldn’t have happened at all. Maybe Cameo would still be here.”
“And maybe if the three of us—me, Teagan, and Arwin—hadn’t been on patrol on the other side of the Spirit territory dealing with a roundup of Negs, we would have been able to save the queen. Maybe if we hadn’t been so positive that something was wrong, so sure that we needed to leave because we were trying to save our people, we would have been in that throne room to help Easton. But we weren’t. We weren’t there, and now the queen is dead. Long live the king.”
We didn’t speak much after Wyn’s whispered words, my thoughts rolling around from one topic to another. I knew I was here to train, to figure out my role in all of this, but maybe everybody else was, as well. Perhaps nobody knew where they truly fit into this war that didn’t seem so much like a war but an ongoing battle that never seemed to end.