Page 93 of An Empress of Earth & Darkness

Just as Gideon moved to stand, midnight black hair caught his eye. It made its way out from an empress tent and into the forest.

“Excuse me,” Gideon said as he made his way towards Emara. She should not be wandering out here alone, and he wondered if her guards were asleep.

He didn’t have to walk long to catch up with her. She stood at the clearing’s opening against a huge fir tree, gazing up at the almost-full moon that had an emerald glow around it.

“Hey,” he said softly.

She turned around to face him, and Gideon wondered why no one had ever painted her. She held such exquisite beauty and grace, yet there was an edge to her too. She reminded him of a siren’s call, as dangerous as she was beautiful.

“Gideon.” She gasped like he’d scared her despite his gentle approach.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said. “I just wondered where you were going without your guards.”

Her curved eyebrow raised, and a smirk broke her lips apart. “An empress can walk without her guards, you know.”

He smiled back. “I know.”

He knew better than to challenge her these days. The power that was beginning to radiate from her was magnificent, and even now as he stood a few feet from her, he could feel the elements of her magic on his skin. It was inspiring and terrifying.

Her gaze turned back up to the moon, and as Gideon came to stand beside her, he noticed that her face seemed troubled.

“Can’t sleep?”

Emara chewed on her cheek and shook her head. There was a comfortable moment between them before she spoke again. “No matter how many times I look at the moon and am in awe of her beauty, a little part of me wonders why she merely watches from her castle in the sky as darkness rushes in on us. It’s rather cruel, is it not?”

Her profound words hit him like a knee to the gut, and it was like he had never seen her in this light before. The air around her had changed; she commanded it now. She carried herself differently from when he had first met her, and she sounded like someone who had been on a throne for years.

“That is because the moon is waiting for you to follow her light into battle and do everything on these lands that she cannot. You are her vessel on earth like I am Thorin’s.”

Emara turned to Gideon, and a gentle wind swept over both of their faces, ruffling their hair. He was sure it was her element because it was stronger than a summer breeze. A staggering pride broke through him for the girl he had found welcoming death at the hands of a knight of the underworld. Back then, she had no idea who was. She had been no one. Anyone.

But now she knew exactly who she was.

She had magic in her veins and darkness in her blood. She was Emara of House Air. She was Fire and Earth. She was Wind and Water, Spirits and Enchantments. And he could feel that her ancestors were watching her from above.

“Gideon?” A small voice came from the woodland behind him, and he turned to see Sybil standing with a few fur rugs slung over her arm.

“Sybil,” he choked out. Guilt instantly raked through him.

Sybil’s eyes strained with something unspoken, and her cheeks flushed with something that was neither delight nor desire.

It was embarrassment, he was sure of it. But he couldn’t understand why.

“I had no idea you were still up, Emara. I am sorry if I am interrupting something between you.” Sybil nodded towards the Empress of Air.

Emara looked to her friend and then to Gideon. “You are not interrupting anything. I was just heading back to bed. I only needed a moment with the moon.” She smiled at them. “Goodnight, you two.”

Emara took her leave between the trees, and it left only the silence between them, lingering thicker than the darkness. Sybil glared at him, waiting until Emara had gone before saying, “When you didn’t come and find me, I thought I would come and find you.”

“I was just about to come—”

Sybil looked down at the folds of her blankets as she cut him off. “Are you still in love with her, Gideon?”

He wasn’t sure if he could take any more blows to his chest tonight, but Sybil’s words punched him hard. His words bubbled in his throat, and the truth that he so desperately wanted to say tied his tongue in knots. He was so caught off guard by the look on Sybil’s face that his mind dissolved into a blank nothingness. Why did that pain in his chest tighten?

“It’s a simple question, Gideon,” Sybil said, frustration flashing in her eyes. “Do you still love her?”

Sybil knew of his heartache, of his past with Emara, as he had opened up to her about it during their travels and time at the palace together. But that seemed like so far in the past, and so much had happened in between the Blood Moon and the one he stood under now.

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