Page 48 of Return of the Nine

She could hear the wonder in his tone.

“The expanse north of my home. This is my place to run and hide when the world grows dark. It relaxes me from the inside out.” She smiled and grabbed his hand, pulling him along.

“Where are we going?”

She laughed. Joy was spilling through her as it always did when she was here. “You can’t see it from here. You have to walk to it straight on or the trees won’t let you see it.”

The grasses were soft, the flowers bright sparkling white,stars against their deeply coloured bases. She tugged her bemused employer through the glade as he tried to look at everything.

“This looks just like our . . .”

She stopped and raised her brows, “Just like what?”

“Never mind. What were you going to show me?”

Daphne laughed. “This way.”

She used the small stones in the ground to line herself up, and she hauled him toward the woods one step at a time.

They moved together and the moment that the optical illusion faded, she heard Apolan gasp.

He kept moving forward with her, his footfalls eager.

The crevice in the rock was invisible to anyone who didn’t know how to approach it. Daphne had been to the glade dozens of times before the hidden cavern had called to her.

The crystals that lined the cavern walls lit as they walked between the trees and into what Daphne privately called the heart of Gaia.

“I am guessing that the walls sense the electromagnetic field of living things. They wake when we enter, and they darken when we leave.” She kept her words quiet. He was too busy exploring the interior of the cave.

The white flowers that marked the clearing above also grew in the darkness of the cavern. The scent here was heady. It woke parts of her that she didn’t know she had.

With Apolan exploring the walls, she walked to the stone that took centre stage and watched him as he caressed the walls, stroked the crystals and murmured to himself.

The large crystal in the middle of the stone tablet drew her attention. Idly, she stroked the flat panel before she delicately drew her fingers down one sharp side.

“Daphne, what do you think this is?”

His loud words in the silence startled her. She drew herfingers back, and the edge of the crystal drew blood. “Ow.” She put her bleeding fingers to her lips and sighed. “That has never happened before.”

Apolan looked at the stone, and his eyes widened. “Oh, goddess.”

The crystal that had tasted her blood was bright blue with light and power. It hummed.

“Daphne, I believe that you have stumbled upon the original bonding chamber of the Nine.” Apolan looked at her fingers and the blood that still welled there.

She looked around her in wonder as she realised where she was standing. Generations of the Nine had come to this place and joined together as one.

The joy and warmth spilled through her over and over, and as she turned to imagine the couples that had stood in that place, searing pain ran through her hand.

Apolan looked from her to the stone and back again. “This is coming on much faster than I anticipated, but since you started the ritual, I must complete it or you will suffer.”

Her knees buckled as the pain coursed through her, and it radiated from her fingertips down her arm.

“What do you have to do?”

He smiled and kissed the back of her hand, helping her to her feet. “I have to marry you.”

Chapter Seven

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