Page 117 of The Lands Defying
She was a vision of wildness and beauty.
I move to the side and walk to her carvings in the crevasses of the rock wall. When the barrier fell around Eridian and my Elites and the Higher’s guards came, I didn’t tell anyone about this place. I couldn’t.
Some part of me felt it would be a betrayal to her. Even if at the time I thought her a traitor and the cause of the rogures, this is just one thing I couldn’t do. Everything within me rebelled at someone else in this space.
Our space.
Because when I made her mine here, it became ours.
Looking over the carvings I left behind, I pick one up that she made of her and Kade. She’s carved it so he’s young, maybe eight, and she’s holding him protectively against her chest as her hand holds him at the back of his head.
I squeeze the wood, hearing it creak and groan before putting it down.
I growl, and it vibrates off the walls as I turn away, wanting to rip his existence from those carvings like he never took his first breaths.
Rhea told me that something is wrong with him, that the Highers or his family fucked with his head, but logic is not at the forefront of my mind right now.
She only fell because he was there, because he stumbled back.
I move past her furs, remembering the last time we stayed here together. I sit on the dirt ground, bringing my arms up to rest on my bent knees. Looking around the space, I notice the lilk trees are still in bloom here, their pink and dark-orange petals swaying with no breeze that I can feel.
The ones that surround Eridian died when the barrier fell, so how are these still alive?
I look up to the moon shining down through the center of the cave, hoping it’s showing the way for my own moonlight to get back to me.
To get back to where she belongs.
In my arms.
A flash of a glow has my head turning toward it, and I see a small ball of light peeking out from behind a lilk tree. It hovers there, like it’s watching before it disappears behind the bark, only to slip out the other side.
I watch it, watch me, wondering how it’s possible when the wisps around Rhea all dimmed, evaporating through the rainfall of the barrier when it broke.
I thought there were no wisps left.
It slowly comes out from beneath the branches and floats toward me, moving around the water that flows down around the pool until it hovers in front of me.
I can sense it studying me, sizing me up.
“I didn’t expect to see you,” I murmur to it, and its misty, green-blue body wiggles from side to side.
It zips forward suddenly, shooting around me again and again in a circle until it rests in front of me once more. More wisps appear behind the trees, looking like fireflies as dozens of thememerge. They float closer, swishing around each other until a wall of them are before me.
“I guess you didn’t die.” Rhea will be happy about that.
They move as one, swirling around, spinning, and spinning in a cyclone until the shape of a body starts to appear. A female. They move within the shape, creating feet, legs, torso, arms, and fingers. The last to take shape is the face and flowing hair.
I watch, my heart beating painfully in my chest as familiar features start to take shape, and I hold my breath, jaw clenching as wisps of Rhea appear before me.
My hand raises on its own accord, the tremble in it visible as the wisps move her own hand out toward me, reminding me of how close I was to grabbing her on the cliffs before she fell.
The wisps touch the tips of my fingers, and their subtle warmth tingles my skin, spreading up my arms before they disperse, tiny balls of her body coming apart as they once again float in front of me.
I drop my hand down, my head following as I grit my teeth through the pain, staring at the dirt below me. My hands land on the ground, my fingers digging in as black mist appears, spreading out around me.
I growl low, and even I can hear the pain in it. Anger.
The fear.
