Page 219 of The Lands Defying
When I’m two steps away from the platform, I swallow before looking down at it. There are lines here that run and connect together, and there are runes and writing that I can’t make out.
This just confirms again that this is where my mother was killed.
A chill sweeps through the air and I shiver, pulling my cloak tighter around myself. I look away from the platform when I see red. I don’t want to see my mother’s blood.
Examining the two pillars, trying to ignore the chains dangling from them, I also see that they have runes on them.
“Why were we brought here?” I wonder, steeling myself before stepping onto the platform.
“Little wolf…”
“I’m okay.” I walk to the first pillar, hesitating before running my fingers over the grooves. Feeling compelled to do so. I know why in the next moment.
Without my control, my magic comes to my fingers and enters the stone.
I gasp, pulling my hand back to my chest in surprise as the runes in the pillar begin to glow. I step back, bumping into Darius’s chest as he wraps his arms around my waist.
We wait for something to happen, maybe statues appearing like they did in Eridian, but nothing comes.
The pillar still glows, but that’s when I realize the other isn’t. I move toward it and this time, I’m the one to place my magic there.
It replicates its twin, glowing and pulsing, then a ripple forms between them like a curved wall, but transparent.
“A portal,” Darius says. We stand in front of it.
It acts just like the other, the silver ripples moving to an unknown breeze.
“Are we going in?” I grab Darius’s hand and hold on tight.
“We have come this far, what is one more unknown place?”
“Here goes nothing.”
Sixty Four
Darius
She’s smiling again, and I think this one is my favorite.
It’s the one where it lights up when she sees something new, when she sees something so beautiful to her that her eyes almost take on a glow.
But when she turns to smile at me, I know I’m wrong.Thisis my favorite.
When she’s looking at me like this, it’s full of joy and a sense of peace.
This is what I will fight to keep, what I will fight to protect.
This is what I would sacrifice anything for.
“This is…extraordinary,” she breathes, turning in a circle and taking everything in, but all I see is her.
There is no danger nearby, almost like the lands would repel it if there were, and that’s why I am able to look at her now as she takes in trees taller and thicker than I have ever seen. Able to take in the red and orange blossoms that shouldn’t bloom because of winter, of the grass and wildflowers so vibrant and strong where snow should have covered it.
I thought Eridian may be the most life-filled forest there ever was, but this is.
Petals fall as we walk further on the dirt path that could take ten of my Elites walking side by side. The full moon is high up in the sky, stars glittering around it and a gentle breeze flows though. It’s not cold, nor warm, it’s…magic.
Power.
