Page 115 of Kissed By the Gods
When we started, the morning sun had barely eased over the height of the peaks. Now, it’s sliding to its resting place on the horizon. She must either sense my exhaustion, or she’s exhausted herself, because she begins a gradual descent. We’re nowhere close to the Valespire Peaks—or to the Synod. I lower my eyes in confusion as my eyes rake over the Weeping Forest.
The ground rushes up to meet us as we land. That initial thrill of fear returns, but not of landing. It’s a fear of being grounded when you know you’re meant to be in the clouds. When her hooves touch the ground, the world is heavier.
She continues, tucking her wings against her side as we enter the forest and she meanders through the trees until she finds the River Eleris. Her sides are heaving, and she’s soaked in sweat. I slide from her back and drop down to the ground, where I immediately fall on my ass. My legs can’t hold me up. I squeak out something between a moan and a laugh as she turns her head around to look at me. I think she smirks at me before she turns to drink in big gulps from the gentle-flowing river.
I drop my scythe and pack to the ground and then slide on my hands and knees across the ground, until I come to the edge of the water, too. I cup my hands around the water and guzzlethe water down. Once I’ve sated my own thirst, I drop back on my heels and watch her, still a bit stunned. This is so … surreal. I blink, half-expecting her to vanish like a mirage. My eyes catch on her strong, sinewy body to see the sweat pulling on her soft coat.
How in the Veil am I supposed to take care of her? I stumble to my feet, my legs shaky and unsteady, but I make it to my pack and find a fur. I bring it over to her, and start rubbing it down her body, taking the sweat and dirt off in gentle sweeps.
She gives a full-body shake, a little sass in the motion, like she’s letting me know I passed some invisible test. I let out a breath of a laugh and smooth her mane back from her face, fingers threading through the tangled strands.
“Brilliant girl,” I whisper. “Beautiful girl.” Her eyes meet mine. Deep, endless, knowing. There’s so much she wants to say. This wall between us is unacceptable.
“I don’t even know your name,” I whisper, defeated.
Frustration claws through me.Unacceptable. I step back from her, and sweep my hand out behind me, calling my scythe into my palm. I swipe it through the air, as a release for some of this godsdamn anger.
The world in front of us shudders, and a seam splits open, like reality itself forgot how to stay stitched. I step in front of her, my scythe raised now as a defense against this …thing. But she’s not worried.
In fact, she nudges her nose into my back, pushing me forward toward—whatever this is.I glance over my shoulder. She’s calm, as if she’s been waiting for this all along. I keep the scythe up, but I reach my left hand forward now, too, and black wisps wrap around my finger—familiar, cool, and strangely tender. It’s holding my hand.
I recognize this. It’s the darkness of my dreams. It’s vast and unending. It stretches in all directions, oppressive yet intimate. Itake another step forward, and she follows. With that single step, the ground vanishes. There’s no dirt beneath my boots, no sky above, no air to breathe. And yet, I move forward. The darkness twists around me, making each step more disorienting than the last.
It’s like walking through water, but with no resistance; like trying to think in a dream where meaning slips through your fingers faster than thought.
It grows thicker, clinging to my skin. I start to feel like I’m suffocating, and my thoughts stutter. I want to run away. Doubt creeps in, but my beast spreads out a wing, sheltering me at her side.
I shove past the fear and push on. Cold explodes across my skin, and something ancient brushes against the edges of my soul. I stagger. The darkness shimmers—not with light, but with something else entirely. Something impossible. As though the void itself is breathing, alive and waiting.
The darkness isn’t a dream.
It never was.
It’s a Veil.
Obsidian eyes meet mine—deep, endless, and knowing.
“I’m Vaeloria,” she says, and her voice isn’t sound. It’s sensation or memory or maybe truth. I reach for her. Not with my hands, but with everything I am. Our connection locks into place, and it’s not twine or thread. It’s something forged in the dark, stronger even than adamas.
The Veil ripples around us.
She steps forward—if “step” is the right word for movement in this space without form. Her mane ripples in slow motion, like molten silver caught underwater, and her wings flare outward, vast and gleaming. With a simple thought, I’m astride her.
“Together, we fly.”
The faravars cross the Veil cloaked in riddles. I suspect that something about leaving the Veil makes it difficult for them to remember life on the other side of it. They speak to their Altor of the Veil in paradox—it is somehow both darkness and light, life and death, destruction and creation, chaos and order. It is a beautiful concept. Poetic, even. But beyond the poetry? Nothing. Utterly unhelpful.
An unnamed priest from Elandors Veil
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
I twirlmy scythe around in my palm, its weight a familiar anchor in the disorientation, and the ancient words engraved on it glow. I turn in a slow circle, trying to make sense of this place. Shadows stretch and shift like they’re alive, curling in and out of vision. I don’t know where I am—I don’t even think that there is ahere—only that I’m not alone.
“Never alone again, Strider.”
