Page 13 of Bound to the Shadow Queen
So I followed her through the shadows of the setting sun until we arrived at the sacred forest. The trees glowed with pale shades of lavender and gold and white, the honeyed scent of the wisteria beckoning us closer.
We landed just outside the treeline before trekking into the middle of the forest. I followed my mother beneath the canopy, walking a familiar path. Roots coiled like ancient veins through the soil, branches arched overhead in latticed cathedrals, and a hush seemed to settle over everything.
Not silence, exactly, but something more ancient. Calm, and protective. Something that promised to keep the shadows and the monsters at bay. If such a thing were even possible.
Curtains of blossoming flowers swayed overhead, shedding tiny motes of pale luminescence that drifted through the air like falling stars.
A strange sense of peace settled over me as I watched them dance in the light, something I hadn’t felt in years.
At the forest’s heart stood the massive Valbough tree.
The sacred tree.
Resting near its trunk was a stone altar, a low, wide slab etched with Drakmor runes fed by flames that never died.
Other Skaldwings were already there, scattered throughout the clearing. They kneeled with their eyes pinched tight as they remembered all those they had lost.
The firelight gilded their faces, turning their grief into something unshakable and reverent.
Though Tavrik had followed to honor his own dead, coincidentally, even he wouldn’t disrupt the sacrosanct ritual by staying too close.
I took a breath, the sweet, floral scent of the flowers wrapped around and through me until my chest loosened, like the forest was exhaling against my skin.
It was the first time I could breathe, going through the familiar motions of filling a small, bone-carved bowl with dried wisteria, taking a twig from a pile gathered by the children, passing it through the flames of the altar until it lit as well.
I dropped the stick into my bowl, sinking to my knees in front of the tree. My mother sank down next to me with her own gently smoking bowl. The scent of dried heather filled the air, curling around us with a gentle breeze.
I took another deep breath. Until the heather burned, we would stay like this, remembering our dead or telling stories about them. Feeling their loss.
Only it wasn’t the face of my slain family members who filled my mind. At least, not only them.
“The soldiers say you saved him,” my mother said quietly.
She had always had an uncanny knack for knowing what I was thinking, like the Visionary, only my mother’s skills were honed from years of reading a battlefield rather than the visions from the Shard Mother herself.
“I had no choice,” I responded.
She looked at me sharply. “Because of the marriage bond?”
I stared resolutely at the burning petals in my bowl. I didn’t know how to tell her that I wasn’t sure I was capable of watchinghim die, the male who had slaughtered half of our clan. The king who had taken my own family from me.
Even now, the bond pulled at me a little more each hour, so much so that I had started to imagine I could see him in my waking hours, too. I saw flashes of his hand clenched around his ring, or the sparkling, icy remains of the monsters he shattered. I even saw Wynnie, blonde curls unusually lifeless, pale blue eyes even more exhausted than the last night I had spent at her side.
“I needed to leave,” I finally said, not quite a lie. “Wynnie was in the house.”
“Your half-sister?”
“My sister,” I corrected quietly.
I felt her sharp inhale as much as I heard it.
“I had no choice,” I said again, wondering if she heard everything I wasn’t saying.
I had no choice but to make a new life. To find a new family. To live without you.
For several heartbeats, the only sound in the clearing was the unsteady crackle of the burning wisteria. Even Tavrik was unnaturally still, standing far enough away that it was impossible to know how much he was listening to.
“I know that.” My mother’s voice was as even as ever, her shoulders squared as she stared into the flames of the altar. “Neither did I.”
