Page 23 of Her Warrior Fae

I glanced at Nylah. I didn’t know how to deal with what I felt for her. I was a warrior, a fighter. I faced battles, I feared nothing. I could take whatever came at me. No challenge was too great.

Except this. I fought, I didn’tfeel. With Nylah, I was overcome by emotion, and it was foreign. I’d learned to switch off my emotions to stay in the moment, focus on my body, on the battle that lay ahead. Now, the battle was my emotions. I couldn’t switch them off. What if they distracted me? What if I lost sight of the goal, lost focus when it was my duty to be a fighter, because my mind was somewhere else?

“You’re worried,” Nylah said.

I nodded. “It’s a lot to take in.” I didn’t know how else to word it.

“It is,” she agreed. She meant our power together.

I was referring to more than just that—I referred to us, to what was happening between us.

Could I afford to have both worlds within reach? Could I fight and love simultaneously?

I had no one to ask, and I felt torn.

Nylah reached for me, touching my cheek, bringing me back out of my thoughts, and I let her. For now, I would let her distract me.

7

NYLAH

Istood in the sanctuary, hands on my hips. I looked up at the large stained-glass display in the window that graced most of the back wall.

It was a depiction of the world, beautiful and green and lush, with splashes of color and light everywhere. In the center of it all was Terra, the Goddess of Light who made all of this possible.

This was where I spent time every day, opening myself to visions and dreams and their meaning. I let Terra tell me what she needed me to know.

When I was in a state of reflection, my soul was at peace. I always felt warm when I reached out to Terra, like nothing in the world mattered and darkness couldn’t find me here.

It wasn’t like that anymore.

I stood before the depiction. I tried to reach out to the Goddess, but uncertainty lurked in the corners of my mind, and no matter how far I reached, Terra was nowhere to be found.

“Why?” I demanded. “How can you do this to me? You show me a vision, and you show me the promise of destruction and pain when that’s not how your visions work. Then, you abandon me. Where are you?”

I waited for an answer. It didn’t have to be an answer in so many words. Terra rarely appeared to me as a being, she rarely spoke in audible words. It had only happened a few times in my tenure as high priestess, and those times, her clear voice had always taken me aback.

Most of the time, when Terra came to me or talked to me, it was just a soothing sensation, warmth, or a thought or a feeling that didn’t come from my own heart.

I felt none of that now, no matter how long I waited.

Since she’d shown me the vision, it was like Terra had removed herself from me. She’d cut me off. I felt like a traitor to still call myself a high priestess. How could I be if I wasn’t able to connect with Terra as I once had?

“I need answers!” I cried out. “You know my heart; you know what I feel. What am I supposed to do?”

I loved Dex. It was plain and simple. He was the man I wanted to be with. When we’d been together last night, it hadn’t been about the mate bond. We didn’t share that, but love didn’t have to be present only when people were fated. So many Fae mated for love without that fated bond existing at all. Love could be enough, couldn’t it?

With Dex, it would be. I loved him, and he loved me, and it was all either of us needed.

The vision I’d had flashed before me yet again. It never left me alone. Whenever I thought of Dex, whenever we were together, the vision plagued me, reminding me that I had found my happiness, and it wouldn’t last forever.

“Am I to assume you’ve left me?” I called out.

The longer I had no answer from Terra, the more panicked I became. My chest felt tight, and my mouth was dry. I felt lost. Without Terra, who anchored me, without my role as the high priestess, the woman who moved in the Second Realm where I could communicate with her, who was I? I was like a boat, drifting, lost at sea.

I ran my hand down my shoulder and paced back and forth. I felt like I was waiting for an appointment where the other party never came.

I felt like Terra had stood me up.

---