Page 188 of Winds of Ruin
Emmerick
Upon Lark and Dritan’s kiss, in the blink of an eye, they were swept away. No Moon-wielder held them back from waking as Ryn once had done to me.
Something hard hit my boot. A golden stone. My stomach dropped—the memorandum lay at my feet. It had not travelled with them; instead, its etched sun symbol stared up, taunting me.
With vehemence, the cave walls rumbled again. Brimstone filled the air as I bent to retrieve my last hope of returning to the living world again.
There would be no laughter at a dinner table.
No mornings spent tangled up with the woman I loved.
My skin, laden with burns from the smoldering rock, had blisters. Any moment, a chunk of the cave would take me down, or the plateau would split beneath my feet.
Despite the grave circumstances, despite my decaying surroundings, I found solace in knowing Dritan and Lark made it out.
My anger dissipated, with it my guilt.
I’d kept some promises.
Maybe this was my penance for all I’d done wrong.
Squeezing the stone in my burned palm, I closed my eyes, wondering if this was how Firose had felt as the amphitheater fell around her. A fate accepted.
I knelt, ready.
“Elsedora… forgive me,” I whispered into the roar of eroding rock.
The air stilled, and all quieted. Bright light leaked through my lids, and when I dared open them, I was kneeling in the grass by the stone bench where Elsedora used to sit and spread seed for the birds at Lamoreaux.
In her place, a light-haired woman with familiar hazel eyes rocked a bundle of soft linens—a tussle of red hair peeked out, and a babe cooed.
“Hello?” I tried to call to her.
But the woman could not see me, and the moment faded.
Night fell. Time unraveled in a dizzying manner. The swaddled babe grew into a spritely child, who roamed the orchard on a dull, flea-bitten pony. Her parents shook their heads at the door each time she ran off, but their smiles didn’t convey any ire.
Another turn of night, and she sprinted on knobby knees with a card in hand toward the stables, only to return with a red nose and tear-stained cheeks. Fen, lacking the scar that now ran across his face, patted her on the back and ushered her inside.
Another turn of day, and she threw daggers at plums hanging ripe from the branches of trees, never missing.
After losing sight of her, I pocketed the waking stone, and walked to the front of the estate. I sought more moments ofher youth, so I could puzzle together all the pieces of her she’d thought she’d buried. All the parts that built the one person I could not live without.
The estate looked much the same, only the placement of the back veranda lay offset slightly. She’d rebuilt it from memory alone.
Night fell again, and torches approached. Men overtook the gardens—an army was upon them. They burned trees, they broke windows, they tore the estate apart. I squinted through the smoke, heart bleeding for the girl inside being thrust into an Egress, leaving it all behind.
Then I saw her—not the child, or heartsick girl, but the version I knew, standing before the flames. She faced away from me, toward the estate as it burned.
“El,” I whispered.
She spun on her heels.
She could hear me.
Her face slackened, arms hanging at her sides. “Puppy,” she answered, and a smile tugged up the corners of her mouth despite the sob that followed.
In only a few strides, I closed the distance between us and wrapped my arms around her, relieved to find I could hold her.
