When Jaylie straightens again, she nearly jumps out of her skin. The yard is suddenly empty of all souls save for herself and a stranger standing next to her.
She’s beautiful.
It’s the first thought in her stunned mind. Standing a good two heads taller than Jaylie, the woman is resplendent in rippling robes of cream, peach, and gold. Dark gold medallions clasp the fabric at each of her shoulders and hang in a shining belt at her waist. Her skin, too, is dark gold, and the blaze of her red hair falls in perfect ringlets past her waist. Jaylie has never seen her before—but she has seen her likeness reproduced in a dozen different ways. Woven into massive tapestries. Painted on tiny keepsake canvases. Patiently pieced together in great windows with stained glass of red and gold. Stamped onto the face of every coin in Jaylie’s possession.
The priestess falls to her knees and presses her forehead to the dirt. “My Lady,” she gasps.
“My cleric,” Marlana says warmly. “Please, stand. We must speak.” She gathers Jaylie’s hands in her own and helps her to her feet. Marlana’s skin is inhumanly warm. Jaylie feels as if she’s standing before a hearth in the middle of an inn. It makes her feel safe.
Marlana leads Jaylie to the other side of the well and leans gently against its foundations, facing away from Jaylie’s father’s squat little castle. The two women peer into the distance to where the setting sun has painted the tree line with rays of orange and pink. Staring out across the fields of wildflowers and into the forest, Jaylie can almost imagine that she’s somewhere else entirely.
“What am I doing here?” she asks. “What happened?”
“You died, my love.” Marlana’s lips move, but Jaylie hears the goddess’s voice envelop her from all directions. It’s the only sound in the world.
“Oh.” She can’t think of anything else to say; she can barely remember how it occurred. She recalls magic coursing through her veins, freezing her solid, and then nothing at all. She tries to look directly into the sun. So close to the horizon, she can almost stare at it without squinting. “What happens next?”
“You have a decision to make.” Marlana reaches for Jaylie’s fingers and holds them between her palms. Jaylie’s hand is dwarfed in Marlana’s, but it’s a soothing gesture. “You can choose to leave this realm, and I will guide your spirit on to the next. Your soul would rest for a time. Then one day, if you are lucky, it could be reborn.” Marlana gestures toward the forest at the edges of Jaylie’s father’s land. A narrow dirt path that Jaylie does not remember from her childhood leads directly into the sunset. She imagines she can see a ripple of water in the distance, beckoning her. Tempting her.
“Or you can go back,” Marlana says. The water is suddenly hidden, obscured behind the sway of the trees as the wind stirs the leaves. “Your friends have opened a doorway for you. Should you wish it, you can go back. You can continue living.”
“How did they do that?”
“It is not my place to say.”
That puzzles Jaylie, but she does not question it. As comforting as it is to be in the presence of her goddess, there is something about this place that Jaylie does not like. It’stoocomfortable. The softness of the grass under her feet invites her to lie down and rest. The gentle breeze threading through her hair is the perfect temperature, cooling sweat before it even has the chance to bead on her brow. The longer she remains here, the easier it would be to allow her eyelids to droop, her body to relax, her bones to sleep forever.
Jaylie violently shakes the fog from her head. “I want to go back. I want tolive.I’m not ready to go.” Despite her vehemence, her eyes flood with tears. “But I don’t want to leave you, my Lady. There are so many things I want to ask, so much I want to learn. Will I see you again?”
Marlana takes Jaylie’s face between her hands and presses a kiss to the crown of her head. “You see me every day, child. You see me in the sun that chases away the storm clouds, and in the smiles of young lovers who have found each other at last. You see me whenyou find the shortest path through the darkest forest, and in a babe’s first cry when it is welcomed to life.” Teasingly, the goddess taps the tip of Jaylie’s nose. “I am always with you.”
Marlana guides Jaylie to step carefully onto the edge of the well. Before she can stop herself, Jaylie wraps her goddess in a fierce hug. “Thank you,” she whispers into the fall of her hair. “Thank you, my Lady, for everything.”
Marlana holds Jaylie gently, full of warmth and light and love. “Good luck, my darling.”
Jaylie turns, takes a deep breath in, and jumps.
She’s so cold, and it’s so dark.
The pressurehurts.Every part of her body aches to move, but every muscle under her skin is tight and cramping, frozen just on the edge of breaking. Pain sears along each of her bones, swelling in her ears and between her temples, and just when she thinks that every joint is about topop—
Warmth blooms on her lips.
It’s like the first breath of sunshine in spring, come to thaw the winter. It’s the first taste of soup after a long, grueling day. Better—it’s the taste of hot spiced cider at her favorite tavern, surrounded by friends, raucous laughter, and the promise of a lantern-lit night full of dancing. The warmth seeps into her limbs with the enveloping embrace of easing into a steaming bath. It chases the ice from her veins and urges life back into her skin.
As the sensation fades, she begins to feel where chunks of raw crystal and stone press uncomfortably into her spine, where her arms and legs sting from the memory of recent wounds. There’s a specific pain in the back of her neck that feels particularly out of place, throbbing horribly. The warmth recedes as she settles back into reality.
But the heat is still on her lips, tasting of fire.
Jaylie’s eyelids flutter open to find Loren close to her face—touchingher face. Touching her lips. This close, she can see where his brow is creased in concentration, his eyes screwed shut. The air around him hums with powerful magic—and where his skin touches hers, he burns like the sun.
It takes her three thudding, glorious heartbeats to realize that he’s kissing her.
It takes him three thudding, glorious heartbeats to realize that she’s alive.
He draws back from her in a rush, and his green eyes flash open in surprise. Tentatively he reaches forward, tracing a line from her temple to her jaw with his calloused musician’s fingers.
“Jay.” He says her name so tenderly, and she’s shocked to feel tears gather in the corners of her eyes.
