“This was her place, Emelyn. She and the king created this as a place to keep her safe, to be alone. It is a shrine to their love story. She brought me here. She granted me access, only ever me and those I trust. I know because I saw her in my dreams. I thought it was the magic, that the king showed me, but it wasn’t, it was her. I feel her now—her sadness, her hopelessness, her anger, and her determination. She was so strong and so in love with the king and this world.” She swallows, then glances back at the book before looking back at us.
“Did her death start the war?”
ChapterThirty
It’s all so clear now.
I feel the shroud of the shadows releasing and showing me the truth it obscures—her, her power, her magic.
She and the king shared it, allowed it to flow between them like a lifeforce, and when she was taken from him, when she was killed, it was ripped away from her and thrown back into him. He couldn’t save her, and that enhanced magic drove him mad.
She whispered to me when I needed it, as if we were finally close enough to hear her. I’m just glad this place is safe. No one can get in unless she allows them to. I know that with certainty, but I’m not sure how.
You are safe here.
It’s a whisper only I can hear, settling my nerves as I stop before the book. I feel the others glancing around, but my entire focus is engrossed by the simple black writings on a page of the book.
It is time you saw. It is time to see.
See what?I almost ask out loud.
To truly see past your mortality, past your humanity, to the heart of this land and the magic it possesses. After all, it belongs to it. We are simply borrowing it, the whisper responds, and without meaning to, I reach out and touch the book.
Memories crowd my brain—hers, the king’s, and all the people who came before. It’s all the memories of this land.
Of magic.
Of its corruption, misuse, and stolen strength.
It crowds my brain until I scream, but I also know I’m not. I’m standing before the book. It all happens in mere seconds, yet inside, I’m screaming and writhing in agony as my brain fills and overflows with too much knowledge.
Too many memories.
Too much pain.
Heartache.
Horror.
Hope.
All of it crashes over me like a wave until I’m drowning.
Breathe, chosen one, just breathe, and it will pass. This was the only way. I injected my magic into these words with my last breath. When my love found this book, he brought it here, which was my last request, for you. You are the one this world and I have been waiting for—the one who can stabilize the balance and save magic.
The soft, almost motherly whisper is like a balm on an open wound, and I slowly start to breathe again. When I open my eyes, I look over the words in the book, but I don’t need to read them to understand them.
I turn to the others, words spewing from my mouth before the truth of the matter escapes my lips.
“Did her death start the war?” Horror fills me as I stare at them in shock. “It did. The humans killed her. Her own father, the king, killed the princess in their own land to start the war. But why?”
I search the memories, but there are too many.
“Power,” Grim replies as I come to the same conclusion.
The others watch me carefully, and I realize I’m glowing again. Magic runs through me, and I follow it like a living, breathing vein pumping around my body and into the ground. “It was power that was not theirs to steal. That’s why magic has deserted the Gilded Lands and the Shadow Lands and only sparks remain like echoes of what it once was. It was never the king’s to capture. It is this world’s, and we simply borrow it. He tried to corrupt it. He killed an innocent being whom this world chose to bridge the gap between its creatures.”
“The humans wanted the power of the monsters and were tired of sharing it with her beasts. Her father thought her death was needed to overthrow the lands, and he was right. Our king was a broken, ruined man after his love’s death. He declared war, but even in death, the human king was haunted by his daughter, so with the last of the stolen power, he built the wall to keep out the monsters and the memories,” Bracken explains.
