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She didn’t trust herself to speak without wailing, so she just smiled and turned to Jael. “What about the Bifrost? And my connection to the children?”
As if he was perplexed, a deep crease marred Jael’s brow. “I don’t know for sure, but if there is any way at all to free you from the binding, I swear on my life I will find a way to make it happen. So that you can go home.”
Her smile faded as she absorbed the implication of his words. He assumed she would leave, and this implied he wanted to help her go. What did that mean for them? How much did Jael care for her?
While Teague entered the boat, she took a step back. She stood between Jael and Math as Teague untied the tether and pushed the boat into the center of the river. The Gelairan craft slipped away and, as it disappeared into the shadows of the mountain, a piece of her heart went with it.
What now? Her thoughts whispered. What is next for me?
For the first time in ages, she didn’t know what path lay before her. Teague and Jael both claimed she was free, but was she really?
Her heart seemed inextricably bound to Agmon.
The children revived within two days. Anrid’s presence worked like a magical charm, and soon the little rascals were up to their usual shenanigans. There were food fights in the kitchen and pillow fights in the laundry room and wrestling matches in the bathroom.
It was a joyous thing to behold. Even the harassed maids didn’t complain, too happy to see the children recovered from their close call.
On the morning of the third day, Jael strapped a bedroll to the backs of all the children and a heftier pack of supplies to himself and Anrid, and sent them off after breakfast for the journey to Elysium.
“How long of a walk will it be?” Anrid asked as they left the halls of Imenborg with squealing children pressing against them.
Jael spoke without glancing at her. “Only half a day. Then we will board a boat which will take us the rest of the way. It’s an easy day’s journey, but I expect it may take us longer.”
She studied him a few moments more, but he never once looked her direction. Her heart twisted and withered as she turned around and retreated to the back of the group to make sure no one straggled.
He was avoiding her. Of that, she was quite certain.
She could guess why: he hadn’t forgiven her for leaving with the elves. Or perhaps he felt guilty for his part in Medda’s injury. She’d seen him with the little girl and knew he cared about her deeply. How the uncertainty must plague him as strongly as it troubled her!
He led the way with two straggling lines of children behind him. Anrid brought up the rear of their merry procession to make sure they didn’t lose anyone along the way. The children peppered her with questions. None of them had been to Elysium and wanted to know what it would be like, what would happen to them with they got there, and things of this nature. But she had no answers to give them.
She was just as nervous about this as they were.
Her fate, too, hung in the balance.
True to his word, it only took a little over a day to reach the capitol city. The boat they had used was quite big, with several bunks in a below-deck compartment where they slept for the night. The children were fascinated by the pulley-system. Because the river ran in the wrong direction, the boat had to be pulled upriver by a series of pulleys and gigantic ropes attached to iron rings on the hull of the craft. The thought of the ropes snapping and them hurtling back down river made Anrid sick to her stomach, but the children reveled in the experience.
They left the boat late in the afternoon on the second day and walked for only an hour before entering a wide, well-traveled tunnel.
“All right, you lot!” Jael called back to them. “Be on your best behavior, and I’ll make sure there are cookies all around. Understand?”
They graced him with eager, angelic smiles.
Jael exchanged the briefest smile with Anrid before leading them around the bend and up a long flight of stone stairs.
Sunlight streamed from the opening at the top of the stairs, warm and golden and beckoning. Anrid practically ran up the steps, so eager to feel the heat of the sun on her face. She broke out of the tunnel and onto a circular stone platform. The rays of the sun shone so brightly she had to shield her eyes from the intensity. She’d grown accustomed to the darkness of Imenborg.
The children squealed and covered their eyes, chattering. A couple of the little ones began to cry. But a goblin guard with a huge basket dished out spectacles with a darkly tinted glass that dimmed the light of the sun. Even Anrid accepted a pair and blinked delightedly to discover the spectacles did ease the strain. The crying vanished and the giggles resumed.
Anrid walked to the edge of the balcony and stared out over Elysium. It was bigger than she had imagined, surrounded by jagged, white-crested mountain peaks. The sun glittered off windowpanes and fountains of flowing water while dragonets sang and fluttered about rooftops. But what amazed her the most was the massive, translucent dome that arched over the city. The magical dome, glowing a faint amethyst color, stretched over every inch of Elysium. Not one building lay outside the barrier. Set so far in the north and high in the mountains, she would have expected the air to be breathtakingly cold. But it was almost…balmy.
She twisted her palms to the sun and let her skin soak in the warmth. It sank into her bones and drove away the chill of recent events.
“Are you coming?” Jael’s shout pulled her out of her peaceful moment. Reluctant, she turned from the cityscape and hurried after him and the children.
Jael led them off to a couple of large wagons pulled, not by horses, but by huge mountain goats. The rams were bigger than anything Anrid had ever seen, but they stood as docile as a domestic horse bound to a carriage. The real adventure commenced, as Anrid had to grab at tunics and belts while the children dove toward the edges of the wagon trying to lean out to observe everything there was to see. She wondered if Jael was having as much trouble as she was, but she couldn’t see him in the wagon ahead of them.
It only took half an hour to ride down wide, cobblestone streets to reach an impressive central structure—a keep, they would have called it in Haldor, but this more resembled a palace. With high, sweeping towers topped by graceful roofs and round stone balconies with fluted stonework designs, it was unlike anything she had imagined. Beautiful and intricate…not stern and functional like the stone towers from home. It might have sprung out of a children’s fairy tale book.
