With a little hesitation but no other choice, Ambrose threw herself back into the blackness towards where the thread was coming from. She had no idea what she was following, but it was her best option. She’d just have to put all her trust into the lifeline, and silently hope she wasn’t being led to her death.
The voices of the woken servants faded from her ears and she found her way deeper and deeper into the palace. She had no way of knowing where she was going, she wasn’t paying enough attention to anything but the thread unfolding before her. She walked until she turned down a hallway that was unlike any part of the palace.
The polished marble floors turned to rough stone, the walls no longer smooth dragonstone, but uncut, like the builder no longer cared for aesthetic. There wasn’t supposed to be an unfinished hallway anywhere in the palace. The air grew no longer cozy and perfect but rather stale and damp. The servants had to have found the dead guard by now and were alerting the rest of them. A manhunt would be ordered and justice demanded of the culprit. The Draconian and Imperial Guard likely discharged to bring the murderer to justice at the end of a blade. Only after hours—if not days—of torture into why she did it, she’d be executed and made an example of.
What kind of example would they make a guard killer?
She did her best not to think of her rotting corpse swinging in the wind the way that servant’s had all those years ago. She stared down at her hands, covered in the blood of a man she didn’t know. Unable to see just how stained they were, she rubbed her hands together in an attempt to wipe it away.
But there were some things she couldn’t make just go away.
The thread glowed brighter and started pulsing. Ambrose tore her attention back to the present as she reached a door glowing golden and bright like the thread that nested right in the heart of it. She gasped as she took in the metalwork. Gold and silver bending and curving into a forest with stars of gems sprinkled into the sky. The pulse that emanated from the thread spread to the entire door as though pulling her closer. Askingher to open it.
As though it had been waiting for her.
She barely had to touch it when the gate swung open. If Ambrose thought the door was beautiful, it did nothing to prepare her for what she saw on the other side. Some plants she had known all her life. Like trees with white trunks and the same golden and red leaves as the ones scattered throughout Eltoria. Wildflowers that she knew grew in the mountains to the north, but only saw when the right flower vendor came to sell to the nobles…while others…couldn’t be real. The entire room couldn’t be real.
Even though she knew it was the middle of the night, moonlightas well assunlight came in through the stained glass windows. The room was day and night all at once. Silver and gold mixing together. Flowers that glowed as the sun and moon hit them, returning their light tenfold. Butterflies that on closer inspection, were made entirely of light and nothing else. Sparkling dust parading down with each flap of their wings. The grass responded to her footsteps with a vibrancy that took her breath away. Each blade glowed bright anywhere she touched it. Roses the shade of the night sky with what looked like stars coating them.
They couldn’t beactualstars.
She traced her fingers over a rose closest to her and the stars coated her fingertips.
That wasn’t possible.
The entire room wasn’t possible and yet there she stood, unable to convey the beauty of it all with anything other than a few tears of appreciation.
The room was alive. She didn’t know how she knew it, but she knew it.
Something was still pulling her. She followed it to the center of the garden where the air was stolen from her lungs the second time that day. There stood a tree that emitted a magickal energy so intense, Ambrose didn’t bother fighting it, she immediately fell to her knees in awe. Baked in golden light—no, itwasthe golden light—pulsating with a steady hum. So bright, it was almost blinding. So bright, it filled everything when she looked at it.
“You’re the one who saved me,” Ambrose whispered, knowing it was true.
“Yes. We did.” Its voice was nothing like she would’ve expected. Both male and female. Human and Fae. Every creature all at once. And something she didn’t understand, ancient and young all coming together as many and one all around her. A blend of melody that almost brought her to tears.
“How are you…alive?” Instinctively she said the words in her mind, knowing that they’d still understand her.
“Everything is alive, young mage.”
Humbled before the ancient soul, she knew what they said was the truth.
“Why?” The light hurt to look at but she didn’t dare tear her eyes away. “I don’t understand.”
“You will,” they assured. “It is not time for you to know why.”
“What are you?”
“You are not yet able to understand.” The voices rode each glowing pulse from the tree all the way to her.
“When will I understand?”
“One day.”
“One day,” Ambrose sighed. “How do you know who I am?”
“We’ve known you for a long time. You’ve known us for a long time,” their melody echoed. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
“What do you want from me?”
