Page 125 of Revealing Fate

She stared at him. “Why?”

“I’m not sure,” he said, brows wrinkling. “I found this place years ago, after I built my cabin. But when I stepped into the clearing that first time, I felt an untamed sense of tranquility.” He gazed at her. “It makes no sense, but that’s the best way I can explain it. I felt wild, raw, and yet…utterly at peace. I had no desire to go any further.”

Felíne shuddered. “And today?”

An odd sense of wonder settled over Kal’s handsome features. “I wanted to be here with you. I don’t know why, but I need to see what’s up there.” Kal turned his attention forward. Upward. He retook her hand, and Felíne felt the gentle prick of claws. “I need you to be there with me.”

“Kal,” she whispered. “I’m afraid.”

Something inside Felíne felt conflicted. She too wanted to reach the top of the hill. To follow the unnatural stream and mournful stone steps to the crest of the plateau. But something else, a quiet insistence, warned her that what she would find would hurt her. Not physically, but a foreign, timid voice in the back of her mind cautioned her with words she was certain she’d never heard before.

The body may ache, but bodies will heal. Ruinous pain afflicts only the soul.

Felíne’s admission of fear broke the fragile trance that held Kal momentarily captive. His gleaming eyes grew fierce, focused. “You are mine to protect,” he said to her, the statement oddly formal. “Nothing will harm you while I am here. Not now. Not ever.”

She believed him.

They walked together up the final stretch of steps.

Chapter 45

MAGIC AND MADNESS

FELÍNE STEPPED OFF THE FINAL stone of the ancient stairway and found herself in a place that felt as though it belonged to another time. She and Kal had emerged onto a plateau, as they’d expected. The flat top of the hill stretched in a wide circle beneath the warm afternoon sunlight.

What she hadn’t expected was the haunted, untouched beauty of the hilltop. To their left, the aberrant stream flowed up a raised rocky berm and trickled over the other side into a steaming hot spring. The spring was sheltered on one border by a crescent-shaped limestone wall. Vibrant colors—orange, yellow, chartreuse, and aquamarine—painted the rockface. The water falling over its façade gave the illusion of a multicolored ribbon rippling down the stone to disappear beneath the pool’s surface.

Beyond the spring, strange, low-lying ferns extended feathery blue appendages, reaching to tickle the bare feet of any passersby. Tiny flowers in a riot of color speckled the plateau’s plain. Creeping mosses in shades of green Felíne hadn’t even known existed wound their way between neighboring plants and over boulders.

A stone bench, its seat cracked and crumbling, had been situated near one edge of the plateau. Felíne brushed her fingertips along the lichen-covered slab. The seat was wide enough for two and overlooked the sprawling expanse of Stillwater Wood. She could see the Rhize mountains in the distance, their hazy white peaks kissing the skyline. Gods, how incredible the night sky must look from this vantage. How infinite.

“Felíne.”

She’d never get used to the sound of her name from Kal’s lips. Yet when she turned, her enchantment faded.

Kal stood several paces from an odd mark in the earth, and as she joined him, that feeling of wrongness returned. How had she not noticed this when they’d first crested the hill?

The ground before them was…scarred. Felíne didn’t know how else to describe it. The soil looked leached of life. Where the rest of the plateau was blanketed with an abundance of flora, odd though it may be, nothing grew here. Not a blade of grass. Not one tiny bud. Not even a single decay-loving fungi.

She stepped to the edge of the scar and dropped to her haunches. Kal knelt beside her. Felíne couldn’t say what compelled her, but she reached out a hand⁠—

“Kitty, wait⁠—”

Her fingertips brushed the boundary. Magic—for what else could it be—thick and viscous and alien zipped through her. Kal shuddered, his hand locked on her arm. Whatever it was passed through him, too.

And suddenly, Felíne wasn’t squatting atop a plateau forgotten by time. It was as though a lens had been fitted over her eyes, and through them she saw this place as it once was—the height of its grandeur.

An overwhelming sadness tore into her, a half sob catching in her chest. What unnatural possession was this? The awe that the beauty of their surroundings inspired paled in comparison to this all-consuming agony. Felíne turned her tear-stained face to Kal. He stood next to her, undiluted anguish etched into every line of his handsome profile.

“Felíne, I am so sorry,” he said.

“Whatever for?” She couldn’t identify the source of this emotion, but the weight of it crushed her. Did Kal know something she didn’t?

Kal’s forehead rippled in bewilderment. “I…I don’t know.”

Another inexorable tide of feeling hit her. She gasped. “What is this?”

Kal took her hand and surveyed the unveiled scene before them. “What was,” he said heavily, though his gaze was wide and unbelieving.