Page 126 of Autumn Queens & Shadows

“Yes. Macaria believes so, too. She said she felt it when your seals were removed. It seems winter wants you to find something. Something you may have maybe lost. Something you can’t find without losing everything else first.”

“What does that even mean?”

“I cannot give you your answers. You have to find them yourself. Otherwise nature wouldn’t have gone to this extent.”

Damn it. Gods dammit. I was so tired from all this bullshit. All I wanted was a nap and to be left alone. “How are you even doing this?”

“Nature doesn’t view me as an anomaly either after they took off the seal my…Melanthe gave me. At least that is what I like to believe. Part of me thinks they might fear my betrothed,” she said, wincing a little.

“I can’t,” I said, panting. I wasn’t made for running or camping or any other open-air activities. My feet were made for massages. I had not grown a callus since…well, ever. “I can’t go any further.” I couldn't see anything ahead but the glistening stars that looked the closest to the realm I’d ever seen them. My thighs and lungs were burning. My feet ached. My poor, poor feet.

“A little further,” she pushed. “Just a little, Thora.”

“What is a little further?”

I halted, my chest burning from the run and the panting breaths I took as I took in what stood in the close distance.

From where I was standing, it looked like a tree made entirely of fireflies. But when I got closer, I could see that the leaves and part of the trunk glowed within itself.

“That,” Lilith said just as I reached the end of the wall. “They call it the tree of life in our holy books. Blackfyre, the Red Coven’s grimoire, recalls many of them to have been planted in many realms. A heart is buried under their roots so the leaves can breathe out the magic into the winter air as well as the roots spreading it in the soil.”

“A heart?”

“A pure one. It was used to keep the land from dying. I figured Krig planted one in this realm, in Isjord, because his blessing would have killed the land and then starved its people. Winter and war were never meant to make humanity thrive. They were meant to extinguish it.”

Realisation struck me. “The heartbeat I’ve been hearing. Could this be it?”

“Must be. I have to go now,” she hurriedly said, looking somewhere behind her. “The scarlet stone I stole from Macaria to reach you has burned entirely. Stay under the tree and let it show you—” she warned right before disappearing.

“Show me what?”

Damn it.

Quiet.

It was so, so incredibly quiet.

The crunch of my steps in the snow echoed in the distance as I approached the tree’s shade, reaching a hand forward to brace it against its trunk. It was warm. A strange sense of calm trickled over my skin when I rested both hands on it. My chest…it felt so light that I thought my body was going to float.

“Alright,” I loudly said, wincing when my voice boomed around the empty air. “I’m here. What do you want to show me?”

Silence.

Nothing.

Only my pulse blasting against my ear drums.

“Talking to trees now, Thora Isa Krigborn?” I murmured to myself, walking around the tree, my fingers skimming its trunk. “That’s what’s wrong with you.”

I paused at the sudden pulse against my palm, wondering if I had imagined it. “What?” I asked, a little embarrassed that I was now carrying full conversations with a damn tree.

Resting my ear against the trunk, I closed my eyes. “What have I lost, you stupid tree? I’m so done with all this spiritual nonsense.” Banging my fist against the trunk, I groaned, “Tell me.”

A squeak came out of me when the tree shifted, its trunk twisting and then splitting in half to frame what looked like a liquid mirror. The reflection however was strange. It was me, dressed the same, looking the same, just from years ago—many years ago.

Little Thora stood before me, watching me with a strange look in her eyes. They were stronger than mine were now despite the youth she still held.

Kneeling down, I tilted my head to the side to study her and she did the same, mimicking me. When I stood, she stood, too. When I spoke, she spoke, too, her small voice joining mine.