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Lucan’s nails dug into Elarian’s thigh, pain blossoming until she sucked in a gasp to hold back her moan. The black heat deep in her center pulsated, feeding off the pain until she wished to beg for more. It disappeared as quickly as it came. Shifting his hand under Elarian’s arm, Lucan lifted her from his lap with one smooth motion.

“Elsewhere, Jace.” Lucan stood, drained the rest of Elarian’s bloodwine, then pulled her down the back of the dais steps by her hand.

Suddenly, Elarian felt deathly cold despite the fever still boiling her blood and clouding her vision.

thirty

Melistra's Grace

She found the place by scent alone, following the impossible memory that she had nearly forgotten long ago—a midnight rain perfumed with roses and misted with blood.

It lingered upon the damp air like moonlight caught between earth and cloud.

The old woman had walked endlessly, searching again as that dangerous bud of hope continued to blossom. At last, something called to her in this forsaken land. She now knelt in the damp, broken masonry and thick mud cool against her barren legs. It seeped into her brittle joints, but still, she cast her hands about. Moss yielded beneath her touch. Water dripped somewhere below, each slow plink swallowed by an endless maze of tunnels under the earth.

Then—

A single strand, fine as spider silk.

Silvery-white. One lonely strand glimmering beneath the moonless sky.

It clung to a jagged edge of fractured stone, caught there by nothing more than chance. The old woman’s hand hovered above it; for a long while, she could not bear to touch the hair.

Hope was a cruel thing with gnashing teeth.

Centuries ago, she had learned to feed it to the earth before it could bloom again. Hope made promises only the dead believed.

Yet here it waited again, screaming at her, Remember how good it felt to hope?

At last, trembling fingers lifted it free.

Spun moonlight.

She could still feel the hum of Melistra’s Grace. The faint blessing woven through every moon elf child before their first breath. How starlight burned from within, reborn even as they fell from the sky.

Her breath caught. “Impossible,” the old woman whispered.

“Saelith.”

The name escaped her cracked lips before she could stop herself. Bowing her head, she lifted the silver strand to her lips. Cruel trickery of the gods, she told herself even as she inhaled deeply.

Fisting the hair tightly in her palm, she turned away from the half-hidden sewer entrance and looked toward the forest stretching beyond the outer walls. Mist rolled lazily between ancient trunks, swallowing the world one careful breath at a time. The forest remembered all. Once, it had been her refuge. Lover by her side, she would wander its vastness while the young human kingdom rose just beyond. She watched a tower turn into three, heard the victory bells as they routed the vampires…and eventually scented only blood on the winds as they fell at last.

She left not long after that.

But the forest remained.

Lifting her weary limbs, she slowly crossed the empty plain to the forest swallowing the eastern horizon. Soon, she came to its blackened edge. Roots twisted over forgotten stone markers whose names had long since surrendered to rain. White flowers bloomed where no sunlight reached. Somewhere in the distance, water laughed over smooth rock, unchanged by the passing of kingdoms.

With a deep sigh, she stepped foot once more in the woods that had once withered her soul.

The old woman had only walked for several minutes before she felt a pair of eyes upon her. Weaponless, she only sat on a nearby rock and waited for the beast to show itself. Even if she had a weapon, exhaustion ran too deeply in her bones for her to wish to fight back.

Bright blue eyes opened in the swirling mists just beyond her perch.

Moon-pale fur shimmered beneath the canopy despite the absence of sunlight. Nearly as tall as a horse, the ancient creature stepped into view. A fey wolf. She gulped but did not cry out. The beast carried itself without fear, each measured step stirring fallen leaves but making no sound. Cerulean blue markings curled across its shoulders and snout like flowing script, disappearing beneath impossibly thick fur.

The old woman searched beyond the wolf's broad shoulders, between the trees, and behind the drifting mist.