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“What am I supposed to do now?” I asked, but I wasn’t sure who I was asking. Terra wasn’t listening. Maybe I was just talking to myself.
If I wasn’t a high priestess, what was I? I had no idea. I’d been in service to the throne my whole life. It was what I had been trained to do. It was what my mother had been, and her mother before that. I knew nothing else.
What I did know was what I felt for Dex.
The only thing that stopped us from really being together, truly, the way it was intended by the natural laws of being Fae, was the mate bond that hadn’t been forged.
I refused to believe that this was how it would work for me. I deserved more than just a relationship without the mate bond. Dex and Ihadto be fated—why would I have had that vision about him otherwise?
If there were other ways to create a mate bond than sleeping together. Clearly, what we’d done already hadn’t worked, but that didn’t mean it was a dead end.
I suddenly thought back to a story my mother had told me when I had been just a child.
Once upon a time, a long time ago, there lived a man and a woman who loved each other very much.I could still hear my mother’s voice. It had been a bedtime story or something. The words were still so clear in my mind, as if at least five centuries hadn’t passed since I’d heard it last.The man and woman couldn’t envision a life without each other. It was as if they completed each other. The problem was that they weren’t fated mates. They loved each other dearly, but they weren’t destined to be together.
As was the custom at the time—remember, we are talking about the times of old, when the Fae didn’t know anything other than being together when it was destined to be—the man and woman weren’t permitted to wed. The community forbade them to be together, but their love was so strong, they refused to listen.
Instead, the man and woman decided to do a spell that would form a mate bond between them. They went against destiny, against fate, and chose a new path that hadn’t been written in their stars.
When the people found out that they had created a spell to forge a mate bond, the man and woman were banished from the village, forced to live a life in solitude. It was worth it—they never regretted the family they’d lost, the friends they would never see again. They had each other, and it was the only support they truly needed. You see, they limited themselves in all aspects but that of the heart. It was a world that was filled with love, albeit with no one from the life they knew before. It didn’t matter, because love conquered all.
I tried to remember what the moral of the story was and failed. I only remembered what my mother had told me—the man and the woman had eventually died, but they had been happy, living a life that had been fulfilling.
That was what I wanted. Everything I’d done my whole life had been according to the rules. I’d listened to the Goddess; I’d listened to the King. I was there for the Queen when she needed me, before she was who she was now. I had done everything for everyone else, and it was my turn.
If Terra didn’t want to be there for me, I would take matters into my own hands.
I wanted to be with Dex, so that was what I would do. I would make it happen. I wasn’t going to sit back and let someone else decide where my life would lead.
I left the sanctuary and walked through the cathedral, heading for the library. The room was one of my favorite rooms in the whole cathedral. It was filled with bookshelves that stretched from ceiling to floor, covering every wall except for the doors. It was my own personal library, mimicking the one in the palace, but it was filled with tomes and scrolls that weren’t for the eyes of any Fae save those called into service.
I walked to the stack of tomes and scrolls that had been given to me when I had graduated from my lessons, mastering the first steps of becoming a priestess. I wish that I would have had my mother to guide me, but her life had been cut short. I’d been young when she’d passed, but she’d been an influence in my life long enough that I still heard her voice, still followed her instructions, guided by the example she’d been.
I heard her voice again, echoing in my mind as if she stood by my side.
In these works, you’ll find the answers to everything you need. There will be times when the darkness will feel impossible, you won’t know how to bear the weight of your questions, and you won’t know which way to turn. That’s when you have to keep your eyes on the light and remember that there have been those who walked before you, carving a new path when there had been only wilderness. The path we walk as servants of the greater good is often one that you must walk alone. It's not an easy route to choose, but if you do it, you’re not alone. You don’t have to go through the trouble again when others have gone before you. Read these when you’re in trouble, and you will find the answers you seek.
Terra may not have been here to give me the answers I needed, but I believed that remembering what my mother had told me and having these scrolls and tomes to turn to was exactly what would give me the answers I was looking for. Maybe it was an answer from Terra in a different way.
It would mean that I had to forgive Terra for abandoning me in my time of need, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to do that. I knew it was selfish of me, unlike what I was meant to be as a high priestess. I just couldn’t find it in myself to be different.
Ellie had been worried, and a part of me was uncertain, but the uncertainty, the feeling of being lost, made me want to act. It was unlike anything I had been taught to sit back and feel helpless. It was in my nature to fight, to find answers, to heal, to make a right where things were broken.
The stack of tomes was old and dusty, and I didn’t know where to start looking.
As I stared at the pile of old scripts, one of them stood out to me. It was as if light shone from the windows, illuminating the one I was meant to pick up.
Yet again, another answer. It was going to tell me what I needed to know; I was sure of it.
With a new determination, I opened the tome and started reading. I paged through the different scrawls of information written by many hands as they’d found the answers they wanted to pass on to generations to come. I would keep searching until I could find it—something that would allow me to be closer to Dex, to be with him and not lose him.
That was all I wanted.
The answers weren’t in the first tome, the one that had been illuminated, begging me to pick it up.
I went through every tome on the pile, every scroll, but I didn’t find anything. I didn’t know how many hours I’d searched, but when I’d gone through them all, I was nowhere closer than where I’d started. Anger bubbled up in my chest, and I let it take over. My blood boiled, and I saw white. I grabbed the pile of ancient scrolls and threw it across the room, screaming in frustration.
The old pages fell apart, the tomes coming undone, and they fluttered to the floor like dead leaves at the end of fall.
