AllFreeNovel
Share Us
When I was younger maybe the fact that I could jump on one of the tiles and actually leave helped me feel that way, too. To feel free. But today was different. I wasn’t young anymore.
I didn’t want to step inside the room. There was no freedom there. No matter how hard I tried to tell myself that this was the best thing—the only thing—for me to do, I wasn’t ready.
It seemed silly to hesitate now. Silly and stupid because I was showing weakness, and just as I thought about turning around to leave, Van gripped my hand in his.
“It could be worse.” He pulled me to his side.
I let my head rest on his shoulder. “How?”
“We could be going to Leaves.”
A startled laugh slipped free from me. “Wrong. Leaves would be an improvement. They might be a little too focused on lazing about for us, but at least they’re not evil.”
“Gales isn’t evil.”
I gave him a look that said he was full of it, but he’d given me enough of a push. His strength would get me through this.
I let go of his hand and pulled my locket out of my shirt, gripping the warmed opal moon in my hand as I finally stepped inside to walk the inner circle of tiles.
The four-foot wide hexagon for Leaves was painted with a beautiful forest. The boughs on the evergreen trees were covered with a light dusting of snow.
I walked to the next tile—Gales. The painted tile was the color of sand. The night sky glittered above the dunes. To the northwest, a sandstorm was brewing, heading toward Gales.
“They’ve got trouble coming,” I said to Van.
He came to stand near me. “Not necessarily. There could just be an actual sandstorm in the area.”
I shook my head. “A sandstorm brewing in the northwest. As in where we are? Just as we’re about to enter their court?” I sighed. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
I didn’t have the Sight, not like Tessa, but I had some variation of it. It was more like very strong intuition combined with being able to see all the different paths a life could take. The red string of fate tried to pull each person along their path, but if they were strong and kept their eyes open, then a lot of heartache could be avoided.
Except I couldn’t see my own path. I couldn’t see my string of fate. All I had was my intuition, and I knew that something very, very bad was coming if I went to Gales.
“It could be nothing.” Van said it as though he knew it was something. He gave the signal to the guards to move ahead, and at that one simple gesture, icy dread ran through my limbs until it hit my heart, and its beating slowed.
Slowed.
Slooooowed.
Until the thump-thump became a thump...thump... And in between the beats, my guards were moving. Fast. Too fast.
Cyros and Taslin stepped around me and onto Gales’ tile.
Thump...
Cyros and Taslin disappeared.
Thump...
Too quickly. They were moving too quickly. And I was too slow to realize that the ice slowing my heart, my mind, my body was dread.
I couldn’t do this. I hadn’t stepped foot in Africa, let alone into Gales, for more than thirty years. The last time nearly killed me. This time, I might live, but my heart and my soul wouldn’t survive.
I couldn’t do this. I really couldn’t do this.
Thump...
Two more guards stepped onto the tile. Pratis and Gurhan were gone.
