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Truthfully, I didn’t give a fuck about leading our people. But I knew exactly what would happen if either of my brothers took control:
They would kill me.
We couldn’t coexist, which we had thoroughly proven as children. They blamed me for our mother’s actions, and to them, I would never be more than the only one of her children that she so much as tried to love.
My brothers weren’t my concern in the moment though; my mate was.
I closed my eyes and stopped fighting the dark power that constantly pulsed in my veins, finding the twisting lunar magic deep within my soul. It hid behind the rest, lying silent and ready. When I tapped into it, it responded obediently, in a way my night magic never had.
With the smallest of urges, my magic slid down my arm and through the palm resting on Vena’s face. She didn’t stir as the soft, unassuming power seeped into her skin and slowly soaked her mind, giving me access to the vast world within. No one but the lunar fae truly understood a person’s mind; it wasn’t a fortress, or a building, or a figure. It was a fuckinguniverse.
Vena’s inner world was a peaceful one. The landscape was full of large trees with long, flowing branches that danced in a breeze I couldn’t feel or see. The leaves were a soft yet rich green color, and lavender flowers blossomed at some of the places where the leaves met the branches. The land was flat and stretched onward as far as I could see. Birds and butterflies soared around us, flying in that same light wind.
As I expected, my mate’s inner world welcomed me the moment my magic materialized my body into being. Her power—which had formed itself into a likeness of her own body, though I knew it was only a shred of the woman herself—stepped toward me with two large strides and threw her arms around me. The way she gripped me was desperate, and my arms wrapped around her just as tightly.
When I held her to me, a frown tugged at my lips.
She felt much more fragile here than she had in the real world. Her magic should’ve been stronger than she was, not weaker.
That was not a good omen.
“Show me your past,” I murmured to my female’s magic.
Had she been an enemy, I would’ve had to fight with her, or persuade her.
Because her magic recognized me as its other half, she simply took my hand and led me further into the forest.
As we walked, I noticed the trees movement slowing, and then stopping.
The birds and butterflies slowed, and eventually, disappeared.
Every ounce of life slowly seemed to drain from the peaceful oasis I had appeared within. Each tree I passed was a little droopier, a little grayer, until we were walking through the skeleton of a forest.
“How bad is your illness?” I asked Vena’s magic.
She gave me a soft, sad smile, but didn’t answer.
She couldn’t, I knew.
If I wanted an answer, I’d have to find it in her memories or hear it from her lips.
The dead tree trunks and branches gave way to a thick crack in the ground. Its entrance was rocky, and I recognized it as the opening of a cave.
Vena’s magic stopped at the base of the crack. Her lips were pressed together, and I watched her body shrink slightly.
I knew my mate had survived horrors, but the way her magic alone reacted to the cave she had hidden her memories in told me that her life had probably been even worse than I imagined.
“You’ll remain here?” I asked her magic.
It didn’t reply, of course, but when I looked over at it, my mate’s eyes were full of unshed tears.
Fuck.
“Take me back to the day my father’s men found you,” I instructed her magic, stepping toward the cave.
There was no purpose in waiting; if I wanted to understand my female and her illness, I needed to understand her past.
I climbed into the cave, ignoring the scrapes and cuts from the stones I maneuvered my way through. Darkness engulfed me further as I continued to climb down, but I was no stranger to darkness. My eyes adjusted without a problem, allowing me to make out the shapes and sizes of the rocks well enough to navigate through the cave.
