CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE（Untitled）Naomi

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Naomi

After lunch, I pull on my new boots and hop up from the couch. With my boobs supported by a bra and my magic bolstered by several red crystals, I feel ready to face anything.

Especially since I know Wranth will always have my back.

“I want to practice teleporting,” I say.

“Now?” Wranth asks. “The dragons will arrive tomorrow with information.”

“We don’t know if they know anything about my powers. Besides, I want to try out the red crystals.” I finger the two small ones added to my necklace, but I’ve also shoved two larger ones into my pants pockets.

“All right.” He stands up and adjusts his sword belt. “Where should be go first?”

“The waterfall.”

When he raises a rakish eyebrow, I grin and say, “Not for that. Not this time. I want to go there because I can picture it clearly.”

I grip my crystal with one hand and lay the other on Wranth’s left forearm. Closing my eyes, I concentrate, pulling up a picture of the pond with the waterfall pouring down into it in a continuous splash.

In a blink, we’re there. A squirrel chitters angrily from nearby and dashes for the trees.

“I did it!” I laugh up at Wranth, a little breathless. “It was so easy.”

He gives me his crooked smile, lips curving up around his left tusk.

Riding my high, I reach for an image of the standing stone from my first day. We pop into existence, into the brightness of full sun, the wind lifting my curls. Trees stretch away in all directions, seen easily because we’re so high up. I brought us to the top of the rock pillar.

I eep and take a shuffle step back from the edge, but I shouldn’t have worried, because Wranth’s hands already hold me, pulling me to safety.

“Guess I better watch what I visualize.” I teleport us to the ground and spin to place both palms flat on the standing stone.

“You want to go home,” Wranth says, his voice strangely flat.

“Something like that,” I say. “Hold on to me?”

His large hands wrap around my shoulders, his grip firm yet gentle.

I close my eyes and reach for my magic. It stirs inside me, willing and eager, but I need more. I feel for the standing stone. It helped me open the door to Earth, so it should help with this, too.

Flickers from deep within the rock send trickles of energy to me, which thicken into streams the more I pull. My magic races within my chest, a building swirl of power that makes my pulse race and sets my teeth on edge. The air grows staticky around me, with that feeling it gets right before a thunderstorm, all ozone and the promise of lightning.

I reach for home, but not my home. As much as I long to go there, there’s something else I need to do first.

I reach for Wranth’s home, the place he originally came from, the place that’s haunted him his entire life. If he can get some answers, he’ll know instead of wondering. That’s got to be better.

And I want that for him.

I send a tendril of my magic into him, feeling for a connection to another place. The first one I find is golden and thick, and when I brush against it, a picture of last night’s dinner in Moon Blade Village fills my mind.

I’m seeing everything through Wranth’s eyes, and the most wonderful feeling washes over me when the Naomi from the memory smiles.

Oh! My heart pinches and tears prick my eyes.

This is what he thinks of as home. Me . I’m his home. I’m not sure how to handle being this important to him already. I should probably be worried that it’s too soon or something. But the wounded part of me I’ve buried deep feels it as a balm.

Seeing this confirms everything I already thought. Wranth will never leave me. I can trust him.

I bask in it for several more seconds before the power whirling through me demands my attention. It needs a place to go.

And as lovely as this revelation is, it’s not helping me find Wranth’s home.

I push deeper, finding a silver thread that leads to a memory of a courtyard surrounded by high stone walls. Sturrm attacks me with a sword, and the body I’m in counters and strikes back. It’s a memory from his time in the king’s guard. This must be the castle. It’s his past, but it’s not nearly far back enough.

I grit my teeth and push again, this time seeing the same courtyard, but the hand holding the wooden practice sword is small, that of a child.

I dive deeper, the way becoming dark and harder to navigate. I refuse to give up. There must be something! Wranth’s origins are too much of a mystery to leave unanswered. I need to do this for him.

Sweat beads my forehead, and my body begins to tremble from the effort. Darkness, darkness, more darkness… No, wait! A purple thread floats across my mental vision, so deep a shade it almost gets lost in the black. I reach for it, hoping for a memory, but there’s not much to see. My borrowed eyes can barely focus on what’s in front of me, and it takes me long seconds to realize I’m pressed up against a shoulder clothed in dark purple. Other than that, there’s a feeling of warmth and safety and being held.

This must be it! This has to be Wranth as a baby.

I gather the energy swirling through me and feed it into the thread, forcing it back to the origin. This isn’t anything like my previous teleports, but it feels right, so I keep going. If I’m wrong, and this is a baby memory from after he arrived in Alarria, the worst thing that can happen is we teleport to the orc castle.

But there’s too much resistance for the destination to be in Alarria. This feels as hard as when I pushed through to Ferndale Falls. I’m right. I know I’m right.

I strain harder, my fingers scraping against the rock as they flex. There, there , THERE !

A sound like the world ripping in two vibrates through me, and I fall forward, my hands and knees hitting hard ground. I blink, eyes fighting to adjust to the sudden darkness. It’s night wherever we are.

“Wranth?” I whisper, my throat gone dry from all the effort.

He stands over me, completely silent, a darker silhouette against the night sky.

A sky filled with two crescent moons!

I did it! We’re not in Alarria any more.

I reach out to touch his leg, the muscles hard, vibrating with tension.

“Wranth?”

Instead of answering, he snatches me off the ground, throws me over his shoulder, and starts to run.