28. Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Eight

Willow

The sobs that rip out of me when my mind becomes my own nearly split me in two.

My earth element bursts free with no command from me and wraps the branches of my tree around me in a cocoon. The woodsy smell mixed with a day of rain makes that entire memory settle into the compartments of my mind, finding their new home.

“CC,” I cry out in my mind.

“I’m here, filia mea, and I always will be. See what your momma left you, my girl. You’ve both been waiting a long time for this.”

Frantically, my eyes fly open, searching for the bound leather that I brought over here with me when I took this spot. My element frees me from its hug but bends my tree so much, I see no other part of my room as it conceals me. Just the shiny green leaves, the floor beneath me, and the black cover with the striking silver sigil engraved across.

Snatching it closer to me from where I apparently dropped it during the memory, I prick my finger and squeeze it to make my blood pool faster. As I lay my tip to the top point on the marking, another sob wracks my chest .

My lullaby.

She came up with half my lullaby.

CC the other.

I can’t stop the tears, gasp, or hiccups no matter how hard I try. The shaking in my hands is so bad, I’m dripping blood all over my clothes, but my need to know outweighs it all.

“Air, Earth, Water, Fire so bright,

Four elements, pure and right.

Remember these with joy and cheer,

The elements become one, the world becomes clear.”

Despite the fact it’s a garbled, stuttering mess, magic sizzles through my hand and a light shock travels up my arm. I wholeheartedly welcome it. A laugh mixed with the downpour coming from me echoes around my isolated space and I slowly peel the cover back.

And wait.

And wait.

The longer I sit here staring and nothing happens, that elation I just felt starts to melt away, and I mentally beg for this not to be a joke. Please, Elementra, for all things, let this work for me.

Just as I go to fucking rage at the disappointment, a beautiful, black cursive script begins to draw itself out across the parchment.

Hello, my little dragonfly.

“Oh my God,” I cry out loud, covering my mouth with my hand as I stare down at the book in amazement.

More and more words begin to show up and my eyes can’t devour them fast enough. My heart is beating so fast, I’m surprised I can’t see its rhythm through my skin.

“If you’re reading this, baby girl, it means that it’s your time.

Your time to learn who you are, who we are, our gift, and what that will mean for your future.

Before that begins to reveal to you, though, I just want you to know, Willow, I am so sorry. So, so sorry. To you and your brother. Nothing about any decision I ever made was made lightly or without the two of you at the forefront of my mind. If I could’ve, I would’ve chosen a thousand lifetimes to be with both of you.

I’m sorry that I never expressed my emotions and feelings about you to CC. I know if I had, he would’ve had more to share and explain. I never want you to think it was because I didn’t want to talk about you or because of how you came to be. It was simply the fact that I had to keep you safe. Not that I didn’t trust him with my true feelings. I didn’t trust the realm. I didn’t trust what could’ve been pulled from his mind. All the snippets of information we’ve had to leave for you, it was a risk I wasn’t taking.

I feel bad for doing that to my old friend, but for you, your brother, there was no limit I wouldn’t go to protect you.

CC worked very closely on ending the Mastery. He was in dangerous situations all the time, and he has kept that from you and his family for his whole life. You all may be aware now or at least assume it, but the fact of the matter is that back then, his knowledge was a threat to the Mastery, and he was in the trenches of the war. Right smack in the middle of it.”

I breathe heavily as I read those words. They stick to me like glue and there’s an inkling tickling my brain that I just can’t grasp and pull out.

“CC, is that true?”

“My old friend is a snitch.”

“Well, are you going to explain yourself?”

“Not at this time.”

Groaning, I roll my watery eyes, then wipe them so I can focus on the words that continue to appear.

“Regardless of that, I want you to know, there’s no other in the realm, aside from my own Nexus, I would have wanted to look after you. Knowing Franklin, I know you weren’t protected from everything, but in my heart, I believe that CC gave you a piece of life you needed just as I asked him to.”

He did. I promise he did.

I know she can’t hear me, but I don’t stop myself from mentally confirming it. He made life so much better. He took amazing care of me until he couldn’t anymore.

“That leads me to my next point I’d like to discuss with you, and this is a difficult conversation, but you deserve the truth and much about your life to come.

Since my parents were on the run with me, I had to grow up far faster than many in Elementra. I didn’t go to an academy. I didn’t get to have other friends, just my parents. They did everything they could to prepare me for anything.

Then the day I emerged.

All the women in our family emerge at fourteen. It’s always been unrecorded for our protection. Our Nexus members usually emerge earlier than most as well, except for yours. Yours emerged at fourteen to prepare for your coming. They had their own paths they had to pave before your arrival.

We knew and were ready for my emerging. Or so we thought. What we didn’t expect was for Elementra to appear to me and tell me what the future of the realm held. What my future held. Her power coming through caused the entirety of mine to explode out far stronger than we thought possible.

I shifted into my wolf immediately and ran faster than the wind while she talked to me. My animal’s mind was at the helm, running free, while I sat in the back and talked to Elementra. It didn’t stay that heightened after she left me, but the consequences of that had started the timekeeper on my countdown.

I knew that day, everything, well, mostly everything, that was going to happen to me. That includes you.”

Oh no.

Picking the book up off the floor from where I’ve basically hovered over it to read it, I lean back into the trunk of the tree so I can sit crisscross for this. I don’t want to miss a thing, but I also feel like I need to be grounded to hear it. Whatever she writes, whatever she felt at the time, she has a right to those things.

Fuck, she was only fourteen, finding out pretty much her whole life.

“I convinced myself that since I knew it was going to happen, then I could accept it, not let it get to me and I would be fine until I could return to Elementra. Grit my teeth and bear it.

And that’s what I did. I was fine while I was in the nonmagical realm .

Coming back home and meeting my men shattered my jaded reality.

The first time one of them touched me willingly, I panicked.

Our bond stepped in and calmed me, reassured me I was okay, and that helped, but my men took it upon themselves to shut down any more sexual attempts made by me. They wanted to reteach me what it meant to be loved.

I didn’t know how to be touched tenderly, caressed, or wooed.

They had to reteach it all to me.

It took me many, many years to admit the fact that Franklin raped me. I’d trained my mind to believe it wasn’t true because I knew what was to come and I didn’t want you to know one day you weren’t made from love.

You were and you weren’t if that makes sense, but I wasn’t going to have a way to show you that. You would only know him.

That’s why it was so important to me to tell CC to show you as much love as he could. I knew it wouldn’t prepare you romantically, but my mom’s and dads’ love held me together for the majority of those first twelve years.

It was around year ten, Franklin informed me that they were gone, and that seemed to shatter something inside of me. They were my hope, my heart, and I held onto the thought of them during the long nights.

I didn’t know it would happen so soon. Their deaths made me angry, rageful, resentful. I’d run through in my mind what I thought was happening to them. If Franklin was draining me almost every day, they surely did the same to my mom. They probably made my dads watch. The thoughts and questions caused me to fight back, and I paid the price for it at every turn, but I didn’t care.

I hated Franklin for all he had done to me, and I wanted to kill him. So many times did I want to unleash my strength and end his miserable existence. And I could have. I had a choice to make, though, as you well know, and I chose you.

Even as a young child, I knew I wanted to be a momma. Have a Nexus like my parents. I wanted men to shower me with affection and love the way my dads did my mom. So even at fourteen, I knew I wanted you.

I had loved you from the time Elementra showed me a little girl with silver and violet eyes that looked just like me. She told me your soul was in the beyond with her, asking a thousand questions, and I thought to myself, yeah, she’s going to be mine.

“My, the questions I asked growing up. I needed an understanding of everything. You poor thing. You probably got a double dose of it being raised by CC. He asked more questions than even me.”

Yeah, she’s going to be mine.

Laying the book to my chest, I close my eyes as silent tears flow down my face. I let the claim I’ve desperately craved my entire life settle into the void in my heart that I thought I’d filled in with the family I’ve created and grown to love.

I knew a part of me would always be eager for her. I thought I’d done a good job of accepting the fact I’d never have her until I found out I had a brother, then I heard his sweet little voice call her momma. And then this book.

I’ve realized here lately, I want her badly. I want her love.

I’m getting it now. It’s not conventional in any sense. But this was the way she was able to make sure I knew it.

Using my hands to wipe my face dry, then rubbing them down my thighs, I peel the book off my chest and pick up where I left off. If I get nothing else from this book but this note from her, I’ll be okay.

I’ll be better than okay.

“Elementra came to me a few more times throughout my life. Anytime there was a major change in the plans. Usually, her visits were accompanied by CC’s either before or after. Sometimes there were years in between, but I knew that it would all line up.

When he came to visit me and informed me I was pregnant, I was around six months along when Elementra came to me. Told me the story of the wolf. It was my new path. My course had changed just a smidge with Lyker’s upcoming arrival, and I had to begin making decisions for his future as well as yours.

The biggest decision was whether my men would accompany me on my return. There were two paths to that, and the only one that guaranteed Lyker’s future was if they left him. Everything would’ve changed if they had stayed with him because they would’ve died eventually when I did, with Lyker there to witness it. It would’ve started a devastating chain reaction for him. But I couldn’t tell them that straight out.

So going against what I was told not to do, I only told Lyker one version of the story of the wolf. I’m sure Elementra knew, probably shook her head at me, but I had made my decision.

On the second return, they were my rocks.

Franklin was too consumed with himself and torturing us to concern himself with learning anything about my men. He’d torture them in front of me, he’d torture me in front of them, make us all watch, then lock us away in our cages every day. Separately.

But if he’d taken any time to know anything, he’d have easily found out that Allton and I could mend any metal. Those cages couldn’t keep us apart and every day, after everything he’d done to me or them, we held each other close.

Day in and day out, Franklin would rape me, and I fell pregnant rather quickly, which was Elementra’s interference. That shouldn’t have been possible. He didn’t touch me again after that, though. The deed was done, and he had no more use for me sexually. He found it vile to have sex with a pregnant woman, as he said, and I was beyond relieved.

So for the entirety of my pregnancy, I wasn’t tortured or raped. Yes, he still drained by blood, but within the limits that Drin had told him was safe without harming you.

I spent those nine months in the arms of my loving men every chance I got. They’d rub my belly, talk to you, they staked their claim over you as though you were theirs. The first time they felt you kick was when Sedric was purring for me. You went crazy with your little legs, and they celebrated as if they’d just won a war.

I often referred to them as your fathers when I talked to you. They were in all things other than blood. They got to hold you before I did.

The morning you were born, Elementra came once again, but this time, not only to me but to my men. All she said was, ‘It’s time to come home.’

My contractions began picking up and my men couldn’t take my pain anymore. They broke out of their cage and came to me. We knew what was coming and they refused to be without me.

Franklin found us or was more so told by Drin and he was furious.

My men easily could have killed him. I told them not to, but they could get a few swings in, although pointless.

Before they attacked, they each gave me a kiss and said they were going to meet our baby girl. I told them I’d see them soon.

They did beat the hell out of Franklin for a few minutes and I got a lot of satisfaction from watching, but when enough was enough, they stepped back and allowed his gift to overtake them.

Franklin was pissed, pumped from the boost in power flowing through him from the pain, and he ended them quickly. He left the room with instructions to Drin’s aid to bring him the baby when it was born.

The second my soul split, my water broke.

I held you in my arms thirty minutes later.

Laying my forehead to yours, I tried to promise you the realm. I told you how much I loved you, and I hoped and prayed you got my strength. I named you Willow, and with a kiss to your little lips, my eyes closed.

And opened once again in the beyond.”

My fingers trace the edges of the book, and my heart clenches in a way that’s both familiar and unbearably foreign. I’ve felt the pain of grief before, but it’s different mourning someone you didn’t truly know, but love.

The parchment feels fragile as if it’s holding not just ink and information but all the warmth and love of a life that never was shared. My trembling hands continue to glide softly over her words, careful not to get them wet or smear them.

Her handwriting is so smooth, so intimate, and it jumps off the page, tugging at something deep within me. It feels like she’s speaking to me from the beyond, her voice a soft echo in my mind.

Wait…

I reread the last few paragraphs she’s written again. My tears blur the words, but I push forward, trying to make sense of how this is possible. It’s a story told that should have no possibility of being so.

Flipping the page, my eyes widen as more words begin to appear .

“Now you’re a very smart girl. I know it because you have been blessed by so, so many and no daughter of mine would miss such a detail. So I know you’re wondering how I wrote you my story when I was already gone.”

A strangled laugh bubbles out of me as I smile down at the words. We must have been so similar for her to know that.

“Just as CC did—I’m pretty sure he stole the idea from me, by the way—I asked Elementra for a favor. It was my request that when I got to the beyond, I would be allowed to update my book for you. It’s a snippet of my story that I wanted to share with you. She granted the request, even gave me a new method in which to rewrite it, on the condition that the information in this book reveals in the time it needs to.

That didn’t settle with me well.

Like you, I wanted to know everything at one time. I hated the wait and I wanted instant gratification, but unfortunately, this isn’t how these things work. Also, you, filia mea, are different than all the other women of our family. You will learn the knowledge in these pages differently than any before you and I’m so proud, happy that I get to walk this journey alongside you now. So nonetheless, I agreed. It’s not a long wait, and I’m sure you’ve grown used to being patient.”

No, no, I have not.

I snort at my mental argument. I have a feeling she was being sarcastic and that brings me a lot of joy. Her words are like a tender touch—a hug, a kiss on the forehead, a whispered ‘I love you’ that reaches me across an impossible distance. It’s comforting and devastating all at once. I can almost feel her sitting beside me.

Wiping away another slow tear, I look back down at the new ink and my heart rate kicks up and I sit straight as a board.

“So without a further wait, my girl, you’ll learn two major lessons. Each with their own little subsections you’ll need to know. So here’s the beginning of lesson one, handcrafted by me. Well, with Elementra’s input.

Ultima unum. The Last One.

You will be the last to hold the ability that all the women of our line before you have been able to do. Manipulate the portals. There is so much more to your gift than this, but this is an ability you will not pass on and it’s imperative to your current journey.

Starting strong with detecting the portals. Any and every one.

Repeat after me.

‘Release to me the ties of time and space,

Deliver the information for me to embrace.’”

Without an ounce of hesitation or really any consideration, I call my magic forth and repeat her words.

The air in my lungs empties with my gasp, and I clutch my head as the words that are beginning to scribble out on the page are also scribbled across my mind. My eyes shift back and forth so fast, it’s dizzying, and I have to look away from the book until the madness in my brain settles down.

The pages of the book flip repeatedly with no command from me or flick of my fingers, and as soon as it stops on an empty cream parchment, my mind stops moving as well.

“That’s a nifty little gift you got from your dragon Nexus member, my girl. I’m a tad jealous I didn’t get to learn this way.

Everything you need you should have in your mind now, but it’s written here as well. I like the feeling of a book in my hand, and I figured maybe you would too, so I wanted it here for you if you ever felt like sitting down and reading.

Take a little break and process what you just learned. I’ll be here, ready to discuss it and move on to the next mini lesson whenever you are.

I love you, filia mea.

Momma xoxo”

My body falls motionless, as do my tears finally, but my mind doesn’t. Not with what feels like centuries’ worth of information on the locations of the portals now settling in.

I can see the map of Elementra clearly as though I graphed it out myself.

In Aeradora, mixed within the massive Everest Trees, is one that the bark is cracked and breaking apart, but I can see it for what the large rectangular outline was. The twenty-five-foot doorway stood tall and shimmering green once before. The giants of Colosyree would pass in and out through there.

A swirling indigo pool, littered with sparkles now sits stagnant, dull, in a secret stream in the heart of Aquaria. Long ago, beings as beautiful and gorgeous as Aurora would step out of that water, glowing as though they always bathed in radiance. Not only beings that the nonmagical would consider angels but also demons. Shadows that almost match mine sit on top of the water like morning fog. That’s the way to the Valorian Veil.

If you look closely enough, you can see a path carved out through the rocky, volcanic terrain of Pyrathia. Through those sharp turns, and possibly falling rocks, you’ll come to what now just looks like an intricate stacking of stones. It used to be an archway adorned with glowing runes, leading you right into the heart of Mystara Hollow.

At the farthest end of Terian, where it borders Central territory, there’s a huge cave mouth that looks home to the deadliest animals that may live in the forest. Its foreboding aura wards people away, but there’s beauty in the structure of the cave. Prior to its gloomy appearance, the glow that the portal gave off from the back wall used to resemble light reflecting off gems. It created quite an art display.

The most astonishing thing about that cave is if it were only one hundred more feet inward, crossing the Central line, it would be in the Forsaken Forest. Where the residents who came out of the Essemist Keep portal now live.

Instead, they’re trapped, one hundred feet from their way home, guarding the last of the portals.

Why it was such a shock to everyone when we found out from the Terravile elders that there was a portal in the Forsaken Forest is obvious now.

It’s unrecognizable.

It used to be a lush, brilliant, and blooming forest, with animals, flowers, streams, everything. It was one of the most enchanting forests I’ve ever laid my eyes on in this entire realm. Those gnarled and twisted trees we saw when we went in have always been that way, but they had canopies that hung down to the ground, creating a secret escape and the most enticing place to explore or even relax.

Two things dawn on me as I metaphorically put my map up in my mind. Both realizations make me jump up, needing to find the guys, Gaster, Oakly, everyone.

Commanding my earth element to release the branches so I can be free of my hideaway, I race through the opening as soon as my tree stands back tall. I don’t have to search far for my people, though. They’re all standing in my lounge, waiting for me.

I can’t contain the huge smile that crosses my face. It’s so contradictory to the worried and concerned mask they all have written on their features.

Draken’s eyes are the first to light when he looks down at what’s in my hand. “You got your book open,” he says excitedly.

“It’s not just any old book or diary or anything I assumed it could’ve been,” I breathe heavily as a laugh tumbles out of me. “It’s my communal knowledge. She complied generations’ worth of knowledge of who and what my family line is. She and Elementra handcrafted lessons for me to learn as we go.”

His jaw falls toward the floor as he stares at me in astonishment. My gaze travels across the others and I chuckle at the mixture of responses I’m seeing.

There’s a twitch on Caspian’s lips that screams, told you so. It doesn’t hide the shock in his whiskey eyes, though. Tillman’s face is full of relief like he was battling not to reach out to me mentally while I was in there. Now that he knows everything’s fine, his pride is starting to show.

Corentin is…huh.

Excited.

Studying his face, he’s trying his hardest to keep a blank mask on, but I see right through it, and I burst out laughing. Crumbling that hard-ass exterior right down with the sound.

“You’re really that excited to be finally getting my answers, huh?”

“You deserve them far more than I want them. But yes. It’s driven me mad for months now not knowing how it’s possible you do what you do, princess,” he says with a smile to match my own .

I catch a glimpse of Gaster’s tender look just before his long white beard begins shaking from laughter, joining the sounds of everyone else’s. Oakly is beaming at me, and happiness for both of us surges from my bond to hers. We both had major wins in the learning department of our day.

I can’t wait to tell them all everything.

“Oh shit, I forgot to tell you all what I was racing out here for. We don’t have any recon teams on the main portals to the Valorian Veil or Essemist Keep. Just at the assumed ones, but both of those will actually lead to the nonmagical realm.”

Well, that got everyone’s attention.