Wylde Magic | Book 3

Fifty Three: Allied Hearts

The lost elven city, for lack of a better thing to call it, quickly became a home.

It wasn't particularly safe, it certainly wasn't filled with comfort, and it was far away from many of my loved ones, but for now it was the most solid thing I had to grasp with my own two hands. Fleeing Thanantholl did little to ease my mind, running through the Wyldes with Aithne was no better, and playing Peyorla's mind games was the worst of it. As far as places to sleep at night go, the lost elven city was the best thing I'd seen in a long time.

The desperation was palpable as we set to work building a safe place to stay. This land had been all but wiped away by time and the harsh seasons of the unclaimed Wyldes, but we were lucky to find a few surviving rooms built below the ground that we could work with.

The first room we had found, the one with the mural, was the heart of our planning. A crude table was assembled from fallen wood the scouts managed to find in the tree line. Supplies were centered here, and what they had for cloaks and bedding was kept elsewhere. We decided that to scatter ourselves would be safer than to hole up in the same confined space, so the other underground rooms we located were invaluable to that.

Schula and I made our own space comfortable. The scouts here were not unfriendly to us, but after our first encounter with Liana back in Eidelhein, I worried that a certain amount of fear would be ingrained in any elven children. In the end, we were happy to share our own space privately and let the others do the same.

Some took to other underground spaces, others chose to sleep high in the trees nearby as they had when we met up with them. Spaulder would not fit through any doorways, but he chose to sleep above the door to our space. The theory was that there was little we could do to hide Spaulder if someone came here anyway, so he may as well be somewhere he could stretch out.

I sat in what must have been a food cellar so many centuries ago. It wasn't large, and the shelves that once lined the walls had long since rotted away, but after a bit of cleaning it was a dry, warm space we could stay in. A place to lay out our sleeping mats and unpack my supplies of witchcraft.

Preparing this place just solidified in my mind that we belonged here. I belonged here. A place outside of the courts yet still within the Wyldes. A place where no king would have power over me again. None to be cruel for what I or anyone else was born to be. The very thought was an enticing temptation. Of course, Eberon now sat on the throne of Thanantholl, but even a king is bound by his people. Look at Peyorla and her endless quest to live up to her late father's ideals, it brought her to a crazed place and will be the ruin of her court if she doesn't wake up and see the real threat.

I sighed as I placed a jar on the floor along the wall.

"What's wrong?" Schula asked, still working to clean out the last of the debris.

"Just thinking about everything," I said. One of the torches we had placed on the walls was growing low, and I stood to replace it with a fresh one. "What comes after all this?"

"What do you mean?" Schula asked.

I bit my lower lip, finishing my task before turning to face her. "I mean, after we defeat DuVarick and Bara Khalja. What then? Where do we go? Our friends are bound to be torn in different directions and..."

Schula's eyes softened. "We won't be like that. Even if we can no longer see our friends daily as we once did, we will see them often. And we will be together."

'All of us will remain together,' Spaulder's thoughts intruded ours in a pleasant surprise. A heartbeat later, his words were emphasized with his landing on the ground above our heads.