Page 391 of Kingdoms of Night

“You’re wild.”

“Proud of it. Let yourself be who you may be, child,” Dew said as she swung up into the nearest maple.

“You don’t look much older than me. Why do you call me child?”

“Because you haven’t grown into yourself yet. But you will. You will. And it starts with embracing all that fire you have hiding inside you.”

Isa’s mouth fell open. “How did you know about—?”

But then Dew was gone, only the rustle of the moving leaves telling her where she climbed, higher and higher into the maple tree.

How did Dew know about Isa accidentally burning a mark in Dame Brune’s sleeve?

No, she couldn’t know. That was impossible. But then what had she been talking about—that fire inside? Did Isa have some disease that only this Dew person could detect, a defect in her flesh? She shook her head. She’d always been too imaginative when it came to illness. Most likely Dew was being metaphorical. The fire inside was only a passion or some such thing.

“Please forgive the bluntness of our hermit,” Viridi said as Isa caught up. Viridi led them, his stride long due to his height and his tone easy. “She is a friend.” He ran a hand through his hair and sunlight caught his forearm, making the flesh shimmer a subtle green.

They arrived at a towering oak with wide-lobed leaves, and acorns as big as Isa’s fist. The tree grew so that the trunk created an archway of sorts, and moss hung over the passage like a curtained doorway.

Viridi broke away from her, bent his head, and pulled the moss back. “Enter if you wish, Lady of the Sun.”

She did so and was rewarded with the view of a tremendous hall. The inside of the oak was hollow, and the tree’s massive limbs stretched overhead like hewn beams in a great castle. Soft green light filtered down to scatter across a floor laid out with glittering stones in patterns of roots that curled around lines of writing.

“What do they say?” she asked. This had to be a dream. Everything was so lovely and she was being treated like a queen.

Viridi crouched to get close to the writing, and she did likewise, Nico leaning on her and Werian and Rhianne stopping close by.

“This one,” he said, drawing a careful thorned finger across the shining black stones that made up the words, “invites one to shed the day upon arrival, to breathe in the air of this moment.”

Nico sighed. “That’s nice.”

“It is,” Isa agreed. She stood and pointed at a phrase written in slightly larger letters. “What about that one? Seems it’s set in a place of importance, where everyone can see.” The writing went all the way from the base of a curving, wooden-slat staircase to a doorway cloaked in flowering vines.

Viridi’s smile warmed her. He was just so incredibly striking. She could stare at him forever.

“It says you are the earth,” he said, his deep voice echoing along the smooth walls of the tree castle, “and the earth is you. You are the air and the air is you. Those are the two strongest elements of magic here.”

The memory of the singed handprint on Dame’s dress, the marking that her own hand had somehow wrought, flashed through Isa’s memory. Had that been magic? It was impossible. She had no magic.

“What is it?” Viridi took her hand and traced a slow line along her knuckles.

His touch was divine and drove away her fear with its baffling familiarity. She longed to be honest with him, to ask him about their moment and the borrowed memories, to see if he’d ever seen someone who could scorch with a touch—someone who didn’t have a wand and wasn’t a witch. But what if she was overreacting? Perhaps it had been ash or dirt on her hands and her feelings about Dame Brune putting off the end of the indenture simply boggled her brains momentarily.

“It’s nothing. I’m just tired.”

“Of course you are. You’ve all been through a harrowing experience. I apologize for my fellow dryad elves. They are rather protective of this island.”

“Have you been attacked in the past?” Werian asked as Viridi led them through the doorway of flowered vines.

Isa inhaled deeply as she ran her hand lightly over the velvet petals, passing through the decorative barrier. The larger flowers smelled sweet like vanilla, and the smaller ones had a tart scent like cherries.

Behind her, Nico stopped and pulled the vines over his head to make it look like he had a hair like a maiden of old. Isa rolled her eyes, but gave him a smile. Yes, this was truly like a dream, like one of their stories.

“We have been attacked, but it’s been ages. I suppose we are a people who have long memories,” Viridi said.

At the top of the stairs, a wide landing held five dryad elves in dark green tunics and soft-looking trousers made from what appeared to be mushrooms and leaves. In unison, they bowed very low to Viridi.

Were they about to argue against Viridi bringing them here? Isa clutched her ripped clothing and wished Nico would have remained closer to her side instead of peering around Viridi and flitting here and there, looking at everything.

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