Page 87 of When Storms Ruin

Zion knew the place we were going.

After a week I was still drained from having expended so much magic, but I was strong enough to make it the distance to Siraleth. Zion knew his way through The Shadow as well as anybody else, and at this point we had spent so much time passing through it I was beginning to know the way on my own. I recognized the places we had gone searching for Phineas Wolfe as we passed them and desperately hoped we didn’t run into him or anyone from his crew.

Luck was on our side today and we made it through The Shadow without incident. We picked up a few new items of clothing and added some food and water to our packs on the far side of Prins before crossing the border into Siraleth.

There would be no merchants where we were going.

I recognized the twisting cobblestone streets as we made our way through the abandoned city, curious which of the houses that still stood would become our new residence. I was surprised when we stopped in front of a familiar wooden door.

A door that had once haunted my dreams.

I initially dreamed of this door leading to the laboratory where I found the book of shadows, but in reality, it was the doorway to an old white cottage.

Zion shouldered the door open, leaving his packs by the entryway. If I remembered correctly, this house served as an exceptionally strong magical tether, and it only had one bedroom.

“You know this place?” I asked Zion as I stepped over the threshold, the wave of magic traveling from my toes all the way to the top of my head.

As it had the first time I had been here, I sensed the magic in this place deep in my bones. Zion turned to me with sad eyes, his expression full of an emotion I couldn’t quite place.

“This is where I raised Donika.”

“Where youwhat?!” Tess asked, immediately stepping back out onto the brick front steps. “You don’t think she would ever come back here?”

“She can’t,” he replied with a shake of his head. “This place is heavily warded with magic. She is never welcome back here.”

Tess’ expression was as shocked as I felt, but there was no denying the magic that surged through this cottage. Through the back window, above the kitchen sink, I could see an old willow tree that still stood in the backyard. A broken swing made of wood swayed from its limbs in the soft breeze.

This was where Zion had raised Donika.

Where he and my mother must have built a life…before Osiris.

I had questions bubbling to my lips but I choked them back, reading the expression on Zion’s face. This was difficult for him, but he knew we would be safe here.

Safe from his daughter.

They had all claimed she wasn’t always like this. I tried to imagine a younger Donika, playing with toys on the hardwood floor of the tiny bedroom, or swinging from the old willow tree out back. No matter how hard I tried to picture it, I couldn’t. I couldn’t believe an untainted version of Donika hadeverexisted. Her soul was blackened beyond measure, and there was no coming back from that.

I wondered if I dreamed of this place because of the link it held to my mother. She had lived here, once. She had returned here with me, before she had hidden me in the human realm, with a human family, to keep me safe from the war that raged in Istmere.

Zion stood in the foyer, but his mind was elsewhere.

Tess and I took our packs to the small bedroom off the entryway and settled them onto the bed.

My eyes immediately traveled to the small closet where Nik and I had hidden from the soldiers in Donika’s army.

Where we had kissed.

Where I had first admitted my feelings for him.

Tess followed my line of sight, and a knowing expression crossed her face, but she said nothing.

“Where will Warrick, Saanvi, and Kenna stay?” Tess asked, glancing around the tiny cottage as if another bedroom might appear out of thin air.

When Zion didn’t respond she stood before him, waving her hand in front of his vacant eyes. “Hello?”

“My apologies,” Zion replied, his hand on his chest as he snapped back to reality. He was likely thinking of my mother. This would have been one of the last places he ever saw her. “This way.”

We followed Zion to the back of the house and out the door to a small wooden porch. Zion knelt, his hand on the wood as he whispered a spell I had never heard before. As he finished the words, a trap door appeared in the porch wood. He tugged on it, descending a small set of stone stairs.

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