Page 121 of Enchanted Crown
“We will. Of course, Your Highness,” he responded, seeming pleased with the assignment. “None of us will rest until the entire castle has been searched.”
I knew how large the damn thing was. It was going to take hours.
Esta looked to Amory. “You are in charge for the afternoon.” She turned to Jagen. “You’re with me. There is a Mallick family secret we must destroy.”
“Should we call the team back from Arava?” Amory asked.
Esta shook her head. “No. We still have a missing person to find.”
By the timewe fell into bed that night, we were both bone tired from this utter mess of a day. Esta and Jagen spent the afternoon blocking the hidden exit with huge boulders. It had been around the corner of a turret near the gateway, the gateway which had promised death upon my arrival to Dra Skor.
I had stood guard and moved some rocks with my magic to help. We didn’t stop until the entire stone door was buried behind a pile of rock. Eventually, the door would be welded shut on the inside, but for now, it was not usable.
“We were so close today,” Esta whispered to me, her voice raspy with the weight of her exhaustion.
There was no sign of Morana in the castle or near it. The teams had cleared the whole damn thing and were running constant patrols both from the sky and on foot. For that matter there was no sign of the missing person in Arava either. For all intents and purposes, the day was a bust.
Just a few days ago we had been laughing in Keld, now it was hard to ignore that lingering threat of defeat. The hard days were tucking in close to the good ones and trying their best to taint them. Taintus.
I brushed a kiss to Esta’s temple as she rested her head on my chest. This war being waged within Dra Skor would likely not end tomorrow, but one day at a time, we would get there. We would do the next right move and keep doing them until eventually we had Morana in reach. Our enemy was smart enough that we could not depend on her to misstep. Yet we could depend on ourselves, the strength of the Dra Skor shifters, and our grit to keep moving forward. Keep hunting.
I had no answers. Only an irrational hope burning deep within me. Still, before sleep caught up to me, I promised her, “Weareclose. We have to be.”
CHAPTER 41
Aweek later, I found myself on another bait and switch with Esta. This time we were taking most of the Wylan team with us, though they were supposed to be resting, because a full team had to stay behind to watch the castle.
We still had no sign of Morana. Not a whisper on the breeze. Not a whisper of Avril’s visions.
Avril was with us, though she had been isolating herself right up until our trip, trying to focus on any vision that came to her. None came to her since that day in the war room.
We visited Zatva, which was closest to The Aaruk. Zatva was not only the southernmost city in Dra Skor, but also the entire realm. The last stop before an endless expanse of sea, which stopped only when the sea turned hard to ice in the farthest reaches of the realm.
We ate the most amazing snapper, caught fresh from Dra Skor’s southern most border. Though it was six hours south of Halikaara Keep, the weather was still milder today than it had been when we stopped at Keld.
The people of Zatva were kind and excited to see us. We had advertised we were going to Rael, not Zatva, again trying to lure Morana out. And since the farmers of Rael had been so ready to take up arms for Esta, she had warned them to be on the lookout for anything suspicious.
As we ended our long day of meeting different merchants and people, shifter and human alike, we took in the waves rolling at the shore. The sea was so blue here it was striking. Hard to look away. And unlike in Keld where there were various areas of rock and cliffs intermixed with the sandy shore, Zatva had only soft, sandy beaches.
It reminded me of the beach in Wylan I had spent so much time sitting on.
“Are you ready to head home?” Esta asked as she walked up to me, tucking her arm through mine. “We have to meet with Amory when we return.”
And it would take us hours to return. I wasn’t looking forward to the ache of traveling that far. “Five more minutes?”
She gave me a smirk and a nod.
After the crazy of the last few days, I just needed to breathe deep and take in the salty air. I needed to be reminded that though the realm was crawling with evil intentions and the divisive cruelty of one woman who had caused Dra Skor so much pain, there was still something good left. The waves would still roll. The sunsets would still paint the sky. Beauty was still to be found.
Zatva had almost twenty healed shifters already. Along with a dozen solar powered lamps which we delivered with us. Dra Skor was healing. It wasn’t as fast as any of us liked, but one day at a time, we were getting there. In a year, I wondered if we would have all the shifters healed. In two years, would Dra Skor have solar powered electricity throughout?
Would we ever find Morana? Or would she disappear until allthat remained of her was a whispered warning, the legend of the jealous cousin.
I wanted to believe that after everything I had gone through in Wylan, justice could still be found. That we would find her. But I also knew that life didn’t always tie up nicely. And even when it did, there were still plenty of hurts to have to dig through and learn from. Scars to learn to carry and not hide.
I was not dense enough to think that just because we found Morana, that alone would deliver peace to the realm. It was something we would have to keep fighting for, keep choosing, day after day. That was why in a few days I would head to Agria, even with everything else going on.
Life was fluid, ebbing us between the highs and lows no matter what threat came from the darkness, no matter who the current villain was.
