Page 108 of Shifting Winds
I shook my head.
Simone sighed. “I feel like I can sense her in there.” She shook her head. “Sounds insane, I know, but Evie just has such a brilliant presence. Every time we stood beside each other, I felt like I was standing next to a supernova.”
I understood. “She’s there. I feel her too.”
Simone nodded, even if she didn’t understand. “Her turtle vine has faded, as if it knows Evie is gone from this world.”
My jaw clenched to hold the angry words back. Evie was not gone.
Only absent.
“Seymour misses her. I often find him out here.”
Simone scooted a little closer, a wolf seeking comfort from Pack. But I didn’t have any comfort to give her. Not since I’d lost Evie. I was an animated shell of the Lord I’d been before, and my people were beginning to notice. If things didn’t change, I’d find myself on the receiving end of challenges designed to take my position.
I couldn’t muster up enough feeling to give a shit.
“Nadia returned,” Simone said after a few minutes. “She’s growing impatient.”
I didn’t care about her, either. “Tell her Gianna is dead. The Lords disposed of her body in a funeral befitting someone of her status.”
Simone sucked in a shocked breath. “Caelan. Her family?—”
“She was murdered by a rogue Chimera who has since been…handled.”
My Omega stared at me in horror. “They won’t settle for that excuse.”
I turned my attention toward her, letting her see in my face how little concerned me these days. “Then tell them to challengeme. I will burn their world down and dance on the ashes of their bones.”
Simone dropped her eyes and swallowed hard. “Very well.” She rose without another word and headed back inside.
Seymour made another warble and bumped me again. I stroked a hand over his trap. “You think she’s still there, too, don’t you?”
Seymour bumped me again.
Chapter
Thirty-Five
Time had become a true construct as I floated in a space of magic and unfathomable, ancient power. My father was the Fae King, and his magic felt like an ember compared to…whatever this was.
I’d lost myself for a while, no idea how long. But Ash had kept my heart protected in a cage of bramble and ironwood, and eventually I, or whatever was left of me, had awoken, floating in this strange never-ending place. I had no true body, or nothing I could see anyhow, nothing but my mind and my burning heart filled with grief and rage and love.
And so, I’d spent my time floating and thinking in the nothingness, wondering how I could possibly come back to myself when the tree had taken everything. My life, my friends, my magic, my…everything.
I had no greenery, no flowers or fauna, no friends or family, no Caelan, no love.
Nothing but the emptiness and a well of grief so profound I could drown inside it if I let myself.
Fury rose in me, an anger so vast I could set the world on fire. I had everything, and I’d gotten tangled up in politics I had no right to be involved in and look at me now.
Fae princess. Ha.
Just a girl made up of atoms and a thorn encased heart with nowhere to go floating in a sea of tree magic.
My memoir would be explosive.
I had nowhere to go and nothing to see and nothing but time on my…
