And maybe that was the path I should be set on following.
No one was with me in the courtyard, so I ran across the stones to the stables and peered inside. The horses all seemed friendly enough, and I began to saddle one up, but had never done it before and dropped the damned saddle a few times as the grey mare I chose looked on amused.
“What are you staring at?” I muttered annoyed.
“Who’s in here?” a voice called out.
I froze as a shifter came into the stables.
“Mori?”
I didn’t recognize the shifter and considered leaving, but I had to get out of here and back to my realm. “Yes, I am in need of a horse if you would be so kind as to assist me?”
“And where are you going? Tristan never sent word you would be leaving.”
“I have business to tend to in Silver Valley,” I lied. “A message for the elves from the gods themselves. I must get there in all haste.”
“And Tristan knows of this?”
“Yes, but he’s busy with the others so I told him I would see to my own leaving, but I’m afraid I’ve never saddled a horse before.” I held the saddle out to him and waited.
He peered over his shoulder toward the castle, and I felt him starting to decide to not help me, but then he sighed, giving in. He took the saddle, and within minutes, he helped boost me up into it. “Are you sure you have everything you need? You’re traveling without a guard?”
“I’ll be just fine on my own, thank you,” I promised.
“I feel like I should send someone with you. You’re more than just a messenger.”
“No, but I am just a gatekeeper. I must leave. Thank you for your aid.” I nudged the mare.
She trotted out of the stables and toward the gate. Once through it, I closed my eyes, searching for the tear into my realm that I knew existed here because of the rejoining of the lands. It was a far ride, but I didn’t need sleep or to eat. I’d let the horse graze when she needed, but I should make it there in good time.
I turned the horse’s head, aiming her in the right direction, and with a click of my tongue, she took off across the fields.
6
Forrest
“Was that absolutely necessary?” I snarled as the door shut behind Mori.
“What? We need her help,” Sabella argued. “I understand she’s been through some shit, but we all have! She’s a part of this now whether she wants to be or not. The rest of us don’t have a choice, and I hate to say it, but neither does she.”
“So, what do you want her to do, huh? Just decide to jump in headfirst? Maybe she doesn’t have a death wish like you and Kate seem to have lately,” I yelled.
Kate groaned, holding her face in her hands and shaking her head. “You’re missing the point.”
“What point? You saw what happened the last time we attacked Baladon and that bastard held her captive for fifty years. Can you blame her not wanting to be a part of whatever plans we make? Are you so eager to get yourself killed again,” I shot back at Sabella, slamming my hands down on the table as I glared at her.
Tristan flinched at the harshness of what I said.
I half-expected him to lunge at me from across the table, but Sabella’s hand rested on his shoulder.
I hung my head with a growl. “I’m sorry, I just… I’m not sure what’s wrong with me today.”
That was a lie. Mori was what’s wrong with me, had been since I started seeing her in my dreams. And when we touched this last time, I saw a vision of us together, but a shadow had loomed up out of the trees and come to take her away from me. I swallowed back the fear that clutched my chest like a vise. The fear that I was going to never get to see that moment or learn why we had this connection. That shadow within her, it was going to tear her apart from the inside out if we couldn’t stop it. And all Sabella and Kate seemed to care about was dragging her through even more shit that none of us had a handle on anyway.
“I do,” Kate said finally, and I looked up, confused. “All of us do, actually.”
I sank into a chair and stared at them all. “Well? Care to share?”
Sabella cringed and shrugged. “Kate?”
Kate shook her head. “Nope, this is all you. You’re the one that saw it and figured it out. You get to explain it all.”
“Will someone just spit it out already?” I was anxious to figure out our plan then go after Mori again and make sure she was alright. I worried about her being by herself with that voice in her head.
If she lost control again and I wasn’t there… gods, now I knew how stressed out Tristan had been those past few weeks with Sabella.
Smoke trailed out of my nose, drawing their looks again as my imagination ran rampant. “What?”
“The riddle…” Sabella started slowly, “it talks about three rising and three being bound.”
I nodded, not sure where she was going with this. “We all have that damned thing memorized now. We know there’s three involved. So what?”
“Okay, well, those three are Kate, myself… and Mori.”
I stilled. The three of them? They were the ones meant to fight the darkness? “You three, you’re sure of it?”
“It makes sense, and Farrah and Crane told me the key was in the riddle. ‘A beast so fierce with eyes of the skies, a secret hidden away from time, a guiding light at her prime.’ Mori’s a damned star! It has to be her.”
“Wait, Crane?” Kate asked surprised. “You saw him, too?”
“Yeah, saw him when I talked with Farrah when I was, you know, dead.”
Tristan growled, but Sabella ignored him.
“Right then. Fine. Mori is part of this riddle and one of your visions.”
“Not just any vision,” she corrected, and before the words left her mouth, she said what I dreaded to hear. “The one where the three of us die… and then what I said more recently, the three dying…”
“I thought you said you didn’t see anything?” My voice was tight, as both Craig and Tristan glowered at her. “Sabella?”
“Alright, I lied,” she mumbled. “Told Kate.”
“Why her?”
“Because she saw the Vindicar shield,” Kate jumped in. “And she saw red, flaming hair, and the glowing embers of a star. It’s the three of us. We’re it, the fighting force meant to save the realms from Baladon, but to do that, we need Mori.”
Tristan looked ready to strangle Sabella. Not that I blamed him. How did she expect me to tell all of that to Mori? It was like dropping a death sentence over her head. My dragon roared inside my head. How was I supposed to protect her if it was her fate to… to die? Before I even had time with her? That was far from fair. No, Sabella had to be wrong, but the way she kept moving from one foot to the other said there was more to it.
“Even if I believe you,” I said going along with it, for now at least, “what does that have to do with what’s wrong with me?”
Sabella puffed out her cheeks and glanced to Tristan for help, but like Kate, he held up his hands and left it to her, especially since she kept that last tidbit of information from him. “Right,” Sabella blew out the air she’d trapped in her cheeks, “so these three, it says in the riddle that three rings abound.”
I waited for her to say more, but she left it like that. “I don’t know what that means.”
“Oh, for the love of the gods,” Kate muttered. She grabbed Sabella’s hand bearing the tattoo binding her and Tristan, as Kate held up her left hand, too. “This is what it means. Rings abound. The three warriors and those they love, bound together by love.”
“So what, we’re supposed to help Mori find her true love?” I snapped, losing patience fast. “You realize how ridiculous that sounds?”
Kate groaned louder, ready to pull her hair out. “We don’t have to find him. We know who he is, if he would stop being a thick-headed dolt and pay attention.”
Craig smiled.
But I was still playing catch up. “You’re not helping,” I shot at
Craig.
“I had the vision of the five of us plus another,” Sabella reminded me. “Craig with Kate, me with Tristan, and you with a face I couldn’t see.”
“And then you saw you two plus that third person die. I remember.”
Sabella tapped her fingers on the table, not saying anything, but nodding her head as if waiting for the pieces to fall into place. The longer I stared at her widening eyes, and how she kept glancing toward the door, the more my frown deepened.
Until it did click, and I shot to my feet. “No, that’s not possible.”
“Why the hell not?” Sabella argued. “It makes sense, all of it.”
“No, it doesn’t!”
“Why don’t you understand? You had dreams about Mori,” she argued.
I pushed away from the table, stalking madly around the room.
“You and she have a connection. I saw that when you rescued her. She senses it, too.”
“It’s nothing,” I lied, trying to brush off what I had felt around Mori so far.
“Bullshit!” Sabella stalked my way until she stood in front of me, glaring fiercely.
If she wasn’t a seer, I would’ve sworn she was a shifter. Tristan was rubbing off on her.
She planted her hands on her hips. “What was that just now? She was losing control, and you calmed her with a touch. I know what it’s like to have someone pull you from the madness. It only happens when you have that draw to another person. You to her; she to you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I crossed my arms and stared past her.
“The hell you don’t. You calmed her down, Forrest, you did that. Do you realize that before Tristan I had no idea who I was? I couldn’t see past the visions? Nothing made sense until him! And Kate with Craig, the connection they have, I know you’ve felt it. How strong it makes them together, how they know how to move with each other, what they’re going to say before they even open their mouths!”
I shot a look toward my two dearest friends who were smiling at me. I swallowed hard, waiting for that pang of jealousy to hit me as it always did, knowing Kate chose Craig over me. But instead, when I looked at Kate, I imagined Mori being there, smiling back at me. Mori walking by my side as we talked and laughed. All the nights I dreamt of Kate fell away, and now the only face that appeared in my mind was Mori.
“What you felt with her, it’s strong enough to stop her from losing control,” Sabella continued, her voice softer. “You can’t just let her walk away. Not when she’s part of the key to all of this.”
“And if you’re wrong?”
“I’m not,” she grunted. “I know what I’ve seen.”
“Then what am I do to do, huh? Just waltz up to her, profess my undying love for a woman I barely know, and then ask her to marry me! Do you have any idea how insane that sounds?”
Sabella shrugged as she said, “Of everyone in this room, I am the crazy one, remember?”
I growled as I pushed around her for the door. “I can’t do this right now.”
“You can’t keep hiding from your feelings,” Sabella called after me. “Mori feels it, too, but if you two can’t admit it, we’re all in deep shit!”
“Red, really?” Tristan scolded as I neared the door. “Bit harsh.”
“What, it’s true, and you know it.”
My hand was on the door when Kate and Craig stopped me. “I just need to take a walk,” I assured them both, but they dragged me back.
“We know what you went through afterward,” Kate said quietly. “And all we want is for you to be happy. I see the way you look at Mori, Forrest, we all do. You dreamt of her. What could be more prophetic than that?”
“They were merely dreams,” I whispered.
“No, they weren’t. They meant something to you.” Craig gripped my shoulder firmly. “You have to believe in yourself again. Believe in what’s possible and stop kicking yourself for your failures.”
My head shot up at that. “I’m not.”
“Yeah, okay,” Kate muttered with a laugh. “We’re not idiots. We spent enough time with you to know what you’re thinking, and you are not to blame for anything that’s happened. So, get over it and go find Mori.”
“I am not going to fall to my knees and ask her to marry me,” I growled.
“Never said to, but Sabella is right. You two have a connection, and I think you should trust your gut and follow where it leads. Can you at least do that?”
“You are all insane,” I muttered.
“Blame Sabella,” Kate teased. “Go find her, talk to her. You might be the only one who can save her if that darkness pushes her any closer to the edge, think of it that way. You saved her once, Forrest, but it might not be the last time. Go,” she said again and shoved me toward the door. “We have to wait for Drake and Ashan to arrive before we make any solid plans anyway. Oh, and send Lucy and Greyson to us if you can!”
I promised I would and exited the room. I wandered to the hall and found the witch and sorcerer laughing quietly together. “Lucy, Kate would like you two to join them when you have a chance,” I said.
“Forrest, are you alright?” Lucy asked with that motherly tone as she stood and rested a hand against my cheek. “You seem torn.”
“It’s nothing, I’ll be fine,” I promised.
The longer she stared at me with narrowed eyes and her lips screwed to the side saying she didn’t believe me, the more I realized how far we’d all come. She’d tried to kill me in the beginning. And I thought she was the villain. Now, she was like a second mother to all of us, and I found myself wanting to tell her what Sabella said.
“Greyson, would you excuse us for a minute?” I asked him.
“Of course, I’ll go see what those four are planning now,” he said with a wink and left the hall.
“Now then, what’s got you all tied up in knots?” Lucy asked. “Why don’t we take a walk and talk? Walking always does a person good.”
I didn’t argue, and we left the hall and made our way outside to the grounds. Torches lined the wall and fires were constantly being fed to try and bring some semblance of light to what had become a world of pure darkness. Except for Mori, the only true light in all this madness.
“What’s on your mind, then?” Lucy asked.
“It appears the others believe they’ve figured out the riddle, or most of it at least,” I admitted, knowing there was no use trying to lie to Lucy.
“And? That’s good news. You should be ecstatic.”
“Should be, yes.”
“So why aren’t you?”
“According to Sabella and Kate, the riddle refers to those two and Mori… as well as their soul mates, their true loves.”
Lucy’s steps stilled for just a second. “And?”
“And… gods, I can’t believe I’m even going to say this aloud.”
“And they think you’re the one meant for Mori.”
This time I stopped completely. “How did you know?”
“Oh, Forrest, you think we’re all blind? I was there, I saw how you were with Mori after you saved her. How you looked after her until the gods took her away.” She sighed as she pulled me along with her again. “I don’t see what the problem is.”
“The problem is according to that damned riddle, I’m supposed to be bound to her.”
“So, think of it as an arranged marriage.”
I shook my head growling. “No, I’m not going to do that.”
“Why not? She appears to feel the same way for you.”
“You can’t know that,” I whispered. “No one can know that.”
“You can,” she argued. “Forrest, love is a fickle beast. Sometimes it takes a long time to manifest itself. Sometimes it comes from the person you least expect in your life, someone you thought hated you at first.” She placed her hands on my face and tugged me down, so we were eye level. She scowled at me. “And sometimes it happens within the first seconds of meeting someone. Sometimes you just know, and you
have to go with it and not overthink everything. Got it? We’re in a war, remember? You can’t piddle around forever waiting for your answers to fall out of the sky when they already did.”
She released me and stepped back.
What was I supposed to say to that? How could I just go with what they were all saying? Mori was a star plucked from the sky who became a goddess. She was the gatekeeper. She’d been around for thousands of years, and I was nothing compared to such greatness. How could I be meant for her?
“You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Overthinking. Just go find her, talk to her. What do you have to lose, honestly?”
“According to Sabella, everything. She swears up and down we’re the match she saw in her vision… but if that’s true, Lucy, I’m condemning Mori to her death.”
The realization none of the others brought up in that room was that Mori could die the second she was drawn into this prophecy or whatever the hell we were calling it. Sabella said it herself, she saw her and Kate die, and the person she hadn’t seen yet, if it was Mori, she would die, too. How could I do that to someone who had already been through so much? How was I supposed to look her in the eye, confess the strong feelings I already had for her, knowing, in the end, it could lead to her death at the hands of the god who already spent so many years torturing her? I’d be betraying her. How was that love?
I held my hands out before my face, already covered in my mind with the blood of so many innocents lost. So much death. When would it end?
“We don’t know what her vision truly means,” Lucy assured me. “Not yet. You have to have faith.”
“Hard to do that when I feel us traveling down this dark road with no turning back.”
“You won’t know anything unless you talk to her,” Lucy pointed out gently. “If you want, tell her everything. Tell her the truth about the visions and the riddle. Lay all your cards on the table and see what happens.”
“She’ll run.” Not that I could blame her.
“And if she doesn’t? If she decides to face this with you?”
“Then I’ll eat my words, but I still believe all of this is insane. You can’t love someone you don’t know.”
Stars (Dragon Reign Book 8) Page 8