I waited for him to gather his thoughts and tell me more.
I placed my palm over his on my shoulder instinctively taking comfort in the feel of his skin against mine.
“Elissa wrote her last words to me before she went away. She had a vision of the present, seen through the eyes of an Oracle captured by Azazel. He’d used her to reach out to Elissa, and he was talking directly to her while looking at the Oracle trapped in a glass bubble. He told Elissa that he’d ambushed my father near the eastern citadel,” Draven continued.
My breath hitched, as I was beginning to see where the story was going. My hand pressed gently over his.
“Azazel told her through the Oracle that unless she came to him of her own accord, he would kill my father and send back his head,” his voice lost its vigor. “So, she left. She loved my father too much to let him die, especially after all that he had done for her. I was safe in the mansion under the protective shield, she’d said. At least I’d have my father back if she surrendered herself.”
A soft southern breeze enveloped us from behind as we walked. The afternoon air was getting stuffy, settling in shades of purple and orange above us. I welcomed the breeze but didn’t let go of Draven’s hand.
“I never saw her again. My father returned a few days later, but he didn’t know anything about what Elissa had described in her vision. That was when I learned how to make the fire that looks into other places,” he said. “My father took me to the same room where I took you the other night and looked for Elissa. We weren’t prepared for what we saw.”
He took a deep breath, and his lips tightened.
“What did you see?” I asked. The whole world seemed to disappear around us as I waited to find out what had happened to Elissa. She’d been my beacon of hope ever since I’d first laid eyes on her journal. Her soft demeanor and genuine love toward Almus and Draven had even made me look at the Druid differently—less like an arrogant know-it-all and more like the child left on his own in complete isolation for too long.
“We watched her confront Azazel in his domain. She demanded to see my father when the Destroyers descended upon her. We watched helplessly as Azazel laughed in her face, saying she was by far the easiest and most gullible catch and that he had no idea where my father was. But Elissa wasn’t a fool either. She’d taken a calculated risk. She knew there was a chance that my father wouldn’t be there, but she couldn’t just stand back and assume he wasn’t there either. So as soon as Azazel admitted to his ploy to get her there, Elissa resigned herself to her fate.”
“He captured her? That’s what you meant when you said Azazel could manipulate visions, isn’t it?”
“Elissa would have never allowed herself to be captured and used against Eritopia, against my father and me. She had a knife with her. She killed herself before the Destroyers could reach her. My father and I watched through the flame.” Draven’s voice faltered again. There was so much pain trickling from his words, it nearly broke my heart.
I could only imagine what the sight of Elissa’s death must have been like for a little boy who’d loved her like a mother. No wonder he had a hard time talking about her. All the times he’d hesitated to talk about Elissa, all the times he’d pushed me away when I’d asked about her—it all made sense now.
“I am so sorry,” I whispered, choking on unbidden tears.
A moment passed before he spoke again.
“You’re the first person I’ve ever told about that day.”
His confession stunned me. My mind raced as the meaning of his gesture sank in. He was opening up to me, slowly but surely, and while I expected to feel some kind of satisfaction in getting closer to completing my mission, all I could feel was grief and compassion toward the little boy who had lost someone so viciously and the man he’d grown into.
Furthermore, the realization of Elissa’s death made it all the more clear why we needed to destroy Azazel—why we all had to pitch in and help save Eritopia. No one deserved Elissa's fate, the fate of those who stood against a maniacal power-grabbing tyrant.
“Are you all right?” Draven asked me, as if sensing my inner turmoil.
“Yeah, I’m just…so sorry,” I managed to say. “Thank you for telling me, really. It means a lot.”
He nodded, and we walked in silence for a while, until I felt the need to fill in some blanks from his account of Elissa’s departure.
“Draven?” I asked. I paused, wanting to hear his voice and test the water before jumping in with more questions.
“More questions?” His reply caught me off-guard.
“Am I asking too much?”
“I think we’re way past that stage,” he sighed, wearing a feeble smile. “Go on.”
I smiled guiltily back at him before continuing. “From what I understand, Azazel never captured your father in the first place. What did your father do after Elissa? Did he go after him?”
His hand slid off my shoulder, but I didn’t let go. I held on to it as we kept our distance from the group. He didn’t seem to mind, since he didn’t let go either. Faint electrical currents traveled from his touch to my knees, softening them with each step I took.
“He didn’t. I begged him not to. After Elissa left, I was so angry at her. I felt abandoned. For the few days that I was left on my own, I harnessed that fury and tucked everything I’d felt away in a dark corner deep in my mind. I didn’t like those feelings. I’d been an otherwise happy boy, despite the isolation,” Draven replied.
I was taken aback, gaping at him. This was the first time he’d talked about his feelings—not facts, not knowledge, not secrets, but his actual feelings.
What have I unleashed?
His fingers intertwined with mine.
“When I watched Elissa die, however, it all came tumbling back out. I couldn’t control it. My father wanted to go after Azazel in a fit of rage. He’d loved Elissa. I could see it in his eyes. But I begged him not to. I couldn’t bear to lose him too. My only advantage was that Azazel didn’t know about me or the mansion, and my father had to make sure things stayed that way.”
My heart sizzled, stripped apart piece by piece as the image of a broken-hearted little Draven with sandy hair and teary gray eyes lingered before my eyes. I looked up at him. He clenched his jaw, as if struggling to keep some details to himself. I had a feeling he realized that he’d shared more than originally planned.
I squeezed his hand, wondering if I could do anything to make things better. My eyes stung as tears of my own welled up. I wiped them away with the back of my spare hand and took a couple of deep breaths, distracting myself with the emerald green wilderness around us.
He squeezed back, and my pulse raced.
“Don’t worry, Serena.” He put on a gentle, reassuring smile. “It was a long, long time ago.”
“Yeah, but you can’t tell me it doesn’t affect you still. I can feel it in your voice.” I was unwilling to let him crawl back into his hard shell so quickly. He shook his head.
“It still affects me. Loss is never forgotten. But the weight of it dissipates with time. You’ll feel it one day as well, and then you’ll understand.”
I wasn’t ready to lose anyone yet. I pushed the thought away without hesitation. He smiled again, as if reading my mind.
“I can feel the resistance in your breath. You can’t escape loss or death, Serena,” he said. “The sooner you come to accept it, the more you’ll learn to appreciate the little things, the moments you spend with someone.”
“I’m not one to give up so easily,” I replied, unwavering in my stride.
“No one is asking you to give up. Just enjoy every moment like it’s your last. Do everything you would do if you knew that tomorrow was your last day in this world, in any world, for that matter. That’s all.”
His advice was sound and a blatant contradiction of everything he’d done and said so far. The Druid I knew was closed off and reserved, focused solely on protecting the Daughter of Eritopia and defeating Aza
zel. But the man holding my hand was filled with bottled up emotions and painful memories, secrets he’d never told anyone until I came along.
He gently tugged on my hand and pulled me closer, enough for my shoulder to bump into his arm. His skin on mine felt so natural, and the way our palms fit together was as if we’d been designed for each other. I couldn’t help but wonder whether there was more depth to what he’d just said about living every moment like it was my last.
Was his gesture a reflection of that? Was he stepping out of his comfort zone, reaching out to me? Or was I misreading everything? He confused the hell out of me, at first with his secrecy and now with his contrasts, but I didn’t find it annoying. There was a thrill there, something I’d never experienced before.
I squeezed and leaned against him to see where it would lead.
“Nightfall is coming. We need to find shelter,” Bijarki announced.
I felt Draven’s entire body tense against my arm. I straightened myself while Draven took his hand from mine and placed it back on my shoulder.
The day was coming to an end, and so was our moment away from everyone and everything. Reality once again settled around us with a cool evening breeze and a myriad of crickets chirping.
“There’s an old tree up ahead, where the road turns east,” Anjani spoke. “Travelers use it for shelter sometimes, because it’s out of sight.”
The prospect of darkness and spending the night in the jungle didn’t sit well with me. Shape-shifters were even more brazen then, and I didn’t want to think about other creatures lurking under the moonlight. I didn’t know enough about Eritopia’s wildlife, but I was pretty sure most of it wanted to either kill me or eat me.
Sensing my tension, Draven squeezed my shoulder again.
Jovi
[Victoria & Bastien’s son]
Nightfall came swiftly, covering everything in shades of dark green and black. The sky above, visible beyond the tree crowns, was a deep indigo with smoky cloud plumes stretching across a mass of bright stars. The moon was out somewhere, but we couldn’t see it from our position.
We found the tree that Anjani had mentioned. It rose heavily above the others, several yards away from the curve of the road leading up north. It was flanked by an abundance of shrubs and tall greenery, along with several limestone rocks scattered all around. The ground beneath was riddled with mounds and steep holes hidden under the grass, making it a challenge to reach on foot.
The trunk was enormous, covered in moss and rugged slate-colored bark. Its roots looped in and out of the earth like the arms of a giant octopus. Its branches curled upward and outward, wavy and dressed in heavy purple foliage. It was a peculiar sight for Serena and me, but it was endemic to Eritopia.
“We call them purple giants,” Bijarki explained as we left the battered road and headed toward the tree.
I had to be careful where I stepped, as Anjani had trouble jumping over all the stumps and rocks ahead.
“They grow for centuries,” Bijarki continued. “This one must be at least five or six hundred years old.”
“I’ve never seen purple leaves before,” Serena mused from behind.
“If you think this is weird, then wait till we get further north tomorrow,” Anjani replied. “The jungles around our tribe are quite… exotic.”
We reached the purple giant, and I helped Anjani sit down on one of the curling roots. A large crack slit through the tree’s base, from the ground to a few feet up, wide enough to allow one person to crawl through.
Bijarki lit a small torch, and we went inside to check it out.
Most of the wood had been carved out of the trunk for maybe five people to fit comfortably against each other. The raw wood glistened amber under the flame. It was beautiful, giving me the impression of standing inside a jewel. Other travelers had carved what appeared to be their names into the walls here and there, and there were a few leftover trinkets scattered on the mossy ground—a couple of metal pans, lumps of charcoal, and a spotted animal fur.
I figured the latter would be useful later that night with temperatures dropping every hour, so I picked it up and shook the dust off. It felt particularly soft, and it occurred to me that Anjani might like it.
I felt Bijarki watching me quietly and looked up to face him. He shook his head in disapproval, then walked out. He was still displeased with me taking a liking to the succubus, despite his warnings.
Well, it’s not like I can help it.
I wanted to call him out on it but changed my mind as a thought dawned on me: I had found something and figured it would please the succubus to have it. If I was going to publicly insist that she had absolutely no effect on me, the fur in my hand stated otherwise.
Bijarki informed the rest of our group that the tree was good for shelter. “We can take turns sleeping,” he said. “I’ll make the fire. One of you needs to pull out some large weeds and branches so we can cover the entrance in case someone or something comes by.”
“Something?” I asked. I handed the fur over to Anjani. She looked at me with befuddlement, but I pushed it further into her arms, and she reluctantly took it. It felt like victory to see her accept something I’d offered.
“You should see what comes out of these jungles at night,” Bijarki taunted me with a smirk.
A chill ran down my spine. I started pulling heavy fallen branches out of the nearby shrubs and leaving them by the trunk opening. I noticed Anjani watching me from the corner of my eye, but as soon as I turned my head to look at her, she quickly focused her attention on her feet. I couldn’t help but smile as I resumed my task.
Serena helped Draven sit on another root and started collecting more wood for the fire, leaving the Druid to hold the burning torch.
“I feel like a piece of furniture,” he muttered.
An hour later, the small campfire crackled in a hole dug into the ground and bordered with rocks. Bijarki sat in front of it with the crossbow armed and leaning against his shoulder. His eyes moved around, scanning the pitch black darkness that had settled around us.
Serena had taken the Druid inside the tree to change his bandage.
Milky white beams of moonlight pierced through the trees above, revealing portions of the road nearby. I could hear crickets chirping and owls hooting and the occasional crackle of a broken twig as unknown animals tried to come closer.
“The fire will keep most of the predators at bay,” the incubus said. “I’ll take first watch on the ground, and you can go up in the tree and keep a lookout.”
I nodded and moved to climb up the massive trunk. I’d made it halfway up, one solid branch at a time, when I heard movement below.
I looked down and saw Anjani pulling herself up on one of the lower branches. Her shoulder seemed to be in a better state, but she still had little use of her leg, as it hung limply in the air. Each move she made seemed strenuous and difficult judging by her grimace.
I stopped and climbed down a couple of branches, enough to reach out to her and offer her my hand for support. She looked at it, then at me, and slapped it away, continuing her burdensome climb like the independent warrior she insisted she was. I didn’t like seeing her struggle, but I didn’t think persistence was the way to go with her either.
Instead, I decided to go slow and continue my climb, waiting for her to call out for help when she couldn’t take it anymore.
I made it all the way to the top branch and straddled it for balance. A few moments later, I was surprised when she pulled herself up and climbed onto the branch next to me. The moon was high and bright, and her skin glistened under it. She breathed heavily, and beads of sweat covered her forehead, but she still looked ethereal, her black hair framing her beautiful face.
I held my breath as I watched her settle on the branch.
She flinched when she bent her knee.
“Are you okay?” I asked, my voice laced with concern.
She nodded with a faint smile and took the crossbow out from behind her back.
She pulled on the wire and set a poisonous arrow against it with a swift and firm hand. She’d obviously done this a million times.
We watched over the jungle around us. A wavy sea of dark green and black stretched out for miles in all directions. Lights flickered on the horizon at the base of a northern mountain chain. The peaks were dipped in white snow, which seemed brighter beneath the blanket of stars above. Thick gray smoke rose in a swirling column a few miles to the east.
“They’re most likely travelers,” Anjani said, looking in the same direction.
I had a hard time looking away from her. The sunlight gave her skin a silvery shimmer, but the moonlight was something else entirely. Anjani seemed to have been carved out of a large black diamond, with emerald-gold eyes, plum-colored lips, and long curls of ink black hair.
She shifted her gaze from the distant fire to me, and her expression changed. Shadows flickered across her face as she looked away again. Her fingers fumbled with the crossbow trigger. She looked nervous.
“I’m sorry if I’m staring,” I said, feeling responsible for the awkwardness that had settled between us. “I’ve just never seen a creature like you before. We have our own fascinating specimens back home, but none of them have silvery skin like yours.”
A moment passed before she spoke again.
“Our kind is different even by Eritopian standards. If you feel in any way attracted to me, I must apologize. It’s in my nature as a succubus. We are designed to seduce, and I can’t do much about that. It’s just always on. I can’t stop it,” she mumbled apologetically, taking me by surprise.
Where was the warrior I’d met earlier, and who was this insecure girl sitting in a tree next to me?
“Is that why you’ve been so snappy?” I asked, eager to get her out of that shrinking state.
I liked her more when she was fiery and armed with sharp comebacks, ready to smack me if I got out of line. In other circumstances I would have considered myself to be a masochist for poking at her, but with all the dangers lurking in the jungle around us, I needed her to be strong and brimming with self-confidence. Weakness never fared well in the wild; I’d learned that from a very young age.