“I can’t help but notice you piling your plate just as heavy.”
Eldas merely grins.
When we’re finished, Eldas loads the dishes into a deep sink and sends me upstairs to dress. I try and move as quickly as possible. My mother always insisted that whoever cooked in the house didn’t clean. But I’m too late. By the time I’m back downstairs in my own shirt and trousers he’s drying his hands on his apron, a slightly smug satisfaction alight in his eyes.
“Cooking and now cleaning?” I arch my brows. “Are you really the same Eldas as in the castle?”
“Here I am free of the castle and free of its burdens. This place is an escape for me as well.” He stands a little straighter, as if no longer crushed by the weight of his position or trauma those walls haunt him with. I narrowly resist saying that he should just live here, for good. “I think it’s time to show you the grounds.”
We leave through the double doors at the back of the kitchen. Creeping vines cover the entirety of a pergola, offering a shaded area over a patio. The pavers spill over a ledge, down a staircase, and wrap around a pool of sparkling blue. I walk over to the low stone wall next to the stairs.
“This place is…” The words escape as a whisper.
To the left of the pool is a copse of trees surrounded by gardens. They terrace upward and into the mountain until they’re entirely claimed by the forest at the mountain’s foot. To the right of the pool is a field of wildflowers have taken over. There are more gardens at the far edge and I can see the sheen of water between the rows of plants that I suspect will only grow in swampier environments.
“It’s yours,” Eldas reminds me again. His breath moves the edges of my hair at the nape of my neck. My whole body aches at the sound of his voice so close.
Before me is a garden I couldn’t have dreamed about if I tried. Behind me is a house, simple and comfortable. A house that I would’ve longed for if I’d ever thought of moving to the countryside.
“It’s wonderful.”
“I’m glad you like it. The Human Queens have tended it alongside the Elf King. These plants were transplanted from the Natural World. Alice said they always helped restore her power when she couldn’t return to the Natural World.”
“You can transplant things between worlds?” I arch my eyebrows.
“It takes significant magic and tending, but yes. The Natural World to Midscape, and the reverse.” Eldas nods. “Hidden away in the Natural World is a mirror of this garden. Alice told me it keeps the plants alive here and can help rejuvenate the Queen—why I thought coming here might help you. She always said a bit of the magic from her world flowed through, enough to make her strong.”
Mirror—balance, is what he means. It’s natural magic—the queen’s magic—suspended between the worlds. Could this somehow be used for the seasons? That’s a lot more magic than just keeping some plants alive. But it could be a start…couldn’t it?
The palm of his hand lands on the small of my back, distracting me. I stand a little straighter.
“Go on, explore.”
We spend the entire day wandering the grounds. It takes all of my energy not to tear apart the cottage for a clean journal so I can begin cataloging all the various plants and noting their needs. This is a dream, I begin to tell myself. It’s a beautiful dream that I will, eventually, wake from. But for now, I will enjoy it. I will delight in the lush gardens, the wild overgrown brush, and the magic that seems to hang as happily in the air as the eager pollinators buzzing from flower to flower.
“What’s up there?” The gravel pathway that snakes between raised beds winds between the trees, slipping into the dense forest and shadow of the mountain in the late twilight.
“The last thing I would like to show you.”
“What is it?” I demand, somewhat firmly. The path reminds me of the temple and that long walk that took me across the Fade.
“It leads to the Fade.” He affirms my suspicion without realizing.
“But I thought that Capton was the only entrance of the Fade?”
Eldas sighs. It’s the only indication I have that he’s shouldering a burden of worry I don’t understand. “Capton is where the Human Queen is chosen from. The act of doing so honors the ancient pact made between the elves and humans, as the first queen’s home was on that isle and the first keystone was placed there—where the Fade itself unfurled from. However…that is not the only point where the Fade can be crossed.”
“Really?” I’d heard whispers in Lanton from time to time…traders spreading rumors about vampir attacks to the south or ships going down in the north due to beasts with wild magic terrorizing the seas. But I thought those stories were like all the other stories of magic from my childhood—grossly exaggerated and grounded in more fiction than fact.
“May I show you?” He holds out his hand. “I will Fadewalk us there, if you’ll allow? Otherwise, it’s a long trek.”
“You may.” I take his hand and the dark mist that is his power envelops us both.
We step through twilight and into a realm of swirling darkness. Every time I walk with Eldas across the Fade it becomes a little easier than the last. Still, this place between worlds—not quite one or the other—makes invisible bugs scuttle across my skin.
I do not belong here, and the entity that is the Fade makes the fact known.
“I recognize this place.” It’s the same mossy clearing I stumbled on with Hook. A circle of smaller stones rings a large tablet at the center of a small rise.