Arcane Rising: The Darkland Druids - Book One, R Nicole [suggested reading TXT] 📗

words. He had the power to save lives and he went…but the Chimera finally caught up with us.”

Delilah drew me close, winding her arm around my waist. “He loved you, Elspeth. He gave up everything to keep you safe.”

But at what cost?

“You have his eyes, you know,” she added. “Gordan always took after his father, but I suspect you take after your mother.”

“I always wondered,” I murmured. “What happened to your husband? My grandfather?”

“Lost to the Darklands.”

“Oh…” My cheeks flushed. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry,” she told me. “It was a long time ago.”

We sat together for a moment, both of us a little overwhelmed.

“What do I do now?” I asked. “I’m not exactly flavour of the month around here.”

“The Druids have fear in their hearts,” Delilah replied. “They will not be easily won, but we have a chance to set things right…if that’s the course your heart wants to take you.”

“We?”

“You, myself, and Raurich.”

I cringed. “Rory knows?”

“He is your neach-gleidhidh. Of course, he knows.” Now I knew what he was about to spill in the library yesterday.

“Does he know you’re my grandmother?”

She smiled and smoothed my emerald hair behind my ear. “He does.”

I sighed as an unfamiliar feeling of knowing settled over me. I should be angry, but I was calm instead, the earlier anger I’d felt towards Darby was a distant memory—though she was unlikely to forget any time soon.

“Will you help with my training?” I asked.

“It’s best I keep my distance,” she told me. “Let Raurich guide you, Elspeth. He is wiser than he realises, and I doubt you two met by accident.”

I thought so, too. Speaking of Rory…

“The Chimera tried to reach me in my dreams last night,” I said, remembering what I was so eager to talk to him about this morning. Dream invasions seemed to pale in comparison to what I’d just been told. “At least, I think they did. It felt so real…”

Delilah looked troubled. “Perhaps it’s possible. There is so much we don’t know about their power. Your Fae blood may give you some ability to connect.”

That didn’t sound good, but at least I was aware of it.

“Ignis woke me,” I added. “It was as if he sensed them and pulled me out before it could go too far.”

“My goodness.” She chuckled and shook her head. “That cat has a knowing I’ve never sensed in a construct before. His soul must have led a special life before it found itself within my grasp.”

“He certainly is a strange cat.”

We sat in silence for a moment, both of us exhausted in our own way.

“I think we’ve had enough revelations for one day and you’ve missed a crucial morning of training,” she told me. “It’s time for you to return to your duties.”

I rose with a nod, my heart lighter but no less troubled. I’d learned a great deal today, but the finer details of my birth had been lost along with my father. Perhaps my mother might still be alive, but there was zero chance of finding her.

Delilah coughed, drawing my gaze.

“Unfortunately, as Elder, I cannot let you go unpunished for your display in the kitchen,” she stated. “I will leave the details to your neach-gleidhidh. No doubt he will be looking for you in order to do so.”

I groaned and averted my gaze as my cheeks heated. No doubt Rory would think of something mortifying.

“Elspeth?”

I managed to return my gaze to Delilah’s.

“Keep your mind sharp, granddaughter,” she murmured. “They will try again.”

15

“I leave you alone for five minutes and you go and get yourself into a fight.”

I looked up at Rory and scowled. Salle towered above us, its branches fluttering in the non-existent wind.

“The whole Warren is talking about it,” he added, sitting beside me on the snarled tree root. He laid his coat across his lap and I wondered where he’d been.

“I feel like a fool,” I muttered. “All this time I’ve been trying to understand this place, I’ve been clueless about the real reason people hate me… I know the truth now, but it cost me everything.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Rory told me. “People make mistakes.”

“I should have been told straight up.”

“There was a good reason we didn’t.”

“I didn’t explode, Rory. I’m a grown woman. I only explode into crystals when my life is threatened.”

“Not exactly, huh?” He tilted his head to the side. “It was a different kind of explosion.”

I glared at him, then swatted his hand away when he went to touch my face.

“You’ve got a black eye, you know.”

I straightened up with a gasp. “Have not.”

“Have too. Makes you look tough.”

I prodded at the skin around my eye. “I don’t feel tough.”

“You gave Darby a matching shiner and almost broke her nose.”

“God,” I groaned, burying my face in my hands.

“Don’t worry, she’s been healed. I can help you with that eyeball situation if you want.” He knocked his shoulder against mine. “You don’t have to walk around looking like a pirate.”

“You can do that?” I asked, my voice muffled by my palms.

“Aye.”

I sighed, wondering if it would count for anything with the Druids if I refused and made my eye heal the old-fashioned way.

“Leave it,” I said, letting my hands fall away. “Darby may have deserved a punch in the face for what she said to me, but I shouldn’t have hit her like that.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

“Why?”

“With us Druids it’s about the journey and the lesson attached to it, not the prize at the end.”

“Well that’s anti-climactic.”

He smiled and looked up at Salle. “It’s what makes us wise.”

I followed his gaze, watching the prisms shimmer around the weeping branches. It was strange how it was becoming more and more familiar as the days wore on—like a magical tree was an every day occurrence. Did that mean I was finally accepting who I was?

“Rory?”

“Ach, here comes another barrage of questions,” he said with a chuckle.

“Delilah said I was an Odhweine and that my great grandmother was a Spirit Walker. Is that true?”

“Of course, it’s true,” he