Journey onto the Storm (BOOK 2)

Chapter 12

MARIA

"Kayal hasn't changed?"

Her quill sat between her thumb and forefinger while she brushed an irritating gold strand off her brow. It slipped behind her ear, but she knew it'd come back to haunt her. Notes scrawled along her empty tome full of possible remedies or answers to the age-old question of a thousand turns. Anatomical drawings bound themselves into the spine of the book with her adjustments. On one page, all commonplace symptoms of the expulsion flashes. On another, varying herbs and alchemical formulae to create a soothing mixture for the deep, bloody coughs. Tickling her chin with the feather, she moved onto the next page, doubling back to keep everything consistent before her next trip to Tanaara's for some reagents.

"No," Kemal said from the door of her room within the treehouse. "We can get him to eat and drink when prompted but I'm afraid his condition will only get worse if we don't get him out of this if we don't figure out what's causing it. I may send him to Euros on the next round trip, I just need to get him to last that long."

Answers elude me, but they won't for long. It drove her through day, night, and sleepless time to find it. "You want me to look him over?" she asked with one last mark on her page, with her tried dosages and whatever Yuven reported to her before they fulfilled their duties across continents. I hope he's taking it... Temple resting against her knuckle, she left the tome open and waited for Kemal's response.

"I'd appreciate it, Maria. Any answer would be better than the nothing Julis is working with," Kemal replied and left the frame of her door and closed it behind him.

Numbness swept through her legs when she freed herself from the spindly chair. Arms over her head into a stretch, fire revitalized her heart, soul and mind while she shuffled over to the dresser. Lion-shaped pin in her palm, she weaved her locks into a braided crown, then slipped the pin between layers for a finishing touch when the braid sat on her forehead. It weighed on her shoulders, and she fingered the stray, tiny strands on her neck.

On top of her work coat, the necklace Yuven had given her before his departure to Dyrin.

"I want you to have it, Myl'la," he said in melodic Navei and placed it into her hands, cupping them in his warm, slender ones. "Let it remind you that you are not alone."

Maria lifted her gaze to the mirror in front of her and examined the metalwork which tied the necklace together, where an opalescent stone of fiery hues made itself the centerpiece and created a ripple effect through the rest of the necklace. Does this mean what I think it means? The question left her lips, and brought dreams.

Yuven scoffed and shook his head at her from the mirror world, but his smile softened. "No, but I do want you to remember me."

You're hard to forget, Ice Knight.

Continents apart.

Maria gazed into his smile and his deep violet eyes, full of both uncertainty and love. "I love it, Yuven. Help me put it on?"

His last memory sent an ice-hot jolt through her shoulders and straight through her stomach and heart as his breath tickled the back of her neck. The clasp gave a gentle snap when they connected the lock together, and she turned her back to the mirror ready to face the day. Her fingers clasped around the stone of fiery blues, no mere memory as his brow rested against hers through time and space.

I long to give you, and so many others, the hope they need to see through to the next day.

And she saw him off on a Warden galleon, sails to the wind and took him to his new posting, with hers in a different direction, but she held onto his gift and piled all his letters in one of the small drawers. Buttons clasped, she smoothed out the gray fabric of her longcoat. Kemal waited for her outside the treehouse. Birds chirped high in the canopy, which echoed with the ocean hum of the harbor and shielded them from rain. Branches tangled and roots wove through the Elvkin city she had grown accustomed to. Music escaped a marble building with high windows and mosaic glass solar. Flutes. Lutes. Drums. A mixture of the ground and the sky in harmony.