♕ A Crown of Lies ♕ (#Wattys2018)

Chapter 7: Beginning of an Adventure

Just one quick thing before you read: Happy new year!

May 2018 be as good (or even better) for you than 2017.

❤ Happy reading ❤

♕

Elora let out a hot breath. She stared into the fire before her, watching the sparks rise up towards the dark sky and slowly fade into nothing. She had her hands wrapped around her knees and cried in silence. Owen beside her was sleeping fitfully. The Albion greatsword he had been given, was tucked underneath his makeshift pillow while he twisted and turned. As the night grew cold around her and the flames heated her cheeks, she couldn't help her mind from wandering.

It had been an entire day since she had left Kay--the man she had called her father her whole life--alone on their farm. She hadn't wanted to leave him behind, but he had ordered her to leave. The look in his eyes had told her he wouldn't take no for an answer. Not this time. She had helped him patch himself up with the supplies he had gathered from the village healer over the years, but after that, she had left together with Owen.

It was the first time that night she had listened to the now dead Seer.

They had taken the horses from the stables and they had run, not looking back. They had ridden until the strong mounts started wheezing and even Elora felt winded. Until the sun had sunk below the horizon and the first trees of the Ash Forest had come into view--until her mind had caught up with everything that had happened and she had broken down crying. That had been hours ago and she still couldn't believe her life had spiraled so out of control.

She wiped the tears from her face and slowly opened her hand, looking at the item tucked safely in her palm. An item Kay had given her before she had left and had said once belonged to her mother. The clear key was but a small, carved out piece of ice, glinting vibrantly with age-old magic. She had recognized it immediately from her dreams. It was a key made from the everlasting ice in the mines in the Northern Reach--the key to the ancient Frozen Halls of Gulara. An heirloom from a House that was destroyed nearly twenty years ago.

A House, she now realized, was hers.

A sigh escaped her lips. Ever since she'd started to have her visions, she knew there was something she should know but couldn't quite remember. Something that made her different from all the others in the Farmlands, apart from her light hair. Despite the echoes of Magic she had felt vibrate through her dreams, she had never thought she'd be a Wielder--that, with Magic dying, she'd be one of the few people left that could channel the power of the Spirits.

It was why she was afraid to go to sleep. In fear of having another vision of the past that now haunted her every time she closed her eyes. She had Seen her parents' deaths more times than she could count, but knowing who they were now made Seeing it all the more painful. The flames reaching from the Albion royal castle into the sky like slithering tendrils were still etched into her mind.

"Can't sleep?" Owen asked, waking her from her thoughts. His voice was heavy with unfinished sleep. He pushed himself from underneath his cloak and rubbed his eyes.

Elora shook her head, resting her chin on her kneecaps. "Someone has to keep watch, right? Besides, we should probably be leaving soon. My father-I-I mean Kay," she corrected herself in a short breath. "Kay said we should stop as little as possible."

Her friend's eyes shifted over her face, seeing the dried tears that stuck to her cheeks. She had never been good at lying, least of all to him. She couldn't hide the helplessness that stormed through her on the inside, or the sorrow of all she had lost that threatened to consume her. He could see it all without having to be a Seer. It was written all over her face and she knew he felt it too.