Delphic Song

Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

Soft breeze, warm sunlight, gently grass tickling my arms and legs. I knew before I even opened my eyes that I was no longer in Ellaera, and immediately a strong feeling of lightweight relief rushed through my blood.

I was home.

But being home didn’t mean I was any less freaked out. I was overwhelmed by everything I had just been told. Another world, all the lies that had been told to keep the secret from me, a great war over power that was still being fought… and the worst part was, I was in the middle of it. I was the daughter of the Weaver.

I rolled my aching body over onto my back. How did this even happen? How did I go from a small town teenager to a… a what? What, exactly, was I? What did it mean to be the daughter of the Weaver? My head spun with questions, none of which I had an answer to. It was so frustrating, knowing enough to be curious, but then getting left wanting. When I had been in the throne room with my mother, it had seemed that every question I had asked had been deflected somehow. She had either answered my questions with another question, or just ignored me.

Some way to treat the daughter you abandoned, I scoffed inwardly. Anger bubbled up inside me at the thought of my mother and all the hell she had put me through. Honestly – she left me, never contacted me, and then she shows up out of the blue, telling me all this ridiculous stuff about a magical other world, and she just expects me to accept it? Take her back into my life like nothing ever happened? Fat chance, Mom.

Groaning, I rotated my neck, wincing at the sickening cracks that proved just how stiff my neck was. Over the past few days, I had been so tense that it was a wonder I could move my neck at all.

But at least now that I had been ejected from the mess, removed from Ellaera and everything that was being shoved at me, I could forget somewhat. I could forget that in the space of ten minutes, I had met my biological mother, discovered she was a Weaver – whatever that meant – and learned that evil people were tracking me. I could forget that another world existed, I could forget that I wasn’t normal anymore. Because forgetting was easier; it was too much to take in everything and still come out sane.

Suddenly, I paused, sitting up and looking around me as I became aware that I was alone. Where was Liam? He should have followed me back to Earth, I was sure of it. He wouldn’t have left me here alone, in a meadow in the middle of freaking nowheresville Stow with no way to get home. It wasn’t like the Liam I knew.

But you never knew Liam, Gwen, a voice whispered in the back of my head. You never knew him; not really. I pushed that thought out of my head.

“Liam?” I said into the quiet. My voice was swallowed up by the empty meadow. It was midday, at least one o’clock, and the sun was beating down on me. Dread twisted my stomach as I realized I had no idea how many days had passed since I had passed into the portal. It could have been hours, it could have been days – it could have been years. I knew time worked differently in Ellaera; when we had taken the Portal, it had been midnight. And after what only seemed like ten minutes in the other world had ended up being at least a few hours on Earth. Gradually, the dread began to turn to panic and it started clawing its way up my throat, demanding me to scream or cry or run or anything that wasn’t just standing still. I resisted the urge, but my heart was beating frantically in my chest, like I had just run a marathon.