Land of Light and Shadows

Chapter 11

Chapter 11

The tension growing within the library was immediately cut with the doors opening as Laurel and Michel walked in. Laurel had been smiling, complaining about how Archer needed to stop growing so fast, but it immediately dropped whenever they realized something was wrong.

"Are we missing something?" she asked. "What...?"

But Gideon quickly cut in, adding a little more color to the question she was about to ask. "What the hell is going on?" he demanded, trying to look at all of them at once before finally settling on Lyv. "What's that book?"

"It from Corliss...addressed directly to me," Lyv explained. "Someone gave it to me just a few hours ago...someone I didn't know about but who was brought by two others I'd met before."

Mik was the first one to smile as he glanced down at Elys before back to her. "Dessa and the older Elys, huh?"

The only ones who were completely confused now were Gideon, Thia, Laurel, and Michel. With Michel being a susurrate spy who hear whispers everywhere, he couldn't even hear those that came from the future...or, in this case, the past. Even Eamon apparently knew what was going on. Of course, he would. He was Elys's best friend. He would have told him about their future since he would be there, too.

"I'm going to ask the same question as Gideon – what the hell is going on?" Thia asked, putting a hand to her forehead. "How could an older Elys and Dessa..." The latter of the names seemingly rang a bell in both her and Gideon as soon as she said it. She'd only heard the name a few times, but instantly knew who they were talking about. "Hold on. Dessa, as in..."

"As in mine and Jai's daughter," Lyv nodded. She looked up at Jai then. "I will say again, I wish you'd been there with me just to see them."

Gideon copied Thia's hand placement on his own forehead. "Again?"

Before Lyv could even get a word out, Elys was the one who began to explain. "Dessa's able to create portals. Her magic...well, she really doesn't come into it until she's eighteen and even then it's hard for her to control. I don't understand why she has so much trouble, though. That's something I'm not able to see. The first portal she makes is actually by accident and she ends up in the middle of the forest where Gideon and Jai had their cottage in Escarral." A slight blush colored his cheeks. "We might have had a fight, which is what made her pretty much explode. After training, she gets the hang of it, though. When it's just her, she can jump from place to place within our own world and others. But together, we're able to do that, plus pick a certain time and place."

Not knowing much about how their magic worked together and separately, this was news to Lyv as well.

"When Mik and I were still in the Keep, Dessa and Elys were the ones who told me how to get out," she admitted then. "It was only a few minutes they were there, and I've only told Jai about what happened. And Elys, of course, but he already knew. Apparently, whenever I would tell Dessa the story of everything that has and will happen, I would tell her about someone coming to tell me how to get out of the dungeon, though I never named them. She realized then she was the one who did."

Just talking about those few fleeting moments made the fury and anger Lyv had felt just a few minutes earlier lessen enough for her to be able to think straight. Her eyes fell back on the book as Allel flipped through its pages, tears welling up in her eyes as she recognized the handwriting, remembering back to the time it described in Corliss's prospective.

"Gods, I miss her like this. Not how and what she is now," she whispered, swiping the backs of her hands beneath both eyes. It only smeared her tears more, which Mik then reached up to wipe away for her. "When she and Meron first got to Palrion, they stayed in one of Mik's parents' inns. That's how we met. Mik and Kalla were causing a stir after drinking a little too much, just like they always did, and Meron joined in. Me, Corliss, and Faraine just stood back and watched the chaos unfold."