Page 186 of Winds of Ruin
The stillness felt ominous.
“Where’s my puppy?” I mumbled, though the words sloshed around too much to be understood.Did they make it back?
Only then did I realize that the blood on my tunic came from my head. Itdefinitelywasn’t just a scratch.
“I’ve got her,” Cass said. Before I could make sense of what had transpired, she lifted me onto a Griffith. “I’ll take her to the healer’s camp. Help the wounded here and then meet us.”
I lost consciousness to the beating of wings and cheers of victory.
I awoke where the gates of Lamoreauxshouldbe. The familiar rolling hills arched across the horizon, stretching toward the lake. The land welcomed me home, though no estate stood tall before me and no everplums dotted the landscape.
A young man with scraggly red hair helped a woman with fair eyes and a heart-wrenching smile off a dappled gray horse.
“We’ll build it here!” he said to her, extending his arms wide and circling. The woman laughed at him.
Sources how I missed that laugh.I recognized it immediately, the same one that giggled through bedtime stories and odd topics of conversation by the parlor fire.
“It’s far from town,” she said.
“Better to keep our children out of trouble.”
“We don’t have children,” she argued.
He winked. “Someday.”
“My mother will never visit,” she retorted.
“Even better,” he said in jest, which earned him a playful slap on the shoulder. Fen had inherited Papa’s sense of humor.
My father looked so vibrant, so full of life then, with no worry etched on his brow and a clean-shaven face.
Before.
I was seeingbeforeit all.
Days and nights flashed before me, and I knelt in the grass to watch as they built a life into something beautiful—brick by brick.
I longed for it to always remain so peaceful, but I knew it would not.
Chapter 71
Larkspur
Caym’s wretched hand dropped from my throat, and a flash of light filled the cavern. I gasped in a lung full of air.
When the light cleared, Caym’s decaying face fell; his reign crumbled at his feet.
He slumped forward in satisfying, slack-jawed shock. His skin peeled back from his gaping mouth, shriveling before he let out a final shriek, then he burst into thousands of amber particles. The dust slammed into the dark gritted walls, rattling them.
The guards dissipated, and though we were alone now, my arm hair still stood on end. A rumble shook the cave, and the molten rock quaked. Cracks deepened in the plateau beneath us.
“Princess, the stone,” Emmerick commanded as he got to his feet, dragging me up with him.
My body felt like a rag doll; icy fear slid down my back, and every muscle grew stiff.
I’d been so close to losing it all.
Failure had been imminent just moments prior.
