The cliff face was as close as I remembered when Naiki soared through it, Raidyn’s body pressed against mine, holding us both against her neck. This time, I had no trouble keeping my eyes open, not wanting to miss that first breathtaking view of Soluselis—a view I’d believed I would never see again.
The wind was cold and strong, but the tears in my eyes had nothing to do with it as Naiki straightened and the city became visible in the valley below us, glimmering in the distance. As we sat back up and Naiki stretched her wings to soar back home—home, here with the Paladin, with my entire family, with Raidyn—he slid his arm around my waist, drawing me back against his warm, solid body. He pressed a kiss to my temple; I tilted my face toward him, so his lips could leave a heated trail down my chilled skin, skimming my cheekbone, landing on the corner of my mouth.
“I’m afraid I’m going to wake up any minute and find out none of this is real,” Raidyn murmured.
“Luckily, if you’re having trouble staying awake, my sister has been giving me lessons on riding a gryphon. I think I could get us to the castle safely.”
Raidyn made a noise that was half laugh, half growl, and sat back, but paused to press another kiss to the groove between my jaw and neck, his teeth grazing the tendon. I moaned, a jolt of need rippling through me.
“That’s not playing fair,” I complained.
He laughed fully this time, his fingers stroking my hip, just as he had on our second ride together. But this time, I had no qualms about twisting around, ready to give him a taste of his own temptations—
Then caught sight of my sister on Sukhi, just off to our left side, her blue-fire eyes wide, staring at Soluselis.
“What—is something wrong?” Raidyn caught the change in my focus and followed my gaze to Inara.
“It’s like she’s never seen it before.” Which wasn’t true; not only had she been here before, the luxem magnam had saved her life.
Maddok’s wings beat next to Sukhi, and Inara turned toward him, responding to something Loukas said that neither of us could hear.
“Honestly, it doesn’t matter how many times I leave and come back, it always takes my breath away every time,” Raidyn admitted. “Maybe that’s all it was.”
“Maybe,” I agreed, but part of me still wondered. I knew my sister, and I was certain there was more to the look I’d seen on her face.
A glance over my shoulder revealed the rest of our company, including my grandmother and my parents. My mother stared at the Paladin capital with her jaw agape, eyes wide. My father was trying and failing to hide a grin as his wife finally got to see his home, at long last.
It had taken days for the Paladin to go through the belongings and books left in the citadel, choosing only the most vital items to bring back. There had been meetings between the Paladin and the army that showed up outside the hedge, drawn by the rumors of a battle at the citadel, the events of that terrible afternoon overheard by the townspeople of Gateskeep. Ederra had promised them the gateway would be destroyed, that their people would never again be forced to deal with Paladin or rakasa, and they had eventually left us in peace. It also allowed the Paladin gathered enough time to recover the power necessary to open the gateway and deal with the potential rakasa that might try to get through.
But there had been none. Instead, we found three more battalions waiting for our return, brought there by the rest of the council, who had come to the castle only to find Ederra and half their Riders gone. They’d come as quickly as they could without leaving the city completely defenseless, and had only arrived an hour before we all came through.
Now the entire group, a sea of Paladin and gryphons filling the sky like a storm made of blue-fire and wings, soared across the valley toward the castle that glowed like a beacon.
A beacon of peace and rest and hope.
“She’ll be happy here,” I said at last. “We all will.”
“I hope so. Because I’m not planning on letting you leave ever again. Unless I’m with you, of course.”
I smiled and wrapped my arm over his, snuggling back into his chest. “I wouldn’t mind seeing more of Visimperum sometime. I’ve spent a lot of years behind a wall, you know.”
His immediate regret was palpable. “You’re right, I’m sorry. I never meant to imply that I would trap—”
“Raid,” I cut in with a laugh, “I’m only teasing.”
“Oh … are you certain? Because I truly didn’t mean—”
“Truly,” I insisted, running my nails over the veins in his hand, up his wrist, and on to his forearm, where I could feel the goose bumps rising on his skin from my touch. His breath quickened. “I really do want to explore the city and the rest of Visimperum with you, and if I ever feel like I need a break, we can take Naiki out for a flight. But I love the castle. And I’m actually excited to start training with you again. I think I may have discovered a weak spot or two I fully intend to capitalize on the next time we spar.”
He shivered when I dragged my nails back down his arm and laced my fingers through his. “Now who isn’t playing fair?” His voice was low and husky.
My laugh was carried back to him by the wind.
I loved it. I loved him.
And I loved that as we soared above the city’s rooftops, painted golden by the setting sun, over the hedge and into the field to land, the castle rising above us, it truly felt right.
It felt like coming home.
At last.
The first few hours after our arrival were chaotic and wonderful and exhausting. Explanations were given, tears were shed, food was served, rooms assigned, baths drawn and savored, new clothes slipped over skin that was finally clean … and suddenly, there was silence and solitude. Raidyn had kissed me good night and left me to my bath and pajamas and down-filled pillows with the promise—and knowledge—that I would see him first thing in the morning when we met in the ring to spar, fulfilling my pledge to exploit the weaknesses I thought I’d discovered. Something he claimed he couldn’t wait to experience.
I ran my hands over the silken material of the nightgown I wore. The weariness in my body delved far past mind and muscle, to heart, bone, soul—so deeply imbedded, I wondered if I would ever not be tired again. But though the bed in my room was large and clean and inviting, the sheets so white, they rivaled the milky moonlight streaming through my window, and a fire burned cheerfully behind the grate, making my room warm and cozy and my eyelids heavy—I knew I couldn’t go to bed. Not quite yet.
I located a robe in the bureau and after pulling it on, slipped out into the quiet hallway, softly shutting the door behind me. Inara’s room was next to mine, but when I tapped gently on her door, there was no answer.
“Inara?” I called out barely above a whisper, not wanting to disrupt anyone trying to sleep nearby.
When no answer came, I tried the handle. It turned easily, the door swung open, but the room was empty.
I knew there was a chance she might have gone off to find Loukas, but I had a suspicion that I might find her elsewhere.
Following that instinct, and hoping I still knew my sister as well as I once had, I moved silently through the slumbering castle. Though it had been a while, I was still able to find my way to the center of the castle, following the pull that was stronger than ever and my own memory of the way to reach my destination—the luxem magnam.
I turned the corner to that last hallway, the undulating light that never dimmed up ahead, and saw an outline of someone standing at the diamond banister, her arms folded as if in prayer.
Inara.
I moved forward slowly, giving her plenty of time to hear or sense my approach. I was only a few feet away when she glanced over her shoulder at me and smiled, the light of the luxem magnam illuminating her, wrapping around her—almost as if it held her, somehow. As if after healing her and giving Inara her power back, she was still connected to it in some way.
“I thought I might find you here,” I said softly. “But I hope I’m not interrupting.”
“Of course not,” she responded immediately. “You could never be an interruption.”
I stepped up beside her, staring down at the undulating light below us. It didn’t look solid enough to support a body, but it had somehow from what Loukas had described to me when I’d asked him for more details—the light had held and healed her.
“The first time I saw the luxem magnam, all I could think was how much you would have loved it—and how badly I wished I could bring you to see it. I thought it was an impossible wish.” I paused as warmth melted into my body, a little bit of the exhaustion releasing its hold on me, like a sigh. “And now look at us—here, at the luxem magnam, together.”
“I still can’t believe it.” When Inara spoke, her voice was hushed.
There were so many things she could have been referring to, I just waited.
Her eyes glistened, the blue-fire almost as bright as it had been during the battle. “I keep thinking that it’ll come back—that the cost for all of this is that one morning the roar will return, erasing everything else. But every day I wake up and I can talk to you whenever I wish. I can’t believe I am truly healed. That we’re here—with our parents. That Louk…” She trailed off with a shake of her head and turned away from the luxem magnam to face me fully. “I’m so happy … but I keep feeling like I shouldn’t be. That it isn’t fair, not when my happiness exists because of so much sorrow and loss.”
My heart lurched for her, because I knew all too well what she was feeling. It was something Raidyn and I had talked about the night before we left Vamala forever.
I wrapped my arms around my sister, pulling her into a hug. “We’ll always miss Sami. And Halvor too. And all the others. It isn’t fair; you’re right,” I agreed, and she stiffened in my arms. “It isn’t fair that when you were born, you brought so much power into the world that Papa got pulled through the gateway, leaving us trapped there with a mother who didn’t know how to find happiness without him. It isn’t fair that you were imprisoned in the roar for fifteen years. So much of life isn’t fair.” I drew back, just enough to look into her eyes, for her not only to feel the truth of what I wanted to tell her, but to see it in my face. “You told me yourself, those who lost their lives have been welcomed home to the Light. They have found true peace and endless happiness with their loved ones who went before them. So if you have managed to find even a tiny piece of that happiness here, the only reason to feel guilty about it would be if you rejected the chance to experience true joy, choosing to remain miserable because you’re worried about them.”
Inara’s eyes still glittered, but the desperate beat of guilt in her heart gave way to the first bloom of hope; I could feel it unfurling in her, tender and beautiful.
“If anyone deserves to be deliriously happy, it’s you, Nara. All I have ever wanted was for you to be free—and happy.”
“And thanks to you, now I am,” she said, pulling me back into a tight hug. “I love you, Zuzu,” she murmured into my hair.
“I love you too.” I squeezed her tight.
After a few moments, I pulled away and turned to face the luxem magnam once more, running my hands over the diamond balustrade. “It’s honestly too bad the gateway was destroyed. Think of the fortune we could have made if we’d been able to smuggle even one beam from this thing back to Vamala.”
“Zuhra!” Inara’s scandalized outcry was followed by a burst of laughter that echoed up to the glass ceiling far overhead, where the moonlight broke into soft beams of white, caught up in a dance with the shards of dazzling light of the luxem magnam, refracted and multiplied by the diamonds we leaned on. The sound of that laughter was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever heard.
“You know I’m not serious. I’m nowhere near strong enough to break off an entire beam. Maybe just a chunk from the top.”
Inara laughed again, and this time I joined her. We laughed and laughed, until our stomachs hurt.
“Come on, we should get to bed,” I finally said. “I don’t know if you remember what the beds are like here, but if my memory is right, I’m pretty sure it’s like sleeping on a cloud.”
“Having now flown through clouds, I’m not sure I’d want to try to sleep on one. I think we’d just fall through.”
Our giggles followed us as we wandered through the castle, trying to remember the way to our rooms. I wondered if this was what it would have been like to grow up like normal sisters, without a roar or a hedge or a hidden gateway … but ultimately it didn’t matter. I couldn’t change the past. I could only be thankful for the fact that we were together in that hallway, that we could wander through a castle in Soluselis, giggling and lost, and not caring because it was our home now. Because our parents were there, somewhere, and our grandmother, too. Because Raidyn and Loukas would be there in the morning when we woke—or to find us if we were still lost.
But above all else, despite whatever else the future held, we had each other.
Now—and forever.