Page 49

Story: Blood Rains Down

“What’s wrong, Landers? What is going on inside of you that you aren’t telling me?” My voice was pleading, begging him to let me in as I locked my gaze on his.

As he opened his mouth to speak, a knock sounded at the door of our guest home and his eyes snapped toward it. I slid off his lap as he stood, letting my hands fall to my sides as he strode over to the door and opened it. Gimara stood on the other side of the threshold.

“Landers,” she greeted with a soft nod as he opened the door wide enough for me to come into her view.

“Please, Gimara, come in.” He gestured his arm toward me but she held up a hand to stop him.

“I was hoping to speak with Hyacinth for a moment, alone.” Landers’s eyes flashed to me, worry embedded in his irises. “Will you walk with me?” she asked, leaning around him and meeting my gaze.

I nodded, grabbing my jacket from the back of the couch as I passed by and slipped my arms into it.

Gimara stepped a few paces away from the door as I approached and turned her back to us. I knew she could feel the heavy unease that saturated the room. Landers’s hand caught softly around my forearm as I moved to step through the opening and I glanced up to see fear staining his eyes.

“I love you, Hyacinth,” he said quietly, the cadence of his voice almost pained as his eyes flickered to Gimara’s back for one fleeting moment before he pulled them back to me.

I lifted my hand to cup his cheek, my lips parting to speak but he interjected before the words could come out.

“Tell me you love me.” Confusion flooded my features as I stared back at him, the crease between my brows deepening at the panic that was beginning to creep onto his face.

“Landers, what—”

“Please,” he cut me off. His voice was almost inaudible as he pulled me closer.

“Of course I love you,” I said, placing my other hand against his jaw. He leaned into my touch, bringing his hand up to hold mine in place.

“Hyacinth,” Gimara called and my eyes glanced toward her before looking back to Landers.

“I need to go.”

Landers nodded as he turned his head, his lips grazing against my palm before letting it fall to my side and shutting the door behind me.

“I apologize,” I said, rushing to Gimara’s side as she began walking the worn stone pathway leading away from our small bungalow.

“Trouble in paradise?” she quipped, raising a brow as she looked over at me.

My cheeks flushed and a nervous laugh slipped from my mouth as I folded my arms over my chest, but I didn’t answer. I wasn’t even surehowto answer her.

I cleared my throat, following after her as she took a right on the splitting path into the cedar trees that covered Ithia’s mountains. “What can I help you with, High Priestess?”

“You may call me Mara, if you’d like. Gimara was my mothers name and it seems I have, like you, stepped into a life I did not have planned for myself.”

I glanced over at her, forcing a smile onto my lips as we walked through the forest. Birds sang above us as the fresh air brushed against our skin and she continued. “Times are changing—I can see that. And whether or not Rilius and Sashi want to move on from the old traditions, they know that they will not be able to stop whatever change is coming, be it good or bad. I would like our realm—I would like Ithia—to learn to fight.”

I listened as we stepped out of the tree line where a large ruin sat before us.

The stones and pillars that now lay crumbling on the ground were covered in grasses with flowers blooming between their cracks. The walls that still stood had become home to vines of wisteria, their purple and pink blossoms swaying against the subtle breeze.

“This was once our most ancient temple,” Mara said, her voice quiet as she stepped into the rubble and brushed her fingers reverently over the wall.

The cadence of her tone was full of longing, sadness saturating every word. And as she looked from the stones to me, I could see the emotion swelling in her eyes.

“It was said to have been here long before the Gods ever came to this world, that it was the beacon that called them to Nimbria.” She tapped the rocks as a heavy breath slipped from her lips and continued walking deeper into the broken space.

“This was one of the first temples to fall at the start of the Great War. Instead of fighting for our home, instead of dying for our land and our people, we fled into the mountains, hiding from the violence that would find us either way. I watched as hundreds of thousands were slaughtered because we refused to fight, refused to protect ourselves and each other. I watched as the King and Queen and their children were murdered in Edvhir, my mother with them. I refuse to let my people suffer that same fate. I refuse to cower behind our traditions for a second time and pray that another realm will come to save us.”

There was so much grief—so much anger in her voice, as if she was speaking for every lost soul that died on these peaks all those centuries ago. I watched as the wind rustled the crimson strands of hair hanging around her face, almost as if it sang for her. Sang the song of her people as it whistled through the cracks of this fallen temple.

She turned to face me, her large brown eyes landing on me with so much determination behind them as she raised her hands and lowered the cream cloth draped over her head.

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