Page 100 of To Scale the Emerald Mountain

Kraeston closes the distance between us and claps a hand on my shoulder and giving me his signature warm smile. “Come on Princess,” he says. “It will be fun.”

I swallow hard, glancing back and forth between the two men, feeling more at peace than I have in a very long time. My rage and anguish I’ve been cradling and clinging to suddenly seems feeble, like a feral dog dropping for a nap.

Alec reaches over and powers a flicker lamp on a spindly table with a drop of his magic as I turn back to Kraeston, both patiently waiting for my answer.

Another clap of thunder rolls across the city, a strange sense of possibility washing over me with the rare desert storm.

“Okay,” I relent.

Alec lays on his back across a desk, throwing a gilded apple into the air and catching it with precision as he thinks, the massive wall of glass windows behind him acting as a stunning backdrop of thrashing stormy skies. A bolt of lightning strikes, illuminating his form in an ethereal glow.

The visual is very distracting.

We haven’t left this room for hours, moving on from the cramped alcove when our bodies and stacks of books became too much for the space. Our time has been spent dissecting the events of Ellhora’s involvement with the tree and theorizing on why only some of the world’s population was gifted with magic. We’ve surmised it’s because the power transfer didn’t occur through the tree as it was meant to—thanks to the Mother—the resulting gems making thingsunpredictable.

My tired mind hurts with all the books I’ve soaked in, trying to reacquaint myself with still lost knowledge that Alec had personally taught me throughout the years.

I can’t help but think Kraeston lied when he promised fun.

The trickster himself paces back and forth in front of the wall opposite the windows, a gargantuan map of the world painted across its surface.

“All these books,” I gesture widely to the endless texts flipped open in front of me, “insinuate that this world was new and fresh when the gods arrived. If everything else seems to be a lie, is this as well? And if Ellhora wanted to send the gods back to ‘where they came from’ should we not assume that’s where she came from as well, given that they’re siblings? And where is that exactly?”

“I can answer one of those questions,” Alec offers, sitting up and letting his legs hang.

My head lifts to him expectantly.

“That book,” Alec indicates his head to the tome of myths, “states that the gods come from a different realm, a world favored by the Fates where magic was born in the race of the Fae through the first willowbane tree. The realm of Rayveshan. It claims that Dhystros created and spoke to the beasts of his homeland. That Mattyas was responsible for the balance required for the realm to thrive. That Serraphina touched the lands and brought forth beauty and prosperity.”

“And what does it say of Ellhora?” I ask quietly.

“It says that she ruled behind their father’s back with fear, using her powers of earth and sky in whatever way she needed to control the people. Building mountains of protection for warring clans or razing crops with fire from the sky.”

“If they’re siblings, how aretheir powers so different?”

Kraeston chimes in, plopping down in a chair. “Legends say the royal Rhellescie family didn’t have bloodline gifts like we do, power inherited from mother or father. They supposedly had divine magic, hand selected by the Fates for their favored royal line. The faerie stories you were so fond of as a girl found their origins from this book. Though not many of those original stories of the Fae still exist.”

Alec nods grimly. “I personally witnessed a book burning in Halliveen where two of these texts were destroyed. All heresy against the Mother is to be scoured by fire.”

“By the school of zealots?” I ask.

Kraeston laughs jovially. “That’s one way to refer to them.”

Glancing down at the tome, it hits me just how rare it is; and how deeply Alec must trust me to hand it over so willingly. “Locane told me of a book that mentions the gems, only indirectly. Is this it?” Taking it in my hands, I flip to the green title page that had earlier caught my interest and place it on the floor in front of me.

“It is,” Alec replies, his stare drawn to the page.

Alec hops off the desk abruptly, striding on long legs to the table holding our refreshments, pouring himself a hefty drink from a crystal decanter, his shoulders carrying new tension. Squinting my eyes at him, I watch as he throws his head back, draining his glass in two gulps. Alec runs his hands anxiously through his already mussed hair. He shares a knowing glance with Kraeston, their eyes barely flickering to meet, passing something between each other I can’t decipher.

Unfurling myself from the floor, I narrow my eyes to their silent exchange. I stride to the table Alec leans against, the warmth of his body radiating towards me, and collect the book of translations next to the tray of food. I retake my position on the sandstoneground and try to make work of finding the correlating pages of annotations to the story with such haunting pictures.

“I can read it to you, if you wish,” Alec offers quietly.

My head pops up, my brows raised. Alec is relaxed against the table, one foot crossed over the other, but I can see a vein jumping rapidly in his neck, alerting me to his racing heart, each beat seemingly working in time with my own.

“You’re fluent in the language of the gods?”

“I am,” he says casually, uncrossing his feet to walk to where I sit. He joins me on the floor, slowly turning the book to face him, its binding scraping softly against stone. “I briefly studied the tongue as a much younger man. I began again nearly eight years ago.”