Page 2 of Where the Shadows Land (Garden of Hope #1)

No amount of Divine magic cured it. There was not a single prayer that eased the suffering.

All known medications, teas, and tinctures failed to improve the condition of the dying.

Some believed the land was cursed and left Gladeview.

Yet, cases were reported as far north as Libeth and as far west as Lanotten, far beyond the borders of the so-called cursed land .

Astoria’s forbidden magic, the Orsea, kept Damien alive for two weeks.

Seven days beyond when Death typically arrived for the infected.

He never recovered, but the illness progressed slower with less pain.

Lord Bethan sent healers from the Pillar to observe her care routine. Refusal was not an option.

The Orsea was the magic of the Forest Speakers.

An ill-omen and said to be the cause of many woes, any youths who showed signs of it were executed by order of the crown.

Church officials insisted it was a sign of the enemy, the Ardeloks, and their false gods.

Killing those with the Orsea was a means of pulling out the rot of Ardelok influence before it spread.

Astoria kept her magic locked away, and she never, ever used it.

Outside of her mother, only Damien knew of her forbidden powers.

The only thing worse than the Orsea was harboring a user of it.

If she continued to use her Orsea under the watch of Lord Bethan’s healers, she would have sent her four younger sisters, her mother, and herself to the grave.

She couldn’t work her magic on Damien, and he died within a day.

In an effort to save one family, she killed the other.

Bastian nudged her knee, and she shook herself from the shame that burned like acid across her cheeks.

Astoria set the kettle down with trembling hands.

She sliced up some stale bread and scraped the last of the jam on them.

She took the meager spread to the table with a frown.

Astoria was an excellent hunter and an even better shot.

She loved hunting, spending the day in the forest and providing for her household.

She couldn’t remember the last time she ventured into the woods, and her stomach sank.

“I haven’t been to the market, or gone hunting.

I didn’t realize we were so low on everything. ”

“I’ll stop by on my way back from the Pillar in the morning. Don’t worry about it.” Blythe waved her hand dismissively.

“Please. Allow me to take care of this. It’s a long ride and you’ve been working hard. I…I want to get out of the house.” Astoria’s lie sounded every bit like one .

Blythe looked Astoria over. The faint holy light that always shimmered just below her skin undulated as she focused. “Fine, but by Her Light, if you get overwhelmed, come home. We can go together when I wake up if it is too much.”

“Alright.” Astoria had no plans of making Blythe add another thing to her task list. Not when the bags under her brown eyes grew so dark over the last few weeks.

Astoria could do one thing to ease the stress on Blythe’s shoulders, so she would.

No matter how many platitudes she needed to suffer through.

The two women ate and drank their tea in companionable silence, another sign of Blythe’s exhaustion. Astoria didn’t mind it. She was not alone. Alone in the dark, she had no distraction or release from the ache of all she lost.

When she finished her meal, Blythe stood and gave Astoria a quick hug. “I need to get back. If you still can’t sleep, come to the Pillar and I’ll get you another tincture, alright?”

“I will come if I need it.”

Blythe squeezed Astoria tight. “May Her Light protect you as you sleep.”

The warmth and sunlit glow of Soleil, the Goddess of Light, illuminated the dim house under Blythe’s prayer.

Divine magic rolled over Astoria’s skin in a wave as gentle as the kiss of a springtime bloom.

Blythe gave the blessing with the best of intentions, but the innate magic in Astoria’s blood recoiled.

Her palms burned and her heart thumped an unsteady rhythm as Blythe vanished in the frozen winter night.

Divine magic never eased Astoria. It brushed over her awareness with something distinctly Other. Something that existed beyond the planet of Mieotsy, and perhaps beyond human understanding. Astoria never looked too closely at her reaction. She didn’t believe she’d like the answers she found.

Bastian laid across her bare feet, the weight of him tethered her to solid ground as the waves of grief and loneliness pulled at her mind.

The frozen darkness of her small home fed the fears that shook her fingers.

Astoria gripped the still warm mug in her hands and breathed slow.

She willed her fingers to stop shaking, but they didn’t.

No amount of slow breathing or reverent prayers at the feet of Divine statues eased the grief or shame that she carried.

Astoria’s hiccuping cry came with all the warning and power of a lighting strike.

It shook her body like thunder and burned in her veins like fire.

Sobs tore from her throat, one after another, blurring her vision and filling the air with her pitiful whining.

Gods, how much longer will I feel like this?

Her friends, her family, and every priestess she spoke to swore all pain like this eased with time.

They swore she’d feel Soleil’s Light again, but never told her when or how.

She was supposed to find solace in knowing that her family awaited her in the Eternal Light, but it wasn’t enough.

Those dagger-sharp words hit her in the space between her ribs and bled her each time.

The Eternal Light was not in her arms. It was not what Fate promised her when she learned she carried life.

How was she meant to recover when part of her very soul died in her womb? How were those words enough when all she wanted was her baby? How could she heal her heart when it died with Damien?

Bastian pawed her thigh and nudged her arm.

Astoria lifted the fluffy creature into her arms and cried into his orange fur.

The tiny fox kit she found on her doorstep a month to the day after her daughter’s stillbirth was the only reason she didn’t follow her family into the grave.

He was someone who needed her, and he kept her company when Blythe could not. With Bastian, she was never alone.

Her crying eased, and she set Bastian on the ground and cleaned up the mess.

The task was small enough to not overwhelm her while giving her something to keep the shadowed thoughts at bay.

Outside the kitchen window, the trees reached up into the sky like skeletal fingers that danced with the frozen winter winds.

Though the trees slept, they still sang their songs.

Their melody faded into the background of Astoria’s mind, always present and always steady.

For the first time since she arrived in Gladeview, the tree’s song went from soft to shrill.

From her distance, she couldn’t place the meaning of the change.

Sometimes the trees grew startled when herds of deer moved through the wood, if a large predator made noise, or if someone lit a fire.

Any number of things could have changed their song.

Her heart skipped a beat and thrummed a foreboding melody against her breast. Bastian circled around her legs, his soft whine joining the chorus of the trees.

Her magic pushed and pulled at the seams of her body.

It tingled down her spine with a pins and needles sensation.

It danced all up and down her back the way it did when she changed her form.

She shifted twice in her life, in moments of great stress and outside of her control, but the feeling was not one she could forget.

Her long, sleepless night promised to end with a tug at her heavy eyelids from the tea.

Perhaps she needed sleep. Blythe always reminded her that the mind played tricks when the body needed rest. Astoria turned from the window and slipped back into bed.

Bastian followed behind her, but instead of curling into a small pile of fluff at her side, he sat on the end of the bed.

His ears turned and twisted with each howl of the wind.

The tree’s shrill song continued, growing louder and louder as she tossed and turned.

She glued her eyes shut and willed her body to still, calling to sleep like a prayer.

Like the gods, sleep never answered her.

If anything, her senses grew sharper and the heaviness on her eyelids vanished.

Blood rushed in her ears. Outside, the wind picked up speed and the strange charge made her skin itch all over.

The scent of fire, distant but too close for comfort, burned in her nose. She trembled with the strain of repressing her magic. Bastian leaped off the bed and barked loud and fast at Astoria. The danger clear in the sharp edge of his yips.

She rose from bed and pulled on her thickest robe and beat up slippers as she followed Bastian out to the main room of the house.

A distant red glow of the fire outside drew her eye.

Several burned near the Pillar of Light.

Astoria blinked, as if the action would make the fire vanish like a simple nightmare. It didn’t.

Astoria grabbed her pack off the coat rack and ran off into the night with Bastian at her heels.

Fire consumed the town square, several small buildings already engulfed in flames.

Thatch roofs caught like matches and the flames jumped from building to building and devoured all in their path.

Feminine screams and baby cries blared in her ears.

Then she heard it, dozens of voices that sang the same shrill song of the trees.

Ardeloks — the Folk of the Forest — stalked through her village with their arms raised.

The long, thin bodies of the Cosai danced on their spindly legs, their three-fingered hands branched outward to the sky. Round faces surrounded by petals scanned the horizon as they commanded the fire to their will. Behind the Cosai came the Rholctai.

Where the Cosai were thin, spindly creatures, the Rholctai were wide and thick.

Round, heavy feet rumbled the ground with each unified step they took.

Their long, meaty arms and tendril-like fingers wrapped around brutal weapons of war.

Spongy rings marked the base of their neck and glowed faintly in the dark.

Three small eyes sat in the center of their triangular heads, the only sign they had faces at all.

Large mushroom-like caps grew from the tops of their heads in an array of colors.

One of the Rholctai threw a spear and hit the village guardsman—Jerrod—with such force he flew into a wall of flame, then landed stuck in the frozen dirt.

His agonized, choking screams froze Astoria where she stood.

Her body shook and her heart jumped into her throat.

Each pulse tightened the grip fear had on her lungs and she choked on her cries.

The last war was still a recent ache to the long-lived monsters.

Humans won and laid claim to this land, but the Ardeloks seemed to want it back .

The magic that pricked against Astoria’s skin surged in a gleaming blast of green light. Her body changed in the green glow of her forbidden magic, turning her from a pale redheaded woman to a large red fox.

“Forest blooded witch!” Stacy, the village seamstress, screamed from behind her.

“A betrayer!” William, a priest, shouted.

“Who was that?”

“Doesn’t matter. They’ll show their face when we pierce their heart and give it to the gods in offering.”

Bastian barked at Astoria from the tree line on the other side of the fire. In her shifted form, she understood his noises as words that echoed in her mind. “ Run to me, sister! ”

She snapped out of her stunned state and followed the scent of Bastian through the flames.

The villagers screamed behind her in rage and pain as the Ardeloks pushed farther in.

None of the monsters paid any mind to the twin foxes underfoot, their eyes too focused on the prize of human flesh.

Shifting back would earn her, her sisters, and elderly mother a dagger in the heart.

There was nothing she could do for the village, her neighbors, or Blythe. Astoria did the only thing she could. She followed Bastian through the forest and never dared to look back at the life she ruined with a single slip of her control.