It seems wrong to be going to Sylva. The memories harbored in these stark woods haunted her for weeks, months. Images flashed across her closed eyes like lightning, replaying that could have been and what truly happened. Her body quaked then everything went black. Where he had touched her burned like liquid fire, melting through her skin and seeping into her veins, painful, agonizing.
It awakens that subdued creature inside of her, the one that she tethered to the dark crevices of her soul when she last left these shadowed woods.
In reality, her visit has a purpose: to advise of political ties. She needs to update her subkingdom on their diplomacy and to see for herself how they are surviving under the watchful eye of the faeries. This is what she tells herself, but Nayl also understands how precarious this venture may become, as it always becomes. The beat of her heart thunders against her chest. She isn’t afraid, is she? She can’t help but question the storm of emotions that are sinking rusty nails into her thoughts, poisoning her. Anger, excitement, elation, dread, hesitation. To claim only one is impossible. Each corner of her mind – and heart – are screaming and rattling their cages. In reality, she doesn’t know how to think or how to feel, but she is here.
During her musings, Nayl traversed across sand dunes and grassy hills and barren plains until arriving here. The trees tower high above her and she shudders as an autumn breeze whispers across her skin the instant she steps into the shadows.
But, of course, she doesn’t stop there.
This is one of two subkingdoms – her subkingdoms – forged by friends and trustees. Her relations are spreading their hands across Beqanna slowly, taking more influence and a stronger grasp on this renovated world. It electrifies her and empowers her, and so she doesn’t stop at the edge of this second home. Instead, she ventures far deeper than she had before. This time, she follows the pungent odor that she had nearly forgotten. Djinni had visited her in Nerine, but there was still the matter of Stillwater whose water wasn’t actually very still during the previous breeding season.
His cave looms ahead and she can hear the faint drip… drop of water against the pool’s surface. She doesn’t step in. She stops yards away from the mouth as it yawns open for her, luring her into more mistakes and regrets.
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