Frozen Tides (Falling Kingdoms 4)

THE FORBIDDEN MOUNTAINS

The closer Lucia came to the Forbidden Mountains, the more they started to resemble to her an arsenal of obsidian daggers slicing up into the gray sky. But she was accustomed to living amidst intimidating structures. After all, she had grown up in the cold, black Limerian palace.

She refused to be intimidated by the foreboding landscape around her. It would take a lot more than these so-called guardians to scare her away.

But that momentary recollection of her past, of the castle perched atop the cliffs where she’d lived for sixteen years, summoned an unfamiliar—and completely unwelcome—sensation in her.

Homesickness.

After so much time away from her home—first during her time in Auranos, and now on the road with Kyan—she’d finally become so weary that she found herself missing familiarities so banal as her own bed. She missed her attendants and the kind cook who always gave her an extra biscuit, a special treat just for her, with her breakfasts. She missed books, the collection she had at home and the incredible selection she’d only started to discover in the Auranian palace library. She missed her tutors, even the ones who taught the subjects she dreaded, especially drawing, which in Limeros was treated as more of a practical life skill than a fine art. Magnus was the artist in the family, not her.

She missed Magnus.

And most surprisingly of all, she missed her father.

She had to put them, put everything besides the task at hand, out of her mind. There would be no returning to her old life. She’d made her choice long ago, and now she had to stand by it.

Lucia concentrated instead on her surroundings as she and Kyan moved deeper into the mountains. It wasn’t all that cold here, but curiously, she still found herself shivering. She pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders.

Nothing grew here, no grass, no trees. No animals. No life.

No birds flew in the sky. No insects crawled across the dirt.

This was truly a wasteland.

“I don’t like it here,” Kyan said. “I think that wench from the inn was wrong. This isn’t a place of great elemental magic, this is a forgotten place of emptiness and death.”

Yes, she felt that too, but there was something about that emptiness, that stillness and lack of life, that compelled her as much as it concerned her.

Paelsia had wasted away over the generations, had become barren, dry, no longer able to sustain life at a prosperous rate. Some people said it was a cursed land—the same people who claimed that Limeros, too, was cursed, with its seemingly endless snow and ice. But Lucia knew the truth, that these extreme environmental shifts were due to the missing Kindred.

The Kindred made life itself possible. She didn’t understand exactly how they did this, especially now that she knew Kyan had been released from his crystal in the form of a young man who’d become part of her new family. But he wasn’t just an extraordinary young man; he was fire elementia. Pure fire elementia that could speak, breathe, eat, hate, need, love, and hope. And his Kindred siblings were just like him. Earth magic, air magic, water magic—all real, living beings, trapped inside their crystal cages.

Without these four exceptional siblings, there would be no life.

The entire world would be just as it was here in the Forbidden Mountains.

They’d only been exploring for a short time, but this stark environment had already begun to affect her mood. When they first trekked into the mountain range, she’d felt optimistic, so sure they were on the brink of finding the answers they sought, so ready to help Kyan gain his ultimate freedom and vanquish the immortal trying to control his fate.

But now, completely surrounded by dark, jagged mountains, with no flat land or villages in sight, all she felt was sad and tired and very alone.

She rested her hand against her flat belly. If this barren bleakness were to spread further out into Mytica, vanquishing all the life it touched, her child wouldn’t have a future.

Death would be all that awaited the living being within her.

Luckily, one of the Kindred had been awakened. Soon, his siblings would join him and walk the earth. It was only a matter of time before the balance that had been lost over the last millennium would be restored.

The sun began to set and, with the growing darkness, it became much cooler. She didn’t relish spending the night in this place. She and Kyan conjured torchlike flames as they walked, to light their way but also to reassure themselves that their magic remained strong. Sera had mentioned that witches and exiled Watchers couldn’t access their elementia here, but that didn’t seem to be the case for a sorceress and a god.

Perhaps the Guardians—the name Lucia had adopted for the black mountains surrounding them, watching them—had the power to drain Watcher magic, just as Lucia had drained Melenia’s.

“Lucia,” Kyan said after a time. “I suddenly have a very good feeling that we’ve finally arrived exactly where we need to be.”

They’d come upon a small valley of black rock and dirt, at the center of which lay what looked like a garden.

They rushed over to the garden, which had a circumference of perhaps thirty paces. Soft green grass, colorful daisies and roses, olive trees. In the center of the garden was a large moss-covered rock as tall and wide as two of the stone wheels they’d previously found stacked atop each other.

Lucia gasped, taking in this small patch of beauty. “Do you feel anything?” Lucia asked. “Any magic?”