Gifts of Elysielle - Inner Origins Book Three

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

By the time we made it back to our hotel, I was ready for a run. We headed to our rooms to drop off our bags, agreeing to meet back in the lobby in fifteen minutes.

The second I arrived in my room, I knew it was going to take longer than that.

“What are you doing in here?” I asked, striding over to the couch by the window.

Lying back with his feet propped up on the arm, Alec lifted his arm off his face and opened one eye to peer at me lazily. One side of his mouth quirked up in a smile, activating the dimple in his left cheek and setting off a minor chain reaction in my belly of heat and fire.

“About time you showed up,” he drawled. “Where have you been?”

“Shopping, again. But look!” I said, shaking the bags above him in excitement. “We finally found everything I needed.”

He reached up lightning fast and pulled me down on top of him, sending the bags crashing to the floor around the couch.

Suddenly, we were nose to nose, green eyes twinkling up into gray. “I’m glad you found what you were looking for,” he said quietly.

“Me, too,” I smiled back at him, lowering my head to brush my lips against his. The slight touch flooded me with feelings of both yearning and completion, passion and comfort, and I sighed into his mouth as he pulled me closer. His chest rumbled and he deepened the kiss. As always when we touched, the surge slammed into me.

Not every fae would experience the surge in their lifetime, and some people thought it was just a myth, a fairy tale. When two fae were truly compatible, body and soul, that’s when the surge would come into play. As an earth fae, I could see the auras, the colorful energy field that surrounded all living beings. Fae auras were naturally bigger and brighter than humans, since we had more light contained in our bodies, keeping us healthy and giving us abilities and longer-than-average lifespans. But when two people had the surge, their auras expanded and grew towards each other. I’d seen it firsthand that night in Montreal, when Alec and I were dancing together. It was an amazingly beautiful sight, our auras swirling around each other and creating an energetic connection that allowed us to feel everything the other person was feeling. I liked to think of it as telempathy. I couldn’t hear Alec’s thoughts, but we had a level of connection that brought us closer than I’d ever imagined wanting to be to another person.

I wouldn’t have traded it for the world.

Right now, I could feel his satisfaction at just having me in his arms. I could feel how relieved and happy he was, being able to release the boredom and the worry.

Wait, what?

I pulled back and brushed his unruly black hair back from his forehead and stared at him, watching him to open his eyes.

“Why are you worried?” I asked.

Alec groaned.

“Aw, come on, no fair,” he protested. “Can’t I just enjoy you for a minute?”

“No,” I laughed, swatting him as I sat up next to him and he scooted over to make room. “What’s up?”

“Nothing, really.”

I raised an eyebrow at him.

“Yeah, okay, fine. We’re getting some weird reports from above below. The Dark have gone really quiet, which can’t be a good sign, and every facility we’ve hit lately has been cleared out before we get there. We don’t have any concrete news, just…I don’t know. Everyone is getting jittery with your Choosing coming up and no progress having been made on a cure for the anti-serum yet.”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” I huffed, the reminder bringing me down. Alec saw my mood shift and reached out to rub my arm, instantly lightening my mood as feel-good comfort vibes flowed through me. “Oh! I almost forgot, Claire and Amber are waiting for me in the lobby, we’re supposed to go running. You wanna join?”

“Of course,” Alec nodded. “You know I live to chase you.”

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to outrun you, even on my best day. It’s embarrassing.”

“True. But that doesn’t mean I don’t like watching you try.”

He leered at me and I laughed. “Alright, give me a minute to put this stuff away.”

I picked up the bags and stowed them in the closet, grabbing my sneakers and following Alec to the door. We headed back down the hall to the lobby and saw the girls waiting for us on the chairs by the door, Amber tapping her foot impatiently.

“Finally!” she said when she saw me. When she noticed Alec behind me she grinned. “Now I know what was taking you so long.”

I pretended to glare at her and she chuckled, flouncing away out the double doors. Claire rushed to join us and we all followed Amber outside.

“Same trail today?” I asked.

“No, I was chatting up the concierge and he mentioned another park on the other side of the city. He said it’s just ten minutes away by trolley.”

What Amber called a trolley I considered more of a monorail. It certainly didn’t remind me of the vintage trolleys I’d seen when visiting San Francisco. Made from the same golden alloy as the gravicycles and the buildings of Valhalla, Elysielle’s trolley system seemed to also be powered by a strange mix of gravity and fusion energy. The exquisitely delicate rail arched over the city’s main streets, aerodynamic cars whizzing underneath below the rail. The transportation system was as graceful and beautiful as it was fast.

We hopped onto one of the sleek machines and sped soundlessly over the city streets below. Even from above, the architecture of the city was stunning. The organically shaped constructions looked more like jeweled animals or beasts prowling below, sometimes nestling against one another in gentle companionship, other times surging towards each other in conflict. Nothing appeared out of place or incongruous, and it was clear that the artisans of Elysielle let no detail escape their notice. When they designed their homes and workspaces, they worked in concert with the environment around them. Even after several days in the city, I was constantly amazed by the beauty that surrounded me.

“Are all the cities in Aeden like this?” I whispered reverently as Alec’s arms came around me from behind.

“Nothing is quite like Elysielle,” he answered, understanding exactly what I’d meant as we watched the city speed by. “But most of them are more similar to here, than like Valhalla. The architects of Elysielle are highly sought after, and their work has helped shape all the cities in Aeden. Valhalla is different. The seven towers have stood since the beginning of time here on Earth. They have never changed.”

“Right. Mireia and Mialloch both told me that story. You really believe that those towers are all part of the original ship that brought the Ancients here when they fled their own star system? That it just decided one day to orbit our Sun, opened up, and the tree of life created Aeden’s sun and terraformed the entire planet?”

“It’s as good an explanation as any, don’t you think?”

“I guess,” I said doubtfully. “It’s just so…so far away from what most human religions talk about.”

“Well, maybe the ‘word’ of god was the word of the captain giving the ship the go ahead. Maybe seven days was really seven years, or seven hundred. But you know, there are so many legends above below that talk about how the earth was populated by star people, or people who climbed down from the skies. And even more legends about how the world was terraformed on the back of a turtle from the waters of the ocean. Did you know that under the world tree, under all of Valhalla, there is an entire hidden complex? Only the council is allowed down there, but we are taught in school that it is shaped like a bowl, that it is the base of the star ship that brought us here.”

“So?” I asked, not getting Alec’s point.

“The illustrations I’ve seen look a lot like a turtle shell flipped over on its back, even to the point of being armored in hexagonal gold plating shaped like scales.” He paused a beat, letting that sink in. “Anyway, that’s what the ship was supposedly like, a giant, thick cone, rounded on the bottom, pointy on the top. Each of the seven towers formed a piece of the cone’s shell, and housed the people journeying on the ship. All the points, wrapping together in a twisted spiral to point the way to our new home. To bring us here.”

He paused again, and then whispered quietly so that no one else would hear, “To bring you and me, here, to each other.”

I blushed, and wrapped my arms tightly around his, drawing him more tightly to my back. The trolley chimed in warning, letting us know that the final stop was approaching. Out the window, I could see this part of the city was sparsely populated, giving way to a vast forest at its gates.

“We’re here,” Amber announced as the car came to a stop and sank to the ground alongside a final golden trolley beam.

Alec and I separated, following the others outside. When I stepped onto the ground, the stairs retracted and doors slid closed behind me. The car rose soundlessly and sped off back towards the city, leaving us in a lush purple wood surrounded by towering trees. The air was cooler here, the ground shielded by the direct rays of the warm red sun above that never stopped shining.

“Great, now what? How are we going to get back to the city?” Claire groused. “I am so not running all that way.”

“Don’t sweat it,” Amber laughed, nudging her with her shoulder. “The trolley runs on an automated schedule. It comes back every fifteen to twenty minutes, according to the guy at the hotel.”

“Thank the gods,” said Claire, looking up at the sky in mock prayer.

“Right well, let’s go, no rest for the wicked.” Amber trotted off into the woods following a tiny trail into the shadows.

“As if,” Claire whined. “What about rest for the weary? Can I get some of that?”

She looked at me beseechingly and I just shook my head. “Come on, lazy bones. Let’s go.”

I grabbed her hand and dragged her with me after Amber, Alec following behind as usual. I tried not to think about him looking at my butt while I ran. Then I tried not to think about how much I’d rather be looking at his butt while he ran.

Finally, my brain quieted down. Claire and I settled into an easy, quiet rhythm. After a while Alec passed us and she looked at me with chagrin.

“You going to ditch me, too?”

“Not a chance. I’d never catch him, anyway.”

The terrain began to climb. For a while, we were silent. Our feet made hollow thuds against the deep forest loam and the red sunlight refracted in lilac rays through the leafy canopy above, turning our skin to pale shades of violet and mauve.

For all her talk about hating to run and exercise, Claire had been working really hard for the past few weeks. I think everything that had happened in Ireland and Vermont had really shaken her. More than once, she had made it clear that she didn’t ever want to be caught unprepared again. Today while we ran she practiced sending off small bolts of lightning towards the larger boulders. Or at least, she tried. Most of the time the sparks fizzled out just inches from her fingertips, and one time she just missed catching my hair on fire.

Finally, she collapsed onto a fallen tree trunk to catch her breath.

“Argh! I don’t get it. Why is this still so hard for me? The more I move around or the more dangerous the situation, the less I can control it.”

“You just need more practice Claire,” I tried to reassure her. “You’ll get there, you’ll see.”

Of course, I didn’t really know if that was true. But it sounded right, didn’t it?

“That’s not enough, Siri. I need to get it to work all the time. I need my power to be there for me when I need it. If I’d had it back in Falls Depot, Miko never would have died. I could have blasted Rowan before he ever tried to splash you with his goopy emo hate-bubble, and Miko would still be alive today.”

“You don’t know that. I thought I had it handled. If anyone misread the situation and messed things up, it was me, not you. I don’t think any of us were ready to believe that he’d really gone Dark. Only Miko understood what was happening.”

“I guess. Still, I wish I was doing better at this than I am.”

“Hey, we’re all under a lot of pressure right now. Use this time to relax. Stop thinking so much,” I shook her lightly, teasing her with a giggle.

She smiled at me and rolled her eyes. “Fine, let’s go see if we can hunt down Amber.”

Claire started to rise, then startled as something fell to the ground with a large thump behind me.

“Looking for us?” Amber grinned saucily, c*****g her head to one side as she placed a hand on her hip and Alec dropped silently from a tree behind her. “Come on Claire, let’s see if you can catch me.”

Claire groaned as Amber sped away, but she gave good chase and pounded off into the woods.

“How about me?” Alec started backing away into the wood. “Ready to try and catch me, too?”

“Oh, you are so on,” I warned him.

He took off and I clicked into parkour mode, seeking out the fastest way through the trees to reach him even as he drew away. It wasn’t going to be easy, but I was sure I could catch him this time.