The Ink

Queen Elena

Northeast Border

THE ENCHANTMENTS

I stood in the sun and stared at the open rift in the veil that we had not yet mended since it was rendered yesterday.

It would be mended that night.

I saw the new day was gray again in Airen, and threatened rain.

I also saw the contingent of warriors guarding the fissure.

Not their side and our side.

Mingled.

Nadirii warriors in their battle tunics and leg casings and Airenzian soldiers in their black leather.

And last, I felt his approach.

Only when he stopped to stand at my side did I turn my head to look up at him.

“True,” I greeted.

“Ellie,” he replied.

We stared into each other’s eyes.

I suddenly knew not what to say, and I blamed this on the fact that the last time True and I stood under the sun in The Enchantments, we were in love and hoping against all the odds that we would find some way to live our love in a world where that wasn’t possible.

Not much time had passed, but much had happened in it.

I was still in love, as was he.

But not with each other.

True broke our silence, whispering, “I would take you in my arms, your losses this grave, this fresh, to assure you of my friendship and support, and yet I feel I cannot.”

“And now you know how I felt when you lost your mother.”

He turned his body to me, lifting his hand to run his knuckles along my cheek.

“True,” I whispered.

And then I was in his arms.

We held each other tight and it was again True who spoke first.

“Ophelia will be missed.”

“Mercy will be missed.”

“Jasmine was…well, Jasmine.”

A bubble of laughter surged up my throat and out my mouth, and I took my cheek from his shoulder to tip my head back and catch his gaze.

“She was Jasmine,” I agreed.

There was humor in his eyes, but it ebbed away before he said, “Tonight, during the ceremony, when it is released from its bounds down here, her spirit will restrengthen the veil that protects her sisters and she would be glad of that.”

“I…I…”

I could not believe I was about to say what I was about to say.

But in that moment, the concept of the “us and them” that had been so long was extinguished now, as our soldiers stood intermingled after two days of battle side by side.

As my heart was owned by their future king.

And his heart was owned by my sisters’ queen.

And for more reasons than the warmth and friendship I needed that I felt from his arms about me, I also needed True, the King of Wodell.

A man whose instincts and integrity I admired.

“I am thinking of not closing the rift…but creating two more.”

True stared down at me.