Page 70 of Kingdom of Spirits
She is strong,Ragewing said.
There is no solution. Ophelia was clear about that. As was Trevain.
As though Marius had summoned him with his silent words to Ragewing, the ghost appeared over Tahlia’s inert body. His golden glow illuminated the hollows of her cheeks. She already appeared thinner.
Marius sat Fara on a fallen tree and tucked the cloak tightly around her.
“Can he help her?” Fara asked, her voice raw and rough.
Marius looked in the direction she gazed. She meant Trevain. “I don’t know. I’ll talk to him.”
“Tahlia really likes him. Be nice.”
“I’ve been nice. I just don’t trust him because he has no reason to be helping us. Also, I thought he would be trapped in the Kingdom of Spirits. I wonder why he is here and how he managed it.”
“Have you ever noticed how much his eyes look like hers?” Fara asked, tilting her head.
Marius left Fara and knelt near Tahlia. Trevain floated beside him. He did have a similar set to his eyes.
“Trevain, can you help her? You know what happened, don’t you?”
“I do. I will do what I can to keep her in the realm of the living. I will push her spirit, nudge her, so to speak, with my soul.”
“Why?”
“She is my descendant.”
Marius’s mouth fell open. “Did you always know?”
Trevain shook his head, his horns glittering slightly within their own ghostly light. “I had begun to guess, but… I returned to the realm between worlds and saw the truth there. Mother Twilight guided me. Her mother came from my line.”
So that was why Mother Twilight had met with them. Tahlia was one of her own.
“Before you knew that,” Marius said, “you were helping us because…”
“Because you aren’t evil. The varjuline are. Katk is. It had been ages since I’d seen anyone not of evil spirit in our lands. Aside from a few others like me, of course. Also, I was dreadfully bored.”
Marius huffed, tilted his head, and nodded. “Well, I’ll take any help you can give. I don’t see how my dragon will manage to get us back to the order’s castle before Katk arrives there and kills them all.”
Trevain leaned close to Tahlia’s face, his gaze touching her forehead, her throat. He pressed his hand to his chest and then to Tahlia’s. Light blinked brightly around his ghostly fingertips. “Oh, you won’t be alone. The goddess’s belt has called Tahlia’s own to her. Look now,” he said, still eyeing Tahlia.
Marius turned to see a thunder of dragons cresting the next peak, their wings dark slashes against the lightening sky.
Chapter 30
Marius
He stood so quickly that his head spun.
The order was here.
His chest tightened, then relaxed, and he let out a sigh. Mother Twilight’s weaving had somehow called the other riders.
“Tahlia already sees the other riders as her family,” Trevain said from where he hovered above Tahlia. “Like Fara and her dragon. And you, of course.”
Marius stared while Fara hurried to Tahlia’s side. Tears silvered her purple cheeks as she took Tahlia’s hand. Trevain bobbed in the air beside Fara while she plucked small yellow flowers and mashed them in her palm. Did Fara have Healer training?
Ragewing lifted his head as the order landed one by one, only some of them fitting into the clearing while the rest maneuvered into the edges of the pines that ringed the area.