Violet

"This is so peaceful."

Bei looked up from the small leather-bound journal she had been scribbling in, her pencil pausing mid-stroke.

"It really is," she agreed, her eyes sweeping across our surroundings with the same wonder I felt.

We had stumbled upon this place purely by accident, and I was so glad we did.

A massive stone arch curved overhead, so enormous it could have sheltered an entire house beneath it. The rock was dark and streaked with silver veins that strangely glittered where the sunlight touched them. Hanging vines and moss clung to its surface, trailing down in green curtains.

Beyond the arch, the land opened into something like a hidden garden.

Flowering trees dotted the space, their branches heavy with blossoms in shades of pink and magenta and deep purple. Low bushes carpeted the ground, bursting with clusters of small violet flowers. A pale sandy path wound through it all, curving gently between the greenery and disappearing into the distance where more towering rock formations rose against the sky.

The light was soft here, filtered through the canopy of leaves and the curve of the arch above, while casting everything in a warm golden glow.

It felt like stepping into a dream.

When we had decided to pause here, Bei had immediately pulled out one of her journals. She had been sketching furiously ever since, her pencil moving across the page in quick, confident strokes as she tried to capture the impossible beauty around us.

"I have never seen anything like this," she murmured, not looking up from her work. "The flowers alone... I don’t recognize half of these species..."

She trailed off, shaking her head in quiet amazement.

I smiled faintly, watching her work. It was nice to have her absorbed and not worried about me for once.

The past week and a half had been... strange.

Good strange, mostly. But strange nonetheless.

We had fallen into an easy rhythm. Walking a lot of the time, riding her wolf form and resting when we needed to. We would talk when conversation came naturally and sit in comfortable silence when it didn’t. She had tried to bring up Rowan and Kael a few times in the early days, but I had asked her not to.

I really didn’t want to bother myself too much about it, and I had been glad she had respected my wishes at least to not talk about them.

I just wanted this time to myself, and to also explore what was out there.

Now I wandered along the sandy path, my fingers trailing across the soft petals of a flowering bush as I passed. The pink blossoms were cool against my skin, slightly damp with moisture from an earlier rain.

The places we had travelled through to get here had grown stranger as we advanced. The familiar forests had given way to rockier terrain, then to landscapes I had no names for. Unusual plants, unfamiliar animals, and formations of stone that seemed to belong to a different world entirely.

And no Rowan to explain them to me...

I quickly brushed off the thought.

That came out of nowhere.

I glanced back at Bei.

She had been fascinated by nearly every single thing, her journal filling with sketches and notes as we went. She had confessed early on that she hadn’t had a chance to see many places. She had been under the influence of Rowan’s ability while traveling to Silverwood, and so the journey to his nation had passed in a blur she could barely recall.

She had mentioned wanting to remember this time.

I had even told her about the willow trees at some point only for the memory of Rowan and I then resurfacing.

Even now, I felt the heat creep into my face.

I remember how his mouth had—

I shook my head sharply, pushing the memory away.

I paused beside a tree with deep magenta blossoms, tilting my head back to look up at the horizon.

The pull hummed steadily in my chest.

It wasn’t entirely intensifying, but just faintly, I could feel we were getting closer.

I touched my grandmother’s pendant through my shirt, feeling its familiar weight against my skin.

Despite everything, I felt calm.

A lot calmer than I had in months, possibly longer. The constant tension I had carried for so long had eased somewhere along the way, loosening its grip on my shoulders and my chest. I could breathe here and think.

We had been very careful along the road, and I had strained my syzygy even more, expanding my skill as we moved by being constantly aware of our environment across a wide range.

And Bei was a very impressive tracker.

We would be alright as long as we were safe.

I missed Rowan...

The realization had crept up on me gradually over the past days, surfacing in quiet moments when my guard was down.

And the thing that surprised me most was that it was him I thought of first, not even Kael this time which frustrated me a bit if I was being honest.

I hoped he would forgive me for leaving the way I did and I hoped the note had been enough to explain, even though no writing could truly capture everything I had been feeling.

I moved back to join Bei, watching her scribble away. We would soon have to find another place to camp. I would have loved to do it here, but this space was out in the open. It would leave us exposed.

I settled onto a nearby boulder, tucking my knees to my chest, and watched Bei write in front of me. The golden light shifted overhead, illuminating a cluster of violet flowers until they seemed to glow from within.

For the first time in longer than I could remember, I wasn’t just running from anything. I was walking toward something. And whatever waited at the end of this pull, whatever answers I might find, I would face them as myself.

Not as Kael’s mate or Rowan’s, but as me.

It really was peaceful here. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

I closed my eyes and let myself breathe.