Chapter 67 A JOURNEY TO THE PAST

Chapter 67 A JOURNEY TO THE PAST

HAVEN

The relic chamber fades around me the moment Imogen completes the memory-weaving spell. One second I am kneeling on cold stone with my mother’s glowing form across from me; the next the world dissolves into soft golden light and the scent of wildflowers. When my vision clears, I am standing barefoot in the middle of endless rolling plains.

Vaeleria.

The grass beneath my feet is impossibly soft, swaying in a gentle breeze that carries the faint sweetness of blooming star-lilies. In the distance, snow-capped mountains kiss a sky painted in hues of rose and lavender—the eternal sunset my mother once described in bedtime stories. This is not a memory of ruin or war. This is Vaeleria as it was before everything broke. Pure. Alive. Hers.

I take a shaky breath and turn in a slow circle. My mother’s presence hovers at the edge of my mind like a warm hand on my shoulder. This is the beginning, she whispers through our link, her voice soft with nostalgia. The plains where I first learned to fly. Walk forward, my brave girl. The palace lies ahead.

I start walking. The grass tickles my ankles. Butterflies with wings of living light flutter past. Every step feels both real and dreamlike, as if the ground might dissolve if I press too hard. Inner thoughts swirl in a quiet storm: This is her sanctuary. The place she retreated to when the world outside became too cruel. I have to remember that none of this is solid. I cannot lose myself here.

The palace rises on the horizon like something out of a fae tale—towers of white marble veined with rose quartz, balconies draped in flowering vines, banners of silver and gold rippling in the wind. As I draw closer, the grand doors swing open on their own, inviting me inside. I step over the threshold and the air changes. It grows heavier, laced with the scent of old books, jasmine incense, and something sharper—pain.

The first memory hits me without warning.

I stand in a lavish bedchamber. My mother’s body moves, but I am only a passenger inside her skin. She watches from the shadows as Eurolys, tall, dark-haired, radiating dangerous charisma—laughs with her younger sister on the enormous silk-covered bed. His hands roam freely over her sister’s body while he murmurs endearments that were once meant for my mother. The sister giggles, arching into his touch, completely unaware or uncaring of the woman watching from the doorway.

The heartache is immediate and crushing. It floods my chest like ice water. I feel every ounce of my mother’s humiliation, the sharp sting of betrayal that never dulls no matter how many times she witnesses it. He does this every day, her voice echoes inside me, raw and exhausted. He parades her in front of me like a prize, then treats me like I am less than the dirt beneath his boots. “You are too soft, Athalia,” he says. “Too weak for a queen.”

I want to scream at him, to rip him away from her sister, but I am only an observer. The memory shifts before I can catch my breath.

Now I am in the throne room. Eurolys sits on the high seat, my mother standing beside him like a decorative ornament. He publicly mocks her decisions in front of the court, calling her ideas “childish dreams” while praising her sister’s sharp tongue and “realistic” cruelty. Every cutting word lands like a physical blow. I feel the way my mother’s heart fractures a little more each time—how she smiles through it, how she tells herself it is temporary, how she still loves him despite the poison he pours into her soul.

What the actual fuck!

She's Vaeleria’s queen. What gives him the right to sit on that throne and make decisions like he owns the place.

Tears burn my eyes as the memory dissolves and another takes its place. Days blur into weeks inside her mind. I endure the quiet nights when she cries alone in the gardens after he leaves her bed untouched for weeks. I feel the hollow ache when he throws her favorite books into the fire because “a queen should not waste time on silly stories.” I live through the moment she discovers she is pregnant with me and he reacts with indifference, saying a child will only make her weaker.

Each memory chips away at me. The emotional weight is suffocating. I stumble through corridors of light and shadow, my own heart aching in sympathy. How did she survive this? I think, wiping tears from my cheeks. How did she still find the strength to seal him away and protect everyone else?

Because I had something worth protecting, my mother answers gently through the link. You. The fae people. The future I refused to let him destroy.

I push forward, deeper into the palace of memories. Time stretches strangely here—hours feel like minutes, or perhaps the opposite. My legs grow tired. My chest feels bruised from the constant barrage of her old pain. I search every room: the sunlit libraries filled with floating tomes, the music halls where she once danced alone, the hidden alcoves where she whispered spells of protection over her unborn child.

I come across when he fell ill and she is told by some scheming priest that the only way to save him is to use the forbidden magic.

Nothing feels like the Library of Lost Souls.

I am about to sink to my knees in exhaustion when I notice a small, unassuming door at the end of a long hallway lined with portraits of smiling fae ancestors. The door is plain wood, slightly ajar, as if someone left it that way on purpose. I push it open and step into a cozy reading nook bathed in warm afternoon light.

There, on a low table beside a velvet chaise, lies a single book.

It is bound in soft rose leather, embossed with silver vines that seem to move when I am not looking directly at them. The title is written in elegant script: Whispers of the Eternal Bloom. My mother’s favorite book—the one she read to me in dreams when I was small, the one she quoted when she needed courage.

It clicks.

No one would search for a library inside a book.

My breath catches. I reach out with trembling fingers and lift the cover. Golden light spills from the pages, brighter than anything I have seen in this realm. Pages flutter open on their own, revealing not printed words but living scenes—gardens that stretch into infinity, shelves upon shelves of glowing souls, flowers blooming in every color of starlight. The Library. Hidden not in Euron, not in some distant fracture, but right here—disguised as her most cherished story so that only someone who truly knew her heart could find it.

You found it, my mother whispers, her voice filled with quiet awe and relief. My brave, clever girl.

I stare at the open book, heart pounding with triumph and terror. The entrance waits inside those glowing pages. All I have to do is step through.

But as I lean closer, ready to cross the threshold, a distant rumble shakes the memory palace. Dark shadows flicker at the edges of the light—Eurolys’s corruption, reaching even here.

Time is running out.

I take one last steadying breath and place my hand on the open page.

“I am ready,” I say aloud, voice steady despite the fear clawing at my throat. “Take me inside the Library, Mother. Let us find you and our people.”

The light surges upward, swallowing me whole.

And the true search begins...