Page 124 of Revealing Fate

“Into the past.”

It certainly felt that way. They weren’t following any discernible path. There wasn’t one. If Felíne had been concerned about losing her way between Kal’s cabin and the glen where Kal trained, she was terrified now. Here, she could wander for eons and never find her way out of this labyrinth of colossuses.

Felíne looked up into a ceiling of amber and green. The plants were so tightly woven in some places that their boughs seemed to insulate the forest floor from sunlight entirely. It was impossible to know what time it was without a visible sky. When she asked, Kal seemed confident it was afternoon. How he knew, she had no idea. Felíne did not possess whatever internal mechanism advised him. So, she followed, trusting Kal’s instincts over her lack thereof.

Without warning, the mass of trees and spongy underbrush stopped. The shadows cast by the dense treetops surrendered to a cheerful sun. Kal led Felíne into a breathtaking clearing. She looked around and was surprised to find the trees didn’t just stop. Their imposing canopies almost appeared sheared off, as though they grew against an invisible barrier that forced their trajectories along its boundary. Not a single wayward limb extended past the unseen line of demarcation. The one she and Kal had heedlessly stepped over.

Ahead of them, waist-high grass swept forward, waving serenely like a pale green sea in the gentle breeze. Beyond the grass, a large hill sloped upward, its flank dotted with blood red blossoms, disappearing into a high plateau. Crumbling stones jutted from the hill’s base and flank, winding up and around in a jagged line. The sound of water trickling punctuated the sighing of the wind, though Felíne couldn’t identify its source.

Strands of hair had been pulled loose from the low bun holding her mass of waves, and they blew into her face. A sudden, unexpected chill swept through her. Gooseflesh rose on her bare forearms. An ominous sensation settled upon her despite the picturesque landscape, an odd feeling of déjà vu. Something had happened here. Something painful. Something wrong.

Felíne glanced again at the oddly growing trees that hemmed the glade. Whatever memories this clearing harbored, even the forest declined to intrude.

“What is this?”

Kal looked down at her, and she startled. He stood in first form, skin warm, expression calm. But his eyes were not the black of a midnight cove, offering Felíne the occasional twinkle of buried treasure. They were solid gold.

“I feel it, too,” he said in answer to her question. “My second form is restless here. It wants out.”

“It?”

He shrugged, grinning. The familiar gesture helped settle Felíne’s fraying nerves. “It’s not a separate entity,” Kal clarified. “I just mean I have this urge to shift. To run and roar and disappear into the wild. To give my humanity over to my instincts.”

Felíne gripped his hand tightly. “Please don’t do that.”

He squeezed back. “I won’t. Come on.”

“Kal,” she warned. “Are you sure…”

“Yes,” he replied, somehow intuiting what she did not say.

They made their way through the tall grass, Felíne trusting that Kal would sense any hidden threat long before it dragged her under the undulating stalks. As they neared the hill, she realized the stones she’d spied protruding from its side were the weathered remains of a once enchanting stairway. The steps looked older than the forest, their carved designs faded by time and neglect. They crumbled now, but Felíne could tell they’d been intentionally, lovingly laid by whoever originally used them. How long had they waited for another traveler’s curious soles? A hundred years? Five hundred? She stepped onto the first wide lichen-covered stone.

A flash of what could have been a memory from another life ignited in her mind’s eye. Felíne saw an inhuman beauty. Flowing hair that glowed like the sun’s rays. A radiant smile. Moonbeam eyes. Delicate, pale fingers reaching back to grasp a huge, black, clawed hand.

She felt love. Knew love. So overwhelming, so complete, it stole her breath.

Before Felíne’s conscious mind could claw back to the present, her feet were climbing. She was being pulled. Compelled. Kal trailed her, his golden eyes transfixed, his large body shadowing each step.

They traveled the stone path, ascending and winding around one side. A stream, the source of the trickling water Felíne had heard, cut through the hillside to join their trail in parallel. Tiny, silvery fish darted through the water. Reedy horsetails jutted from the bank alongside strange vermillion blooms. Lillies floated on the surface of the bubbling runnel. A brilliantly speckled frog leapt into the shallows as they passed.

Kal stopped Felíne with a hand on her forearm. She glanced back, charmed.

The severity of his gilded gaze tempered some of her thrall.

“Felíne,” he breathed. Her lips parted at the sound of her name spoken in his rich timbre, but he wasn’t looking at her. “The brook.”

Felíne forced her eyes back to the stream. “It’s lovely, isn’t it?”

“It’s going the wrong way.”

She frowned. Then gaped. He was right. The water should have been flowing downhill. It wasn’t. It was flowing up.

Impossible.

Felíne searched the path ahead of them. The stone stairway and the aberrant creek disappeared around a final bend. “Kalevar,” she asked, “what is up there?”

He turned wide, lambent eyes on her. “I don’t know. I’ve never been beyond the grass.”