Ariana's pov
The parchment paper with the image of the Avax Clara feels heavy in my pocket as we walk back to the palace. Will and I walk in silence. It's not a light, breathable silence but a tense one, where an unsaid apology lingers in the back of my mind. I should apologize for assuming the worst, but I can't. Something seems to have glued my mouth shut as I try to get my head around the fact that I really am Wills's mate.
I should be ecstatic and delighted over the fact that he's mine, but I'm not. I'm terrified of what it means. It only makes me believe that the prophecy my father had tried to make false may just come true.
Will is a king, and by being his mate, I will be his queen, giving me power that I should not be able to yield. The power that could make me the destroyer of our world.
All of a sudden, I feel my stomach drop, my heart stuttering in its beat as the palace comes into view, and I think of my father. I may loathe the man with all my guts for making my childhood miserable, but I understood his fear of me. He made sure I did.
I swallow hard before looking up at Will only to see him already looking, his face plastered with concern, his brows knitted together. His voice soft against my ears, "Are you alright?"
I shrug in response, scared of frightening him with my answer. He didn't need to know about my inner turmoil. He's about to say something, but I stop him with my quick goodbye. I leave before he can stop me. I needed time to understand that fate had meddled with my life again in the worst way possible.
By the time I'm inside the palace halls, I've pulled out the image of the Avax Clara from my pocket. It was beautiful with its golden petals and beautiful leaves. The image of the sickly little boy who needed it desperately flashed across my mind. I sigh, closing my eyes, my distasteful mind comparing little Jamie to Burty.
I stopped my mind from delving too much into it, for Jamie was nothing like Burty. Burty had gotten sick, but Jamie was born ill. He was an anomaly in nature, and nature would do its best to get rid of it to restore itself to equilibrium.
However, he was just a child. A child who had never done anything remotely wrong. A baby who had lost his father and had a mother who could only do so much for him. The Moon Goddess is cruel for giving his parents a baby that they wouldn't be able to keep.
Before I know it I'm making my way to the Royal library. I needed to research this Avax Clara. I needed to make sure that there was nothing I could do to help Jamie so that I could sleep a little easier tonight.
The Royal Library is breathtaking. Its ceiling is covered in glass to show the last glimmers of sunlight. Books neatly filed on shelves that seemed to be running for miles. The smell of sandalwood and new books is thick in the air. The Royal Library was majestic, but nothing in comparison to the Androstat Library at home. It hopefully contained enough information to satisfy my worries.
It takes me a while to find the books I want on healing and herbs, but once I do, I'm more than happy to go through the shelves that I find containing them. There are alot of them, and I doubt I will get through them all today.
The first few books I skim through are useless, with most of them being about autonomy, diseases, and herbs, which are for small wounds like cuts. It's almost midnight by the time I start finding books that mention the Avax Clara, and even in these books the information is scarce, with most detailing that the plant was only good at healing colds during rough winters.
The small amounts of information I find are terrifying. My stomach drops when I realize that the plant may be useless when it comes to healing Jamie. His parents where given told false information. My head pounds, my heart breaking at the thought. It would mean that Jamie's father died for nothing since there is no cure for his little boy.
My eyes sting with unshed tears as I look at the clock through my blurry vision. It was already two in the morning, and I still needed to cover a whole shelf of books, needing to take a break from reading and the growing pit of hopelessness in my stomach, I decided to get up to stretch my legs.
I walk around the library. My legs delighted at the increased blood flow. The library is mostly empty, with there being a few guards at its entrance and a maid who is currently dusting the shelves. They're all so quiet that I barely even notice them there.
At the very end of the library, I find an area draped with an emerald green carpet and bright red seating lined with plush cushions of every color in the spectrum, ranging from soft whites across to navy blues. The shelves contained just as many toys as they did books. It was the children's section. The vibrant colors made me smile. Whoever designed this part of the library loved their colors.
My smile only grows when I imagine Will and I's children crawling around here and learning to read.
I find myself skimming my index finger across the spines of the books in the section. They're all thick, with more drawings on their spines than words. I pull one out, it's green with large golden trees on it. Its title is in large bold handwriting. The words have the smile on my face disappearing.
The garden of spes.
I skim through the book, quickly realizing it's a legend about a garden that could kill the living and give life to the dead. My hands tremble when I find a line hinting that every plant known to man grows in this little place.
It's amazing, just as it's terrifying to now this may be right. That this garden, the same garden I had seen with my very eyes, could contain the Avax Clara. I shut the book and walked away. Refusing to believe what was in it. There was no way on Earth that could be true. It was too good to be true. But still. What if it was true? What if the Avax Clara can really heal Jamie?
Third Person pov
Holding onto the crippled old text showing the Avax Clara, Ariana walked through tall grasses looking for the mysterious garden of spes. It had been three days since she had first met Jamie and his mother, three days of haunting thoughts of a little boy dying at no fault of his own.
She knew that it was futile to find the Avax Clara in the Garden of Spes, but it was worth it knowing that not in a million years she would be allowed to go to the east mountains, especially after consolidating the idea that she was the king's mate. With the hope she had, she strolled through the evergreen land using the ropes of memory as a map for her passage through the forest.
It wasn't long till she found herself standing in front of the two pillars of the garden of spes. Taking a deep breath of hope, she stepped into the garden, her vision fogging the world spinning beneath her feet. A blinding sensation taking over her whole being, her senses going numb.
The fog in front of her eyes cleared slowly, her senses awakening again as she stood feeling paralyzed at what stood before her. She no longer stood on soft grasses but on a thick pedestal of snow, her feet freezing in her shoes at the sudden cold of the ice. How could this be possible Ariana thought to herself, it was summer only moments ago.
The trees around her were leafless, their branches covered in a vail of cold white crystallized snow, making them look like a sickly herd of corpses. Ariana could feel the blood freeze in her veins as they constricted to preserve her heat as she began to shiver.
She almost felt embarrassed at her body's reaction to the cold, wolves never shivered no matter the weather, and neither did their eyes ever water at the wintery breeze like hers did.
It was cold, so very cold, making Ariana wonder if all the plants had died off already as she headed off towards a small cliff in the distance. Maybe, she could still find the Avax Clara. The text did say that the plant only blossomed in the coldest depths of the Earth.
She nears the cliff, touching its surface to see if she could climb the rough landscape, her hand camouflaging with the ice that covered it, she could barely feel her hands it was as though they had detached themselves from her. Thinking it best not to climb the cliff, she turns to head off in the opposite direction, only stopping when she hears cracking.
Looking down her eyes widen seeing the cracks forming under her feet. Great, just great! She thought to herself. She was standing on ice.
Her mind scrambles inside her with nerves as she tries to lunge forward away from the cracks only for her foot to slip, plunging her into the bitter pool of hellish cold water. Her arms flay weakly at her sides as her body hits the cold water, her insides instantly freezing, her heartbeat increasing as she tries pulling herself out.
The water, however, begins to outweigh her as it soaks into her clothes, causing her to further sink into the pool of desolated frost, the glacial water biting into her lungs as it seeps in through her nose. She flays her arms around herself in hopes of catching onto something to pull herself back up and out of the water.
Just as she squirms underneath the weight of the water, she feels her fingers skim across the Arctic ice above her, causing her to push her legs as her hands grab onto it. Feeling a glimpse of hope, she latches onto it with both hands to hoist herself up only to stop when a blood-curling scream erupts from her throat as she is dragged back down into the dark depths of the water by a scally hand clawing at her ankle.
Her heart stops, her mind freezes as the air catches in her lungs, the pain of the claws almost shattering her insides as she withers in agony, her eyes move down to the hand, a sea serpent.It was a sea serpent, causing her to curse her God damn luck.
She felt the monster pulling her closer to its talons as its claws further pushed into the skin of her ankle, letting blood ooze out of her as she tried to get out of its venomous hold.Sea serpents were malicious predators whose touch was poisonous to the living flesh of land mammals. They could easily kill her, but she didn't want to die at least not yet. She still had to save little Jamie, watch him walk and run like the little pup he was, see the light in Jocelyn's eyes when she found out her son would live, and say sorry to Will for accusing him of wrongdoings.
Remembering that she still had to live, she trashes her body around swaying herself side to side to get rid of the serpent's hold. But it only tightened to the point it stopped the blood flow to her ankle, making her let out a silent shriek of pain. She didn't stop even though it pained her to do so till the serpent loosened its grip on her ankle allowing her to kick it in its loathsome shin as she pushes herself back on the ice, her lungs aching to catch onto the air.
Her moment of peace only lasts for a very short time when She feels the ice beneath her feet begin to shake as it cracks underneath, causing her to quickly wobble her way towards the trees where the serpent couldn't come, her gashed leg leaving a ghastly trail of crimson blood behind as she trips onto the feathery snow, her breathing coming out uneven.
"stupid snow, stupid thing," she mumbles out as she gets back up and limps towards the trees to get further away from the ice, her eyes widening in perplexity at what she sees, a trail of golden petaled flowers leading to a meadow filled with there heavenly hue.
She found it the Avax Clara.
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