I nodded, relaxing. Jepati moved us both along a beam of ruby light, and we were deposited into the front yard of their gorgeous house. "We had a wing redone for you," Deloria said as she appeared next to us. “We hope you’ll like—"
"Can you show me how to travel like that?" I blurted out, my mind still on that way of moving about the land. At her startled expression, I winced. "Sorry, I have a habit of jumping in whenever I think of a question. It's rude, I know."
She waved me off. "No, sweetheart. Please always jump in. I've waited over twenty years to hear your voice. There's nothing you could do or say that would offend me."
Heat burned my eyeballs and ... she was going to make me cry. Fuck. I was not a crier. Nope, that shit was beaten out of me years ago.
My parents noticed me struggling for composure, and I could have hugged them when they didn't make a big deal about it. "The moment your power was unlocked, you connected to the power of our land," Jepati said. "But that’s only the beginning. There’s a special trial that all royals undertake, which allows the bond to grow deeper. You’ll connect to the heart of our land, and once you’ve done that, you’ll be able to travel and use power the same way we do."
“When will I be ready for this trial?”
I was slightly competitive and anything that required me to “win” always caught my attention.
Deloria chuckled. “Give yourself a few weeks to adjust and start using your power regularly. It feels very locked away at the moment. You must free it first; get comfortable using it.”
Ugh. Well, I guess that was fair. Up until this point, I’d used my energy when forced, but it never flowed about me freely like my parent’s seemed to do.
Life. Goals.
"So this wing," I said, "how about a tour of it and the rest of your house.”
"Your home," Deloria choked out.
Fuck, her soft heart must get broken a lot. She just put herself out there with no protective armor. My eyes flicked to my father who was watching her closely, and I wondered if he was her armor...
Time would tell.
I got the full tour. Their home was large but not as crazy as I would expect from royalty. It was warm and open and very minimalistic—fey were not like humans cluttering up their lives with objects to make them happy. My favorite part were natural springs out the back that were a perfect balmy temperature all year, even during the cold season.
"We're actually at the beginning of the cold season now," Jepati said, waving his hands toward the sky. “It’s always pinker during this cycle.”
"You can swim even when it snows,” Deloria told me.
"It snows here?"
They both nodded. "Hopefully you stay long enough to see it,” Deloria said with a smile. “It’s not like Earth, it’s not cold in the same way, but it’s very beautiful.”
Before I could assure her that I’d be here for much longer this time, she moved a few steps away from where we stood in the main foyer area under huge ruby lanterns.
She returned with a mirror in her hands. “You’re already changing by being here,” she told me, handing the mirror across.
Lifting it, my reflection was right there, and … I legitimately looked nothing like myself. My eyes were pinker than ever, threads of red cutting through the lighter color—it was the same shade as the mark glittering on my ring finger. Power swelled inside of me, responding to the changes, and instead of fighting against it as was my norm, I allowed it to flow up in a gentle arc.
“What in the…?”
A row of jeweled marks matching those on my hand spread across my forehead in swirls of red and silver, and they looked like a crown. The silvers held pigments that glittered when I moved, and the contrast against my dark skin was actually really beautiful.
“What does this mean?” I said, touching it.
“It means the land recognizes its princess,” my father replied.
I felt a swell of more power then, from both of my parents, and just like me, they wore marks across their skin. “Not all the jeweled royalty connect in the same way,” Deloria told me. “We wear our jewels quite closely, and you’ll find real ruby in all your marks and coloring.”