Chapter 1

Isaac exhaled in frustration before picking up a stone and chucking it at the large boulders in front of him. They’d been at this a week and here was another dead end. The trail he’d been following with Shemnon, Hazel, and Dren stopped here, and they couldn’t find where it picked back up again.

He’d grown up tracking—was one of the best he knew at it, even among his current company. But the Cozars had rocky patches that went on for miles. Thelbrook Forest’s soft loamy soil had made his job easy his whole life. 

“Well, that’s it for the day,” Shemnon said, glancing at the setting sun. “Let’s get back to camp before it gets dark.” His stag form turned and led the way back, but his humanform stayed and rested a hand on Isaac’s shoulder. “We’ll find him.” 

Isaac looked up at the fit warrior, his paladin necklace of red, blue, and gold the same as what Isaac wore. Shemnon was everything he had imagined in the Paladins; grand in stature and demeanor—with unmatched prowess in battle. It was a dream come true to be working alongside him. 

So why did Isaac’s stomach feel like it had been punched a hundred times?

Hazel, next to them, pulled a metal knob out of her pocket and somehow fastened it to the air in front of her. A wooden door appeared, hints of rainbow light visible around its edges. She gestured toward the door. “Why don’t you head back and get some tea going? That will make us all feel better. I’ll walk the door back to camp.” 

Isaac hesitated, circling the boulders one more time in his hawkform, trying to catch something, anything, that he’d missed before. But there was nothing, and avoiding the walk back to camp sounded nice. He’d done nothing but scour the mountains for the last week and his legs begged him for a rest. His determination to find Tharyn had outlasted their complaints thus far, but he found the fear of failure creeping in as more and more time passed.

 Six days prior, Isaac had led the Paladins back to the camp where he, Vera, and Ace were prisoners. They approached warily, ready for combat, but found the camp abandoned. The rest of the Paladins set up camp there, but Hazel had continued to let Isaac, Ace, and Vera use her cottage. 

Shemnon squeezed his shoulder when Isaac didn’t respond to Hazel. “Rest is a good idea.” 

Isaac nodded and headed toward the door. A wave of smells hit Isaac as Hazel opened it, perfumy yet tart. He may have been able to identify some of them if he’d smelled them individually, but dozens of scents crowded together, pushing in on him like a mob trying to get through one of Morristowne’s gates. He found it ironic that he’d grown more accustomed to Hazel’s door than to her house’s smell. 

“I won’t be too long, dearie,” Hazel said as he stepped through the threshold. “But don’t start the tea quite yet. I like it hot.” She winked at him, waited a moment for his hawkform to fly in, and shut the door. 

Isaac took a deep breath, looking around at the dozens of plants, candles, and needleworks. He unstrapped his sword and hung it on the rung next to the door. Hazel had made it very clear how she felt about weapons in the house. 

It didn’t take long to deduce that no one else was in the place. It was only a small square dwelling, but he’d still hoped that Vera would pop up from beside the bed, picking up something she’d dropped. She always seemed to make things better. 

She’d probably just taken a walk or something, but Isaac didn’t know if he wanted to do any more of that today. He eyed the bedroll on the floor that he’d used for the last week. It practically called to him. 

As tempting as it was, Isaac turned and lifted the latch to the door out. He did want to see Vera. 

A strong breeze tossled the long grass surrounding the cottage. It carried the distinct, salty scent of the ocean. He breathed it in. Only a week and he’d already grown fond of the smell. He noted the sun, much higher in the sky than back in the Cozars near Morristowne, where he’d just been. Okay, maybe he wasn’t as used to the door as he thought. 

He walked through the grass to the cliff that looked out over the sea. He dove over it in his hawkform, letting gravity take him for a spell before pulling up. As he’d hoped, Vera sat on the beach below the ridge on which he stood, reading a scroll Hazel gave her about different parts of the body. A little ways away, Ace waded in the water with rolled-up pants, practicing pulling threads of water in and out of the ocean. 

When he flew past Vera in his hawkform, she turned, a small smile on her lips as she waved to his humanform. “Anything?” 

Her voice barely made it up the cliff, and he didn’t feel like shouting back, so he just shook his head. Her shoulders fell just a hair as she looked up at him. 

“Come down.” She gestured to the sand next to her. “Rest will be good.” 

Isaac looked back at the cottage. Hazel wanted tea, but quite frankly, he didn’t even know where she kept it. He’d be just as likely to poison them all with whatever he chose to dip into their water as he was to refresh them—and Hazel had asked ‌him not to start right away…

He started ‌down the path to the beach. 

Ace growled in frustration as the stream of water he’d pulled out of the ocean burst and fell. He smacked the water with his hands as if he were shoving it away. Apparently, the ebb and flow of the waves made using his bestowal difficult.

Isaac nearly laughed. Why was seeing Ace fail the one thing all day that made him feel just a little better? 

Whatever the reason, he wasn’t going to let the moment go without squeezing a little more out of it. “Just focus harder,” Isaac said sardonically, cupping his hands over his mouth. 

“On what?” Ace asked, turning toward him with a scowl. “If I focus on too much, I don’t move a thing, but then other times I focus on so little that I might as well go back to the creeks near camp.” 

Isaac nodded, pretending to understand as he walked closer. They’d been lucky Ace had been able to break the dam at Elsdon, a feat the locals, for some reason or other, didn’t find quite as heroic as he did. Ace had told them about the rocks within the walls of the dam and how that aided him in destroying the structure. It was almost as if Nature had prepared it for them long ago. 

Isaac shook his head in bewilderment as he approached Vera, who looked at him expectantly. “We’re so lucky to be alive. I still can’t get over it.” 

“You know how little luck has to do with it,” Vera said, patting the sand beside her. 

Isaac knew that she was implying that Nature had saved them. For some reason, that bothered him, even though he himself had just been thinking about how ironic it was that the rocks used for making the dam were the same stone that unlocked Ace’s power. 

“How are you so sure?” Isaac asked, sincerely wanting to know. 

Vera set down her scroll and looked at him with scrunched eyebrows. “What do you mean?” 

Isaac felt silly all of a sudden. “I honestly don’t know if anything more than luck helped us,” Isaac said after a while, looking at the sand.  

Vera kept her gaze on him, her furrowed brow increasing in intensity. “I don’t understand how you can feel that way. You see through FOUR eyes. You’re Bestowed. You have a reminder every waking second that Nature is there and exists.” 

“But how do you know some power out there is what made that happen?” Isaac asked, “Is it because some people in the past said so? What if that is just what happens naturally?” 

“Exactly,” Vera said with a slight smile. “It is natural because Nature willed it to be. Certainly the beliefs of people I trust and want to be like have influenced me, but that’s not how I’m sure. It’s knowledge, Isaac, just not of the mind. It’s knowledge in my soul. It’s a feeling that is confirmed when I see incredible things, like the pulsing fish in Thelbrook.”

 Isaac remembered thinking it was a miracle at the time, but now it just seemed a coincidence that they had discovered a new animal at a time they needed it. 

“What if those are just normal animals that are capable of things like that?” 

“Come on,” Vera said, her voice sounding like she had to tug him out of a hole. “There are no normal animals. Animals are the miracle. Us, our bodies, our brains. We are the miracle. Things don’t just happen. Manifestations don’t just grow to enormous sizes. Or do you see that happening every day?”

Isaac dropped his gaze, hiding from Vera’s eyes. He had no explanation for what had happened at the cliff. If there was someone or multiple someones in charge, why had they let his mom die, then? Or Val'tan? 

Furthermore, if Nature gave the manifestations and could transform his, why couldn’t they take them away from people like Mortagnan? It just didn’t make any sense. 

Vera watched his internal wrestle and spoke again. “Does your dad love you?”

Isaac turned. That was quite a switch of conversation. 

“Yeah,” he said slowly, not sure where she was going. “I mean, we don’t get all worked up about it, and we didn’t part on the best of terms, but he does.” What in the world did this have to do with Nature? 

“Prove it,” Vera said, poking him in the chest. Her finger pushed in just enough so that it almost hurt. The sudden turn in the conversation had him all turned about. 

“Well, he’s taken care of me my whole life…protected me, taught me.” 

“So, to love is taking care of something and protecting it? I do the same thing with plants,” Vera said. 

“You know what I mean,” Isaac said. “He cares. It’s not like with an object, you feel love.” 

“So you’re saying it’s a feeling then, probably a strong one.” 

“Ye—” Isaac stopped when he realized what Vera had just done. He tried to keep the frown on his face, but her victorious smile won him over. They’d been through a lot together these past few weeks, and she looked all the better for it.

“Looking at it from the other end makes even more sense,” Vera continued. “I know you love your father too, but you’ve never really taken care of him. You’ve helped him in the shop, but I doubt all blacksmith apprentices love their teachers. I don’t think I could pinpoint a single action or even a group of actions that proves you love him. Actions can and are faked or are done for different reasons, but love, real love, can’t be faked. You can feel when it’s real.” 

Isaac nodded his head slightly. He couldn’t prove he loved his father any more than she could prove Nature’s existence, and yet he knew his love for his father was real. That’s what she was getting at—a solid argument. It didn’t answer his questions really, but it felt right enough that he was able to lay the doubts aside for a moment. He didn’t know when he’d pick them up again, but for now, he smiled at Vera and thanked her. 

Isaac was ready to head back to Hazel’s place, but when he looked up, he noticed that Ace was no longer in front of them. He hadn’t seen the Cragmason leave, and the disappearance startled him a bit. 

As he turned around, he found himself hit with a face full of water. The cold shock shot through him and he reached for the sword that he’d taken off at Hazel’s. 

Ace burst into laughter. “Gotta be sharp around me.” 

Isaac brushed off some of the wet sand now clinging to the back ‌of his pants. Okay. They could not let this become a thing. 

Isaac looked over at Vera, who was equally soaked, and tilted his head toward Ace ever so slightly. 

Vera smiled, and they sprinted toward Ace, tackling him onto the sand. It took only a poke or two before Ace writhed in agonized laughter. The kid was very ticklish.  

A shout echoed down from the top of the cliff. “Vera. Isaac. Ace.” 

They stopped their torture and looked up to see Hazel shouting down and waving them back. 

“Come quickly!” 

All three of them took off up the trail that looped up and around to her cottage, a nervous anxiousness filling Isaac’s gut. He’d wanted something to happen for days, but was he ready now that it had? 

It took the group a few minutes to get to Hazel’s cottage. When they arrived, they saw the normal latch on the door, and they quickly lifted it and went inside. 

As soon as they entered, both Isaac and Vera stopped in their tracks, Ace bumping into their backs. 

There, seated at the table, was Father.