บททั้งหมดของ A Date with the Future: บทที่ 51 - บทที่ 58

The visit to the Hollow settlement, when it finally came together three weeks later, carried none of the careful, tactical planning that had accompanied their first approach to this same village nearly a year before, and Elena found the difference considerably more moving than she'd expected: no scouting party positioned at a careful distance, no contingency plans layered against unknown danger, simply a small group of friends riding together toward a place that had, through everything this past year had demanded, become something considerably closer to an ally than an enemy.Wren met them at the settlement's edge, considerably more composed in person than her careful, formal letter had suggested, though the particular nervous energy of someone meeting people she'd only known through her mother's stories was evident in the quick, searching way she studied both Elena and Damon."You're exactly like my mother described," she said, finally, something like relief easing the tension from h

Thale spoke for the better part of three hours, and Elena found herself, listening to him describe a civilization she'd never once suspected existed beyond her own world's careful borders, torn between fascination and a wariness she couldn't quite set aside no matter how patiently he answered every question she and Damon put to him."The Dominion was founded eleven centuries ago," Thale said, accepting the tea Selene had quietly provided partway through the conversation, "by a handful of wolf and vampire lines who fled what was, by all our own records, a war considerably more brutal than the one that eventually necessitated your own Council's founding. They crossed the northern mountains seeking simply to survive, and found, on the far side, land empty enough that no one contested their claim to it. Over time, isolated from the conflicts that continued to define your own territories, those founding lines began to intermarry rather than simply cohabit.""And the mixing was successful,"

The first month of travel carried them through territory Elena had at least seen mapped, however roughly, on the Council's own charts: the northern borderlands beyond even the unclaimed wilderness where the Hollow Keep had once stood, forest giving way gradually to harder, colder country that made her grateful for every layer of Selene's carefully planned provisions."You handle the cold better than I expected," Thale observed, riding beside her on the fourth week, watching her adjust her cloak against a wind that had grown sharper with every day's northward progress. "Most in your territories speak of these mountains as though they mark the edge of anything survivable.""Wolves run warmer than most," Elena said. "Though I confess, this is colder than anything I've experienced even on the harshest winter patrol.""It grows colder still, before it grows warmer again," Thale said, something almost fond entering his careful voice. "The mountains themselves mark a considerable barrier, pa

The Dominion's ruling council received them in a chamber that made Damon's own black marble hall look, by comparison, almost modest: a vast, circular room built into Voss'mir's central spire, its walls carved with a continuous relief depicting what Elena gradually understood to be the Dominion's entire eleven-century history, wolf and vampire figures intertwined throughout in patterns that told a story considerably more unified than anything her own territories' history could claim."Elena and Damon Ashgrove," Thale announced, formal in a way he'd rarely been throughout their two months of travel together, "of the Council of Both Bloods, come to verify what I carried to your borders."The council itself, arranged in a wide arc facing the chamber's entrance, numbered considerably more than Elena had expected, perhaps twenty figures ranging from what appeared to be genuine elder statesmen to surprisingly young representatives, all bearing, in varying degrees, the particu