I stood at my window, a film of terror cold on my skin, chilled as the windowpane I pressed my fingertips to as I looked to the cliffs where a storm had begun to build. Mother had succeeded in forcing me to bathe, and even got me to drink some tea and lie down. Despite everything churning in my mind, I’d somehow fallen asleep much quicker than I’d believed possible. Until I’d finally woken, my tongue thick in my mouth and my head groggy.
She’d drugged me.
But not even that had been strong enough to fight off the demons in my mind for long. Once I’d woken, I’d gone to the window, hoping the cold would help shake the fuzziness from my mind. Outside, I saw the men digging the hole where my grandfather would be buried.
In a mere day and a half, I’d gone from thinking I’d been abandoned by my father and that my sister was lost to me forever, to having my sister and father returned to me, gaining a grandfather and then losing him, and nearly losing my own life. I wanted to grieve him, but didn’t know how. How did one mourn a person they had never known—had never even thought to wonder about—but who was family by blood if not knowledge?
Killed by Halvor’s uncle.
Killed by my power. Stolen by the jakla.
As I watched, lightning tore across the distant sky, raking across the dark cliffs on the horizon. I wanted to rip myself apart and force the lightning inside me, putting myself back together somehow, someway.
A miracle, Sachiel had said, and she was right. But I didn’t want to be a miracle. I wanted to be me. The me I’d always been before the last day and a half.
My cheeks were wet when the darkness slammed into me again, with no warning other than a flash of ice across my already-cold skin. I vaguely heard the skritch of my nails dragging down the windowpane as I tried to grasp something, anything, to keep myself present, but there was no stopping the onslaught.
A boy lugging a huge book over to the man with the heavy, bearded jowls and glowing eyes. “This is from our true home, Barloc. There are those who believe books have no value, but they don’t realize how many secrets one can hide in plain sight in a book.”
A young man walked into his office in the library while he was poring over his latest find, a very rare Paladin book that a fellow enthusiast had procured for him. The young man, his nephew, who was as lost and broken as he once had been, came over to him, his hazel eyes dull with grief, his brown hair too long, too unkempt.
“It’s time I taught you something,” he said to the boy. “Something that was a secret just between your grandfather and me.”
“A secret?” he asked, looking up, the first inkling of light entering his eyes since his mother had passed on to meet her husband in the Light.
“You like learning about other places, don’t you, Halvor? You enjoyed sailing with your parents.” Halvor nodded, cautiously interested. “I may not be able to take you sailing, but I can teach you about a whole other world—an entirely different people with power in their very veins. Power like you can’t imagine.”
“Really?” Halvor’s eyes lit with excitement, and for the first time since being saddled with the unwanted ward, Barloc realized perhaps it had been a blessing in disguise. The boy did have an inheritance coming in a handful of years, after all. The means to finally make his dream a reality.
Wind whipped through the trees, on either side of the river he walked in, chasing him forward, the power in his veins sparking and burning, eager and willing to be summoned—to be used. Not wasted like that girl, making plants grow. And then he felt it. The sensation of being watched—being followed. He should have been afraid; once he would have been. Terrified even. But no longer. Now his lips curled into a smile, his power surging up at his call as he rushed to face whoever had been foolish enough to find him. The two gryphons’ eyes widened a split-second before the glorious fire erupted out of his hands and obliterated the screeches from their beaks before they could escape—
I crashed back into my own body, my own mind, as though I had been ripped out of myself and then thrust back in again. Dizziness assailed me, dizziness and a violent wave of nausea. I clutched the windowsill so hard, splinters dug into my skin beneath my nailbeds. Painful, but not as painful as the horror of a knowledge I could no longer deny.
Whatever Barloc had done to me—which I’d miraculously survived—had created a connection between us, just as my power once had with those I healed. But this connection was all wrong. It crawled beneath my skin, like a disease burrowing into me, deeper with every strike. Instead of only seeing snippets of his life one time during the use of my power, it seemed I was struck with his memories every time he used it.
And a glimpse into wherever he was using his power at that moment.
Shoving one fist against my riotous stomach and the other against my mouth, I backed away from the window. I had to block him out. I had to.
It was yet another reason I needed to get my power back.
There had to be a way.
A knock at my door startled a scream out of me that I barely managed to muffle behind the knuckles still pressed against my lips and teeth.
“Dinner, Inara.” Father’s voice came through the door. “Are you up?”
“I’ll be right there,” I barely managed to force out past the wild thumping of my heart.
Sachiel knew something—she knew a way, but it had to do with having access to the jakla for some reason. Well, apparently, now I did. I needed to tell someone about what was happening to me. A little voice urged me to go to Zuhra—but though she would no doubt be gentle and concerned, she would also try to protect me somehow, like she always had. There was no way for her to stop this, though. And it was time I started protecting myself.
By convincing Sachiel to help me get my power back.