Mother stood next to me, gripping my hand tightly in hers. Sharmaine paced back and forth in front of her gryphon, Keko, while Loukas leaned against a tree, his arms crossed, eyebrows pulled down into a scowl, Maddok a short distance away, his feathers fluffed in agitation.
Father had left only a minute or two after Raidyn, despite Mother begging him not to leave her. Father and Taavi were still visible in the distance, but soon would disappear as Raidyn and Naiki had.
I wanted to pace like Sharmaine, or scowl like Loukas, or even climb onto one of those gryphons and take off after them. Instead, I remained motionless, while Raidyn’s words echoed through my mind over and over. Something’s wrong. Something’s very wrong. I can feel it. I can feel her.
Father had argued with him, though he’d paled at Raidyn’s words. It’s too dangerous. You can’t go after her in full daylight. She’s still alive—you can feel that, right? If you go after her, they will kill you.
Raidyn had ignored him, climbing onto Naiki’s back. She’s completely panicked—she’s terrified. I can’t just sit here and hope she’s fine. I’m going to find her. I have to.
“I can’t believe he left me. I can’t believe he’s gone.” Mother’s hand was a vise on mine; my fingers tingled from the lack of blood.
“He didn’t leave you,” I assured her, though he had in fact done exactly that. “He’s gone after Zuhra. There’s a difference.”
“I know … but … I’m scared.” She stared at the speck that was all we could see of him in the distance with an intensity that frightened me. But not as much as the fear of what had happened to Zuhra. What if they’d run into Barloc? “I’m afraid none of them will come back.”
I had felt it too. Not as strongly as Raidyn, but I’d felt it. The distant echo of terror that wasn’t my own and panic that slicked my hands with cold sweat, making my heart flutter like a frightened bird’s wings, rapid and quickly weakening.
“I don’t know what I’ll do if he doesn’t come back again.”
“Stop making everything about you.” I yanked my hand free and stormed away—straight past Sharmaine, who had paused her pacing at my outburst, auburn eyebrows lifted. Disbelief? Dismay? It was hard to tell, and I wasn’t sure I cared. I didn’t know her, I didn’t know Loukas, I didn’t want to know them. I didn’t want to be out here, lost in some forest deep in Vamala, with only my mother and two Paladin who were little more than strangers. I didn’t want to have a connection with Barloc, or need to track him down and do what Sachiel had told me was required to regain my power.
But here we were, and there was nothing any of us could do to go back to how things once were. We could only go forward.
I was done waiting, always waiting. Stuck in cages all my life: cages made of poisonous green vines, of power that roared and drowned and saved all at once, of fear that bared bloody teeth, pressing me into the ground, shoving me into a corner, paralyzed. My sister was out there, and something was wrong. She was suffering; she needed help.
I would not stay in that clearing, holding Mother’s hand, thinking I’d been left behind again when I could go and do.
What? I had no idea. But I would figure it out.
Twigs and branches cracked behind me from heavy footsteps; it had to be Loukas. Would he try to force me to change my mind? My face flushed hot at the immediate assumption. He’d never done anything to lead me to believe he’d used his ability on any of us yet … why would he start now? He would have been better to force Raidyn to stay if he were going to make anyone do anything. Though he’d been visibly angry at his friend’s insistence on going in search of Zuhra despite the danger, he’d let him go.
“What do you want, Loukas?”
He came up beside me and reached for my arm, tugging me to a stop. “This won’t help,” was all he said.
I pulled free of his grip, though it took considerably less effort than breaking free of my mother’s. “I have to do something.”
“And if something has happened, what will you do? Raidyn made a reckless decision that is putting all of us in danger, and your father went to try to stop him. How do you think Adelric will react if he gets back and you’re missing too?”
“He’s trying to stop Raidyn? I thought he was going to help him find Zuhra.”
Loukas ran a hand over his face. He had faint bruises beneath his brilliant green eyes and heavy stubble already darkened his entire jawline. Though he was a bit unkempt, he was still stunningly beautiful. Even more beautiful than the statues at home with their jeweled eyes and painted perfection.
And ten times more frightening.
“Have you ever loved anyone?” I asked.
He blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Because if you had, you would know that I can’t keep being that person who sits back and waits while the people she loves are in danger—possibly hurt … or worse. I have to do something.Please.”
A muscle in Loukas’s jaw worked beneath his stubble. He glanced back to where we’d left poor Sharmaine alone with my mother and both gryphons. The trees pressed in so close, they nearly grew on top of one another, their branches tangling above us. We couldn’t even see the small clearing anymore, and I knew I hadn’t made it far before he’d caught up to me.
“Yes,” he said at last, “I have loved someone. I love Raidyn like a brother, and I—” Loukas’s mouth clamped shut and he turned back to me. “But even though I care about him, I will not go after him, because that would be foolish and only put more of us in danger. Your father went, and that is enough. The rest of us must wait—as hard as it is.”
I was still new to deciphering facial expressions, the nuances to conversations, the hidden meanings of gestures and words said and unsaid. But there was something about the expression on his face when he’d turned away—when he’d looked back. A painful kind of longing, which had darkened his vibrant green-fire eyes. He was talking about Raidyn, but he was thinking of someone else. I was almost certain. And then it hit me.
“It’s Sharmaine, isn’t it?”
Loukas’s eyebrows shot up and he took a step toward me. Though the shadow that crossed his face was as dark as his stubble, I held my ground.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t I? Have you ever told her?”
Loukas lips thinned. “How long have you been lucid now? Has it even been a week? And suddenly you think yourself an expert on interpreting relationships between people you’ve known for even less time than that?”
My infantile courage wavered and, though I hated myself for it, I flinched.
“I have trained for longer than you’ve been alive to know how to handle situations like this. But because you love someone, that means you must know what’s right, not me.” He flung a hand toward the forest. “Still determined to go after them? Then you know what? Be my guest. You’ll probably just get lost and we’ll have to come rescue you too. But by all means, go save your sister.”
He spun on his heel and stormed back the way we’d come.
I stood there for several long moments, the sun-warmed air scraping through my lungs. You’ll probably just get lost and we’ll have to come rescue you too. The tangled, massive trees pressed in on me. It was an ancient forest, no place for us mere mortals to be trespassing; these trees weren’t sentient in the way the custovitan hedge the Paladin had planted was … but there was a certain sense of awareness around them. An acrid tang to the air—like the aftermath of magic. Was it the cotantem they’d talked about, that I’d believed myself unable to sense any longer? My skin crawled, itchy with the feeling I was being watched. With a shiver, I turned in a slow circle. Did that feeling mean Barloc was nearby? Or something else?
Defeated by the fear that strangled any courage I might have possessed, I rushed back to the clearing to tell the others what I’d felt. To let them decide what to do while I waited and waited and waited some more.
Like I always did.