The fire in the grate should have been unnecessary on a summer’s morning, but it was unseasonably cold as the sun broke over the eastern mountains, visible out the window, past the top edge of the hedge that had fulfilled its purpose of protecting us magnificently—and continued to do so. If I strained, I could hear the lingering shouts through the mortar and glass that separated us from their cries. Even though I knew we were safe here, a shiver of dread still slithered down my spine. The hedge had withstood the garrison’s attempts to break through or destroy it so far … but how long could it last? How long before they lost their desire for my blood?
If I followed through with Barloc’s suggestion, the four of them would be left to defend the citadel and our lives without my help—because I would be lost once more. Consumed by the roar.
“How long do you think it will take for it to build up once more?”
“It’s hard to say.” Barloc answered Sami’s question with his gray eyes on me, an eagerness in his expression that was a bit discomfiting, though I knew his intentions were good. Halvor had explained how, as a lifelong scholar studying the Paladin, meeting me and getting to see me use my power was such a thrill Barloc had a hard time tempering his excitement. “If she doesn’t access her power at all, it could be a couple of days, or it might be closer to a week or more before it regenerates to that level. Only time will tell.”
Halvor sat beside me on the couch, close enough for me to be acutely aware of his body, the weight of it dipping the cushions, the warmth of it hovering between us, but too far for contact—not like before in the woods. I wondered at his thoughts, at his opinions on all of this, but he had remained silent through much of the conversation, barely offering a nod here and there, his gaze on his hands clasped in his lap.
I wished he would tell me if he agreed with his master—if willingly choosing to let my power build up until I was lost to it again was the right thing to do. That peculiar sensation of connection stretched out once more in the space that hovered between our bodies, the fine, gossamer tether that grew stronger the closer we were and thinner, more fragile with distance. It was quite strong right now, less of a string and more of a cord, urging me to slide toward him—filling my already muddled mind with further feelings of confusion and concern. Mine or his? It was all a jumble and I didn’t even know if it was real or merely imagined.
“It’s just that … I’m not sure … that this is wise,” Sami continued, her words stopping and starting in short bursts, as though it were taking all her control to hold back, but little leaks of worry kept bursting out.
I forced my focus away from Halvor and his disconcerting silence, pausing over my mother, who sat perched on the edge of her seat, her back ramrod straight out of sheer habit. She, too, hadn’t spoken since we’d come to the drawing room to hear Barloc’s idea away from the looming hedge and the screams it couldn’t block. Her gaze remained turned to the window, her skin wan and her lips pressed into bloodless slashes against her drawn face. She wasn’t the mother I’d known, that I’d heard in dreams and nightmares and sometimes in waking, but this wasn’t the time to ponder the changes in her.
Instead I looked to Sami, whose eyes were already on me, her body tilted forward slightly, the force of all that weighed on her too heavy to bear upright.
“There is no cause for concern,” Barloc assured her. He had settled in the chair opposite where I sat beside Halvor, next to Sami, so that they spoke to each other while both watching me. “It will be no different than what she has experienced her entire life.”
She is right here, and is perfectly capable of deciding this herself. The words died in my throat and I swallowed them down. While it grated, the way he said “she” as if he weren’t looking right at me as he theorized on my future, it wasn’t true that I could decide for myself. I had no clue what to do now. Zuhra had always been the one to guide me.
“But … you’ve never been lucid like this for so long,” Sami pressed. “Are you certain you are willing to take the risk of going back to that … place?”
What if you don’t come back this time?
The unspoken question swelled in the brief silence that followed, but before that fear could take hold and truly dig its tentacles into my already flagging courage, Barloc shook his head emphatically.
“I have studied the Paladin for most of my life and I assure you there is plenty of documentation on this very thing. It is well known among them that if they suppress their power it will build until it either requires an outlet for release, or overtakes the host, as you’ve all witnessed with Inara throughout her life. This same process will happen again, and just as before, she will be able to open the gateway—allowing us to go in search of her sister.”
My mother jerked in her chair, a strange, unnatural movement; it took me a moment to realize she was shaking her head no.
“Cinnia?” Sami half stood, her arm outstretched toward my mother, a different—but no less powerful—sort of concern on her face.
“No,” she finally rasped. “Not there—not them. No. Inara—no.”
I stared at my mother—stricken. She’d turned to me at last, limned by the window. The woman she’d been was stripped away, revealing a gaunt stranger so ravaged by grief as to almost make her unrecognizable.
“But … Zuhra…” My voice shook as badly as the hands I shoved beneath my legs to hide.
“Don’t go, Inara. Don’t leave me. Don’t go.”
She didn’t stand and take me in her arms, she didn’t even move, but the pleading in her voice broke me apart, tearing me between my need to reach Zuhra and the first time my mother had ever needed me. I’d known her in snippets of memory, from brief interactions and absences that spoke louder than words, but those glimpses of an immovable, indomitable woman were indelibly seared onto my mind, coming in sleep when the roar couldn’t keep dreams from rising over its tumultuous presence. And this woman, sitting by the window with shaky hands clasped in her lap and eyelashes spiked by looming tears, was completely unknown to me.
“I have to try and get Zuhra back,” I whispered. The words felt like a betrayal, even though my only purpose in doing any of this was to bring my sister home—to return someone to her, not take me away.
“No one comes back. She’s gone. She’s gone!” My mother stood at last, her last words torn from her like a scream wrenched from the deepest recesses of a heart that I had no idea contained so much pain.
We all jumped to our feet as well—to stop her? Protect her? I didn’t know … I didn’t understand why the woman I had known had crumbled away, the hardened shell she’d presented my entire life shattered overnight. Zuhra had always felt that Mother didn’t love either of us—that our father’s disappearance had turned her heart cold, made her incapable of love. She’d felt that neither of us was enough to fill the hole he’d ripped apart inside her when he left us.
Apparently, she’d been wrong. Mother had been able to pull herself together enough to at least function after my father was gone. But losing Zuhra had broken her entirely.
Mother’s eyes flashed over each of us in turn, and then she mumbled, “I’ll be in my room,” and rushed across the morning room and out the door, the echo of it shutting behind her loud enough to make me flinch.
Barloc sat back down, but the rest of us remained on our feet, torn with indecision—at least in my case. Before I could decide if I should follow after her or not, Sami spoke up.
“She shouldn’t be alone right now,” she murmured, with an apologetic glance in my direction. “I’d best…”
I nodded, hoping she could read the relief in my expression. I had no experience offering comfort; I had no idea if my presence would even be a comfort to my mother. Though she’d begged me not to go, I was still the daughter with the Paladin power in my veins, whose eyes burned with the unerasable memory of Adelric.
“I’m very sorry that this ordeal has had such a terrible effect on your mother,” Barloc commented softly, watching Sami quietly close the door once more as she exited the room.
I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. I merely sank back down on the couch, feeling acutely my own uselessness. Halvor sat down as well, perhaps a tiny bit closer to me this time. The cushion compressed under the weight of his body; I had to dig my fingers into it to keep from sliding toward him.
After a few seconds of silence that pressed in on those of us left in the room, Barloc ventured a hesitant “Are we decided then?” Before I could respond, he continued, “I know your mother is upset, but surely once the initial trauma of the recent events passes, she will see the wisdom in at least trying to go after Zuhra and bringing her home.”
“If she survived.” I stared down at my thin legs, their outline visible through my tattered, bloody nightgown and Sami’s robe. I needed a bath and clean clothes and to go to sleep and wake up and find this was all just a dream.
Halvor hesitantly lifted his hand into the space between us, reaching forward slowly, jerkily, before coming to rest on top of mine. His fingers curled over my palm and he squeezed softly.
“I can’t go the rest of my life not knowing.” My gaze had moved to Halvor’s hand over mine, the weight and warmth of his touch like water to a dying plant—like my power to a dying plant. I could heal everyone and everything else, but Halvor seemed to have the power to heal me. “I won’t use my power.”
“Are you sure?”
I looked to Halvor, meeting his honey-warm eyes in the morning light, and nodded.
“We have to at least try. I want to open the gateway again.”