Silence.
I blinked and exhaled. It was gone. It was gone.
But something was still wrong.
I was lying on my back, staring up at a ceiling far, far above me, a cool wind blowing the damp hair off my cheeks.
“Inara! Are you all right?”
“How did it not work? I don’t understand!”
Voices, footsteps, someone dropping to their knees beside me.
Slowly, I realized where I was—who I was. We were in the Hall of Miracles. Halvor knelt at my side, Sami right behind him, her face pale and drawn, and Barloc stood at the base of the stairs that led up to the door where I lay … where I’d grabbed the handle, where I’d tried to open the gateway … and failed.
It didn’t work?
It didn’t work.
The realization knocked the breath from my lungs. I’d lost myself to the roar again, after the humiliating afternoon when Halvor had tried to come up with a plausible excuse for the burns on his lips. They still weren’t entirely healed; the edges of his mouth were cracked and scabbed. I hadn’t used my power once, not one tiny bit. Toward the end, I’d had to go lie on my bed, squeezing my eyes shut, drowning in the pain and agony of holding it all in, until finally, finally the roar consumed me once more and took me away on a wave of blissful oblivion. I only had vague recollections of what happened after that, the last of which was grabbing the handle to the doorway, feeling my power ignite and surge out of me and into the door just like last time, my back arcing, the excruciating agony of having it ripped from me so quickly, so completely, being unable to let go—
Except that unlike last time, the gateway hadn’t opened and Zuhra hadn’t pulled me free. I’d eventually passed out, collapsing, only then breaking the connection.
“Inara, can you hear me? Are you all right?”
I turned toward Halvor, who had lifted one hand to my face, gently wiping the tears I didn’t even realize had leaked out onto my cheeks. Sami knelt beside him now and took one of my hands into hers.
“It didn’t work” was all I said, my throat raw, as if I’d been screaming.
Halvor’s eyes closed and his head dropped. Sami squeezed my hand tighter.
“We must not have waited quite long enough,” Barloc said gravely. “You were so close, my dear girl. Another day or two, that would have done it.”
“How dare you. How dare you!” Sami dropped my hand to stand and whirl on the older scholar. “Did you not see what that just did to her? She can’t do this again. It might kill her!”
“No,” I protested, weakly pushing myself up to sit. “He’s right. I must not have waited long enough. Next time give it another two days to be certain.”
“There will be no next time,” Sami bit out, two bright spots of red flaring in her pale cheeks.
“Sami.” I climbed to my feet on shaking legs and reached one hand toward her arm. “I have to. I have to at least try to get to Zuhra. What if she’s alive somewhere through there? What if she’s lost … what if she’s sitting there waiting for me?” I blinked back more tears as Sami’s eyes welled up.
“You know I love Zuhra,” she said slowly, her voice thick, “but from what Master Roskery has said, she was seriously hurt already, and if she was pulled through by another one of those monsters … chances are she didn’t—”
“Don’t,” I snapped. “Don’t you dare even say that. She has to be alive. And I am going to open this gateway and find her.” Strength had quickly returned to my body, my power flaring, sparking within me to heal the minor damages from my fall and whatever the gateway had done to me. The roar was far away; it would take days before it returned. But it didn’t matter. I would wait. “We do it again.”
Barloc nodded at me, his expression inscrutable, as I stormed down the stairs and out of the Hall of Miracles.
I went straight to my mother’s room, rapping sharply once and then pushing it open without waiting for her permission. She sat at her desk, staring out the window at the gray, stormy day, a cup of untouched tea gone cold in front of her and a plate of vegetables beside it.
She startled at my intrusion and turned; when she saw it was me, not Sami, she blanched.
“Inara? You’re … here?”
I wasn’t sure if she meant physically or mentally, but since both applied, I merely raised one eyebrow. “Why didn’t you come?” I demanded. I’d never had much experience with anger. I’d been so focused on survival, on trying to stretch the brief interludes of lucidity as long as possible, that I refused to acknowledge the burning heat of it inside me—every time I asked Where is mother? and Zuhra would make up some excuse and try to turn my attention elsewhere. But I had plenty of time now, and once I opened that gateway I would never be lost in the roar again. And if Sami was right about Zuhra—if my deepest fear that haunted all my dreams, turning them to terrors, was true—I needed my mother to be a mother. “Why do you never come?”
She flinched as though I’d physically struck her. It hurt, to see how diminished she was, how slight her frame, how thin her wrists were beneath the faded fabric of her dress. Her knuckles were white on the cup she gripped and she didn’t look up when she said, “I wasn’t feeling well and—”
“No,” I said. “That is not a good enough reason to hide in here when you knew what I was attempting to do today. When we were trying to go find Zuhra—your daughter.”
“I couldn’t, Inara. I … I can’t go in that room. In any of those rooms.”
I stared at her, shocked past words when she reached up to swipe away a tear.
My mother was … crying.
“I tried to be strong for you girls. I know I failed, trust me, I know. But I tried. I didn’t know how else to … to be strong … when I left … everything … for him—and then he … he left me.” Her voice kept breaking, she could barely force the words out. And then my mother, who I’d never seen even get choked up, curled in on herself with a shudder and … shattered. All that sorrow and grief and guilt had finally broken loose and it ravaged her in great gasping, gulping, body-wrenching sobs. I stood frozen, staring.
“He left me,” she repeated again and again in between gasps and shudders that convulsed her entire frame. “He left me.”
And I just stood there, helpless and pathetic and … ashamed.
I’d vaguely known my father had left us; it was a story, a hushed secret. But this … this was real pain, this was a heart torn apart by the agony of his leaving. And I had no idea what to do.
Hesitantly, I took one step toward her, then another, until I finally reached her side. I haltingly reached toward her shaking back, gently brushing it with my hand. She flinched but didn’t pull away. I was strangely nervous, my heart pounding in my chest, as I inched closer and slowly wrapped my arm all the way around her narrow shoulders. My mother stiffened, her sobs halted momentarily. She lifted her head and glanced at me, her bloodshot eyes and tear-streaked face so familiar and so foreign all at once.
“I’m … sorry.” My voice trembled, uncertain and afraid that she would push me away—again.
But instead, for the first time in my life, my mother wrapped her thin arms around me, pulling me close. “No, Inara. I am the one who is sorry,” she whispered.
Everything was still broken and wrong; my father had still left and my mother had pushed me away for fifteen years and Zuhra was still missing … but right now, my mother was hugging me.
My mother had said she was sorry.
I only wished Zuhra, who had borne the brunt of her pain and anger, had been there to hear it.
“I have two brothers,” Mother said haltingly, as if it was still difficult to make the words leave the hidden recesses of her heart.
We sat in her room, eating dinner together. Well, I was eating. She was moving her food around her plate and taking a small nibble here and there. I wanted to push her to eat more, but was afraid if I pressed her to do anything else she would snap back into her old self and shut me out again.
And that was unbearable to consider—not when she was actually talking.
“They were younger than me,” she continued, “and it broke their hearts when I left. Brycent cried and cried … but I didn’t have a choice. My father disowned me for choosing Adelric, for refusing to turn him in to the garrisons.”
I didn’t understand everything she told me, but I didn’t dare ask for clarification, in case it made her stop. Instead, I just listened and tried to make sense of what I could.
“Your eyes … they’re just like his,” she admitted, glancing up at me. I flushed, embarrassed for some reason, knowing that when she looked at me, she saw him. Which was probably part of the reason she’d always pushed me away and not Zuhra. That, and the power he’d also gifted to me. “Adelric…” The name stuck in her throat after more than a decade of trying to erase it from her memory. “He was … my everything. It was like I had lived my life in the darkness of night but he brought me out to stand in the sun. He made everything brighter, more beautiful. He’d sacrificed so much to help our people, and had only been handed back suffering and violence … yet he remained so … positive. I’d never known anyone like him. Even the pain of leaving my family and home on such terrible terms was bearable because of how happy he made me.”
I was transfixed, my food forgotten.
“We fled the garrisons and the death decree, traveling under the cover of night and hiding during the day, only to find the gateway shut when we finally arrived. He convinced me we’d be safe here, that the citadel and the hedge they’d planted would protect us. He was one of the last, you see. And the villagers … they didn’t turn us in, but only after he begged and bribed them not to report us to the garrisons that came every few weeks to check on the citadel—to make sure it was still abandoned. It was dangerous and lonely living here, but there was nowhere else for us to go. He was all I had, Inara.”
For some reason, I felt as though she were trying to explain herself, trying to justify what had happened since then. But I was not the only one she owed this story to … or her apologies. And as much as I wanted her to keep talking—to keep telling me about what had brought her here, had turned her into what she was … I’d originally come to her room with a purpose.
“And then he left me … after everything I gave up for him. And we were trapped, and I couldn’t even take my daughters and return home. Even if we weren’t trapped behind the hedge, I don’t know if I could have, because of…” She trailed off, her gaze flickering up to mine then lowered again as silent tears trailed down her cheeks, the violence of her earlier breakdown passed, leaving this quieter but no less painful regret in its place.
“Mother,” I began, soft but firm, “I need you to tell us what you know—and I need you to be with me when I try to open the gateway again. I know it’s hard for you,” I rushed on when she started to protest, “but Zuhra is out there somewhere. Only you have known a real Paladin before—only you know what he told you about his home and his people. And,” I added, “she’s your daughter. If she survived, she deserves to hear this story—to hear your apology.”
Mother was quiet a long time. I made myself wait, though my instinct was to fill the silence with more reasons to try and convince her.
Finally she closed her eyes and nodded. “Tomorrow,” she whispered. “Tomorrow … I’ll try to tell you what I can remember. But I can’t promise anything else.”
Halvor squeezed my hand, the pressure of his grip reassuring but doing little to assuage the strange flutter of nervousness in my belly. “I still can’t believe she told you all of that,” he said quietly, too low for Sami or Barloc, who sat across the room at a small table playing a card game, to hear. The day had dawned gray and wet yet again, the sky leaking, dripping, slow and constant and forcing us to stay inside.
“I still can’t believe it either,” I whispered back. I hadn’t told him that she’d agreed to come out of her room today and share what she knew of Visimperum, the home of the Paladin, with us—for fear she would lose courage and go back on her word. But that didn’t stop me from eagerly turning toward the door every time there was a creak. So far, it had been nothing but the citadel’s normal noisiness.
Halvor’s thumb moved back and forth across the top of my hand, the methodical touch distracting and comforting all at once. It was strange how my stomach could be twisted into knots with worry about my mother and Zuhra while my chest was tight with the memory of our kiss and the longing to repeat it—without the disastrous results of the first attempt.
After this is over, I told myself. If Halvor is still around, if he still wants to … maybe then.
I glanced over to find him watching me, his eyes darkened to umber in the somber light from the storm. Or, perhaps it was something else. His gaze dropped to my lips momentarily, forcing all other thoughts to flee my mind and making me wonder if he wished as much as I did that we were alone.
And of course, it was in that moment of distraction that the door finally opened and my mother marched into the room, her hair perfectly coifed, her dress pressed, and her shoulders thrown back—the strong, dominant woman I’d always known entering the room, not the weak, broken thing of the last week since Zuhra’s disappearance.
“Good morning,” she announced loudly to everyone, lifting her chin and ignoring the twin looks of shock on Barloc’s and Sami’s faces. Sami recovered more quickly than Halvor’s uncle and jumped to her feet.
“Good morning, Madam. Can I get you anything?”
“No, thank you, Sami.” Mother’s eyes met mine across the room, hers widening slightly when she noticed Halvor sitting so close, holding my hand. “I know you’ve all been trying to get Zuhra back and I … I’ve decided to help. If I can.”
If Sami and Barloc had looked shocked before, their twin expressions could only have been described as flabbergasted now. Even Halvor’s mouth fell open beside me.
I smiled at her, encouraging.
“My … husband”—she nearly tripped over the word, but continued on—“told me quite a few things about the Paladin, this gateway, and their home, before he … before he left.” She almost shrank into herself again as she spoke, but when I stood, releasing Halvor’s hand, and walked toward her, she reset her shoulders and exhaled, visibly regaining control of herself. “I hope some of it might help.”
“Thank you,” I said, reaching out and taking her hand in mine, squeezing it tightly.
She stared down at our clasped hands for several seconds, then nodded, a little of that old stubborn spark back in her eyes. “I hope it helps … I hope we can get her back.”
“Me, too,” I said, and then closed my eyes for a moment. “Me, too.”