Anjhela left Trevarr alone in his confinement.
She told herself it would soften him—the waiting, the wondering when she’d back. She told herself it would humiliate him, the forced submission to the dullest of bloods and the cleaner entities—feeding him, absorbing his waste, giving him the meanest of care.
She told herself it meant nothing that she’d returned to Solchran’s original site, the razed ground beside the rich alluvial platinum field where it had first prospered. The area was still surrounded by trees and craggy thrusts of rock, still caressed by tides of black fog and baking heat, still full of silly little flittering avians and broken rays of sunshine. Just as it had been, except for the exact spot where the village had stood.
That earth was dead, now. That earth would always be dead.
She stood upon an overlooking rock and wondered about the pressures that had formed Trevarr into the equivalent of the hard, precious metal once mined here—gleaming and true and so very valuable. She wondered about his early years and she wondered why these people had taken him in, even knowing his grandfather had been one of them. Would they have done so, knowing the price they’d eventually pay?
But she could not scorn them. Because she was becoming them.
Shahh and Ghehera had called her to review. They would want answers. They would want the identity and location of the powerful being who so far defied their search. They would want Anjhela to lead the hunt for this person—this woman—whom Trevarr so stubbornly protected.
But this village had taught Trevarr what protection meant, and what love meant, and what it meant to provide those things in defiance of Ghehera. He would not fail this love of his, no matter how Anjhela plied him.
Anjhela found herself uncertain that she wanted to try.
She could not see deeply enough inside herself to know if this reluctance was a failure or a victory. But she could look out over the flat destruction of this once-thriving village and see what would happen to her if she didn’t overcome it.
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