as if I had said the craziest thing possible. She searched my expression for a moment. I did not know what she saw there, but I presumed it was too serious for her to dismiss my words as a joke. I saw the laugh that had been bubbling in her expression dispel.
She swallowed. “Head of the Moontouched? As in, whatever that last person was—before she was assassinated?”
“Yes,” I said.
She laughed, but it was a much more bitter sound than I imagined had built up before. “I only just found out that I might—might—be a very distant, diluted member of this long-lost clan, and now you want to make me the head of it?”
“Yes,” I repeated, flameheart lowering even further. Although this was only what I had expected, given how horribly I had handled everything up to this point. That was one of the many reasons I had sent Kor and Yvera ahead: so that Sarah could yell at me without their interference or judgment.
Sarah threw up her hands. “What, just by default? Because I’m it’s only confirmed member? Some clan leader I’ll make—of no one.”
“No,” I said, flinching. “Not by default. Because you were the one the Trees of Ice and Flame sent. Of all the descendants of Moontouched that are in your world, they sent you, Sarah. That’s why. And it’s not a clan of no one. Yes, right now, you’re the only confirmed member, but you said you had a family, didn’t you? Then they must be Moontouched too—”
That was the wrong tack to take, because Sarah’s flush grew deeper, and her eyes flashed. “You expect me to just go back to Earth and lord over my family? To declare some kind of mystical power over them and start ordering them around just because a tree told me to?”
“No, that’s not what I meant at all,” I said, a spark of temper of my own entering my voice. “That’s not what a Lady, or Lord, or Monarch does. Do you think that’s what I’ve been training to do my whole life?”
Her wrinkled nose relaxed, and her eyes cooled. She even looked somewhat abashed. “No, I don’t. I’m sorry.”
I took a deep breath. “Don’t be sorry. I’m the only one who has anything to apologize for. I know I have done a terrible job of explaining all of this, and that I gave you the wrong impression for too long on too many things. Will you just…let me try again, for just a moment?”
Sarah didn’t seem to be the type built to sustain anger. Her justified fury with me was already fading from her eyes, and her shoulders and hands were lowered and relaxed once more. She didn’t speak, and her eyes looked down and away from me, but she nodded.
“It all goes back to the assassination, and then the Moontouched leaving and shattering the Earth sungate after them,” I said with a sigh. “That combination broke the First and Second Covenant, Sarah. That’s what I was trying to explain before. Ever since, the power behind the broken Covenants has been unraveling. Most people don’t even know it, but it has. The Monarchs are the vessels of that power, and they’ve felt it. Each one after has been weaker. Even the Sunfilled—my clan, the royal clan—is fading away, as we can’t seem to have enough children to replace the ones we lose. Perhaps most terrifying of all…the sungates are weakening. Avva spends too much of his energy these days making sure they don’t falter and cause a general panic, because if they did.…”
I shuddered. “That would be the beginning of our extinction.”
Sarah looked up at me, her warm brown eyes now soft with concern. She bit her lip. When she spoke, her tone was serious, showing she wasn’t taking the threat lightly, but still needing to know the answer. “Why?”
Knowing my answer could well determine her willingness to help us, I chose my next words with unusual care. “We can stand against the Devourer because we’re united as a people. If the sungates, the bridges between our six worlds, fail…we’ll be irretrievably scattered across the cosmos, and the Devourer and its forces will pick us off, one by one. More than that, though, the sungates are almost as much a symbol of our power as the Tree Herself. In fact, they resulted from the First Covenant. That’s why the Moontouched’s shattering of the Earth sungate broke it. After the rest of the clans broke the Second Covenant by their treatment of the Moontouched, it piled a wrong on top of a devastating wrong, but the Tree could not prevent it because the clans were not listening to Her, not even the Queen. Ever since, She has allowed us to learn from our mistake, as the consumed have increased in numbers and power and we…have not. Nor has She allowed us a chance for redemption.… Until now.”
Sarah bit her lip and looked away again, folding her arms. My chest constricted. I longed to keep talking, to keep babbling, really, trying to help her see.… But some instinct held my tongue and let what I had said sink in, made me stand in silent agony while I watched her turn my words over in her bright mind.
After an eternal half-dek or so of silence, she said quietly, “And you guess that I’m this chance for redemption. Just because someone from Earth with the potential to be Moontouched stumbled into your world and across your path.”
“Not just because of that,” I said softly. “You didn’t just stumble across my path, Sarah.”
She huffed. “Right, because the Trees ‘sent’—”
“Because I was looking for you. Because just as your Tree sent you to me, mine sent me to find you.”
Her head jerked to look back at me, her eyes going wide. “Find.…”
She put her hand to her forehead with a groan. “Of course. This last year you’ve spent ‘traveling.’”
I gave a rueful smile, not sure how much others had told her and therefore what else to say or do.
She looked back up at me incredulously. “That…was you trying to find me?”
I sighed, feeling the full weight of that eternal, exhausting year of searching and waiting and praying and despairing settle on my shoulders. “Or, well, the one the Tree promised would come. She didn’t give me any details, except to say that she…or he…would be Earthren, would be Moontouched, and would be the Tree of Ice’s choice of…leader.”
I chose that last word carefully, as I had chosen “head” before. No need to go into the technicalities of what it meant to be a sovereign Tree’s chosen right now. Yet another good reason Kor wasn’t here to blurt out the conclusion. That detail and implication, not even he and Yvera had yet guessed at. Maybe.
At least Yvera assumed I was trying to return things to the way they had been before—to make Sarah the next “Lady Moontouched.” She did not understand that, once again, the order of things would have to change.
A revelation for another time. It looked like “leader” would be quite enough for Sarah to swallow in this moment. Much less anything…more.
Sarah blinked. “And so, you just…wandered around, waiting for someone like me to show up? For a year?”
“It could have been longer,” I said grudgingly. Because, as long as that year had been, I knew even now that I’d gotten off lucky.
Even if the Tree had not warned me that I would have to seek until I found, I would have known Her ways too well to think She had only one reason for sending me off on such a journey with such vague parameters—knowing, as She must have, where and when Sarah would appear. The Tree cared far more about the growth of Her Heirs and Monarchs than She did about their comfort. She had intended me to learn many things over that year that had nothing to do with finding Sarah…on the surface.
Yet they had had everything to do with making me a better Heir and perhaps future King. And, perhaps, in giving me the skills I needed to help and protect Sarah now. As much as it had sometimes grated on me to feel as if I were wasting time I did not have, I knew that there was no rushing the purposes of a Tree, nor the work needed to be worthy of mending a nearly thousand-year-old breach in the Covenants that were the foundation of our existence. When I thought of it that way, I despaired the Tree would ever deem me worthy.
Sarah just shook her head in bafflement. As if echoing my thoughts about myself, she said dubiously, “I still can’t believe you think this person you need is me.”
“It is,” I said earnestly. “Even if the Tree hadn’t told me as much, I would have known. Sarah, I hate to keep coming back to this, because it could be the reason your life is in such danger right now, but remember the doorgem.”
“White,” she said with a sigh.
I hesitated, then risked one hint.
“Not just white,” I said. “A white so bright that the only one its equal…was mine.”
Her eyes widened. “What does that mean?”
I kept my answer simple. “Your potential is great, even now. Too great to be merely a member of your clan. Too great to be just a wanderer from Earth, instead of the one we so desperately need.”
“Need for what? You still haven’t said.” Her voice had an edge of tension now.
I sighed and ran a hand through my hair. “I don’t know. Just that…if you agree to help us, I’m supposed to go with you back to Earth and to your Tree—the Tree of Ice. She’ll tell us what we need to do then. It could be that we’ll be able to mend the Covenants then and there. If not, She will give us the next step.”
Please, please let that be all. The steps needed to get even that far seemed monumental enough—and taking all the time left before.…
Sarah relaxed. “Oh, so you don’t need me at all. You just need me to help you get to Earth and the Tree of Ice.”
I blinked. “Uh, no, I’m pretty sure—”
“How? You said you didn’t know. Only that we had to get to the Tree.”
“Well, yes, but Sarah—I’m almost certain we will not restore the Covenants without the Moontouched clan and their leader to represent them in the Covenants. Nothing else makes sense.”
“Fine then,” she said with a shrug. “Still seems to me that—if you are right about me being that leader—that all you need me to be is a figurehead. Someone to sign the dotted line for you so that things can go back to the way they were.”
My flameheart sank. “Clan leaders…aren’t figureheads.”
“Well, the leader of a clan of no one is.”
I had nothing to say to that. Her face had fixed in an expression that was both determined and relatively relaxed—an improvement from her anger and anxiety of before. Was it such a bad thing for now, until we had more solid instructions about what would be required of her as the “leader” of the Moontouched, to let her comfort herself by downplaying her role in her own eyes? She had received shock after life-changing shock for the past two days. Perhaps it was wise to give her space to accustom herself to the very idea…then explain what it most likely entailed.
Then give her the space for her decision.
That was what decided me. I wanted her to have the chance to choose, fully knowing the consequences of her choice, and she would not be able to understand those now.
“In any case,” I said after a moment’s pause. “You don’t have to give me—or your Tree, for that matter—an answer now. Our way forward is still the same: we get you home. I made you a promise, and by the Flame, I’m going to keep it, no matter what you choose. What happens after we get to Earth…is for you to decide, when that time comes.”
Further relief entered her eyes. “Thank you,” she said.
I felt another twist of guilt and grimaced. “It’s the only decent thing to do. I’m sorry that I’m not just doing this because it’s the right thing. I just.…”
“I get it,” she said, taking a step toward me. “You’re doing your duty—what the right thing is for everyone, not just me.”
I looked down at her sadly for a moment. How could she understand my role so easily…and be so dismissive of her own?
As if reading my thoughts, she took a deep breath and said, “I feel for your people, and I want to help. I just have a tough time believing that the one you need, the one you’ve been looking for all this time, is me. I’ll do what I can, but I think we’re going to get to Earth and you’re going to find that the real Moontouched leader you need is…someone else.”
At her last words, she turned away and bit her lip, as if pained by the thought, which confused me. Wasn’t that what she was hoping would be the case?
“It won’t be,” I said with quiet conviction. “It’s you, Sarah.”
She just shook her head. “You haven’t met my family yet. If what you say is true and they are Moontouched too, then you’ll have your pick of better leaders than me.”
I had opened my mouth to retort that I wasn’t the one doing the picking, but just at that moment, Yvera’s inner voice intruded.
Ben…you’re going to want to see this.
“What is it?” Sarah asked, noticing the change in my expression.
“Come on,” I said, unconsciously putting a hand to her back to gently urge her forward. What I had done only registered in my mind when my hand began prickling with an awareness that was as pleasant as it was troubling. I dropped the hand as soon as I thought I could casually do so; by then Sarah was walking as quickly as she could to keep up with my longer stride.
“What have they found?” she said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But it’s Yvera. Which means it isn’t Kor enthusing about some ancient inscription or dusty sculpture.”
Sarah walked even faster, allowing me to lengthen my stride. Already, she knew what I wasn’t saying out loud: that if this thing had captured Yvera’s attention, then it was most likely significant. Or dangerous.
Or both.…
Probably both.