Convince them she’s dangerous … because she is. Though accepting Raidyn’s advice still felt like swallowing a thistle, sharp thorns shredding me apart, I wondered if, perhaps, he truly had been trying to help me. There were only two reasons for him to give me advice—to help me, or to sabotage me. And while I wasn’t sure if he was a friend or ally, I couldn’t bring myself to think of him as a potential enemy, attempting to keep me from returning home. Especially with how loyal he seemed to be to my father, his commanding officer.
But then again … why was he on the council, but not my father?
Their relationship and dynamic was unfathomable and I had no time to parse it out. I could only inhale deeply once more, turn the handles, and pray I was making the right choice.
* * *
The room was much larger than I’d anticipated when I pushed the doors open and walked in, dominated by a massive circular table set in the dead center where the council all sat—and every single one of them turned to peer at me with varying degrees of reaction on their faces, from outright fury (my grandmother, Ederra, of course), to unreadable scrutiny (Raidyn), and a variance of the two extremes on the other ten Paladin. A number of other Paladin stood against the wall, including my father and grandfather, which only increased my frustration that I had been kept from this meeting. The weight of all those stares was crushing, a physical force that nearly pushed me back out of the room to the safety and silence of the hallway. Instead, I forced my leaden feet to shuffle forward one step, then two, away from escape.
“I-I have come,” I began with a humiliating quaver that began in my knees and somehow worked its way out through my voice, “to plead with you to open the gateway so I can get back to my sister.”
“That is precisely what we have convened to discuss.” Ederra sat directly across from where I stood, her hands folded on the table in front of her, spine so straight I had the strange, fleeting thought that it was a shame she had never met my mother—they might have gotten on quite well, actually. “And, as you are not Paladin, and don’t understand our proceedings, you were not invited to participate.”
If the weight of their scrutiny weren’t enough to cow me, her public denouncement would certainly have done the trick—had this meeting been about anything other than my sister.
You can do this for Inara. Be brave for her.
Ignoring the trembling that had graduated to full-on shaking, I lifted my chin and straightened my spine. Mother had spent hours teaching me to stand up tall, to bear myself like a lady, even if I’d only ever ruled over our empty citadel. But her lessons came in handy now as I met my grandmother’s glare with one of my own, also trying to channel my mother—though she’d never purposely taught me that skill, only by example. “I am half-Paladin, and the only reason I remain ignorant of your traditions is because of your refusal to allow my father to return to his family for the last fifteen years.”
Even untouchable Raidyn’s eyes widened at that, and I almost lost my nerve. Ederra’s mouth opened and then closed, struck silent—but only momentarily, I knew. I had a short window to speak my mind.
“But my sister—she has more Paladin power than most of you in this room. I’ve spent my life protecting her, keeping her calm, keeping her from hurting herself or others.”
“That is enough—”
“She’s dangerous,” I practically shouted over Ederra’s cold pronouncement, shocking all of them and myself. My father’s head snapped back as though I’d physically struck him. “She opened a gateway by herself, just from touching it. And I was the only one who could control her and now she’s there alone.”
“I said enough,” Ederra repeated, slamming her hand down on the table, a crackle of blue flame singeing the wood before evaporating into a tendril of ebony smoke that snaked toward the ceiling. “You are not permitted in these proceedings. You must leave—at once.”
I fell silent at last, knowing I would get no more chances and hoping the little I’d said was enough—and that Raidyn’s advice had been the right thing to follow.
My father broke away from my grandfather, moving quickly toward where I stood, hands hanging at my side, my shoulders slumped now that I had spoken my mind. I didn’t dare look at my grandmother, or Raidyn, or any of the other unfamiliar faces still turned toward me.
“Come, Zuhra,” my father murmured, gently taking me by the elbow. He steered me back out the doors, quietly closing them behind us.
I crossed my arms over my chest, shoving my shaking hands under the opposite arms. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I had to at least try.”
“I understand. But why did you call her dangerous? You’ve never claimed that before now.”
I glanced up at him, into his blue-fire and crinkle-cornered eyes, and just shook my head. Did I dare tell him that Raidyn had told me to?
“They’re going to be meeting for quite some time. Why don’t you go back to your room and rest and I will come find you as soon as they decide anything.”
No! Everything within me shouted, but I forced my chin to dip down, the barest semblance of a nod. “I don’t know where it is,” I admitted softly, defeated.
“Oh.” My father glanced down the hallway, first left, then right, but it was empty. “I need to get back in there … but I suppose I could—”
“I’ll just wait here,” I volunteered. “I promise not to come in again, unless they invite me to. But I can’t go to that room and lie on that bed and try to pretend that I can sleep right now.” Without waiting for his approval, I took three steps and sat down on the ground, my back against the wall, directly across from the double doors.
“You’re sure? It could be quite some time.”
“Positive,” I assured him, folding my arms again.
Adelric stood there for a moment longer, looking even larger standing while I was sitting on the ground, and a bit older than before with the shadows carving out deep grooves in his drawn face. “All right. If you insist.”
I nodded and he sighed.
“Your mother was stubborn too. I loved that about her, but it drove me mad sometimes.” He paused, and then added, “You remind me of her.”
He didn’t know how much that comment cut through me, how painful it was in my ears. But he’d known a different woman, I had to remind myself, thinking of the one memory I’d been gifted that night in the ballroom with Halvor, when I’d remembered her in a field, with loose hair and a smile as bright as sunshine on her face.
When I didn’t respond, a flicker of confusion crossed his face, but he just nodded, and turned, pulled the door open and slipped through, shutting me out in the hallway by myself to begin my long vigil.
* * *
I sat in the hallway waiting for hours. The skylights above me were cloaked in darkness; the hallway was lit by the same ethereal lanterns as the stables, their blue light both comforting and disconcerting at once. It didn’t take long for my back to begin to ache and my tailbone to alternate between going numb and coming back to life with spikes of pain shooting down my already cramped legs. I tried to adjust my position often enough to avoid the cycle, but as the time passed, I found myself nodding off, despite the hard ground and hard wall and the fear in my heart. I’d jerk back awake every so often, my neck seized by a cramp from my head lolling forward.
And then, finally, just as the skylights turned a muted gray, the doors opened.
I scrambled to my feet, ignoring the pinpricks of pain in my left foot as blood rushed back into it. Several Paladin I didn’t know walked out first, the looks they gave me varying between curiosity and pity, but it wasn’t until I saw the devastation etched into the grooves of my father’s face that my heart sank.
His eyes met mine as he crossed the threshold and shook his head mutely.
No.
The impact of that minute movement was like running full speed with my head turned back to look over my shoulder and slamming into a wall.
They had decided not to open the gateway.
I was trapped here.
I was trapped.
And I’d never see Inara again.
THIRTY-ONE
INARA
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.”
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