“Raidyn?” I turned to see him striding toward me, his lips stretched in what I think was supposed to be a smile, but it resembled more of a resigned grimace.
“I came to see if you’d want to come down to the training ring with me.”
“A training ring?” I repeated with raised eyebrows, trying to decide if I was still mad at him, too, or not. “To do what?”
“To train.” Raidyn stopped a few feet away, his hands shoved into the pockets of his breeches, his powerful shoulders hunched slightly forward. He didn’t quite meet my eyes as he added, “To help you pass the time.”
Because you’re trapped here now. The unspoken words fell as heavily between us as if he had spoken them out loud.
“But I don’t have any power to train with,” I pointed out, feeling prickly, and annoyed that this was what my father had thought would help. It could only have been his orders that would have induced Raidyn to seek me out and offer to help me in any way.
“You are only half human, and your father is a powerful Paladin, from an extremely strong family. You have power inside you somewhere, we just have to draw it out. This might help.” He still wouldn’t meet my eyes, gazing at my shoulder, or the top of my head, or somewhere just past me altogether.
It made me want to slap him in his beautiful, frustrating face.
Maybe training would be a good idea. “Do you train how to fight in other ways, too? Not everyone has the same kind of power, right?”
“Yes, of course. Physical sparring is part of everyone’s training, regardless of what kind of power they wield best.”
I’d never been one to crave violence. I’d always preferred Inara’s gentle spirit and Sami’s soft, quiet stories, but I’d never felt more helpless in my life than in those moments in the Hall of Miracles and what had happened after, when I had no idea how to defend myself or anyone else. And I never wanted to feel that way again.
Plus, part of me just really wanted to hit Raidyn. And though I had no idea why such an idea appealed so much to me, I wasn’t going to refuse the opportunity to do exactly that.
“Fine.”
“Fine, you’ll come?”
“Yes, that kind of fine.”
“Excellent,” he said, but somehow his tone seemed to imply the exact opposite. I would have felt bad for him, if I weren’t so furious at him still.
He turned, obviously expecting me to follow, which I had no choice but to do, since I had no idea where the training ring was.
We walked in silence at first. I could practically feel the cloud of frustration surrounding him. That tenuous connection that I now knew was because of the sanaulus stretched taut in the space between my arm, hanging loosely at my side, and his, pressed against his body as if he were afraid of any accidental physical contact with me.
We walked out of the castle through a door I hadn’t exited previously, into a different courtyard. The gryphons’ field and stables were nowhere in sight. Instead, a second, much smaller building—though still quite large, only small in comparison to the castle—stood across another graveled walkway. It, too, was round, with a domed roof that glimmered in the full light of the sun high above us in the cobalt sky.
There was no one else outside, and I leapt upon the chance of not being overheard to blurt out, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Raidyn flinched as if I’d struck him, stopping halfway to the training building. “I’m not sure,” he finally said, quiet, to the ground, still not looking at me.
“That’s not an answer.” I crossed my arms over my chest, my fingers digging into the opposite biceps.
“I was concerned that the decision wouldn’t go in your favor, and…” He lifted his chin, staring at the door two dozen footsteps away from where we stood, a muscle in his jaw tightening. “I didn’t want to get your hopes up that I could do anything about it.”
“So you lied,” I bit out.
“I never told you I wasn’t on the council.”
“You knew I had no idea you were on the council. You tried to give me advice with no context as to why I should listen to you—and then it didn’t even end up mattering. I wasn’t supposed to be there, and barging in and declaring my sister to be dangerous didn’t help anyway!” Each word was kindling for the anger that had been crackling within me, until by the end of my tirade, I was shouting. Raidyn stiffened and finally turned to face me, his eyes burning as blue as the sky above us, as blue as the center of a flame.
As blue as Inara’s eyes.
And then I was suddenly crying. Furious, hot, fat drops splashed onto my cheeks. I swiped at my face and turned my back on Raidyn.
“I tried, Zuhra.” When he spoke, his voice was raspy, edged with razor-sharp regret. I felt it seeping out of him and winding around me, around my heart, softening my anger, turning it to something else … something far scarier than fury or even a desire to hit him. Curse that sanaulus. “We argued back and forth for hours … But I’m young, and Ederra … I really did try.”
When his fingertips brushed the top of my spine, I flinched, but didn’t pull away. Slowly, he curled his hand around my shoulder and with gentle pressure, turned me to face him once more. The heat of his touch burned through my thin blouse; I was aware of his entire body in a way I’d never experienced before, not even with Halvor. He’d been the only boy I’d ever met, and I thought what I’d felt around him must have been what it felt like to start to care for someone … in that way. But the pull I’d felt toward him had been nothing more than the fleeting warmth of a summer breeze compared to the conflagration of sensations Raidyn’s touch kindled in me—what his eyes did to me, when he looked down at me, as he was now, the entirety of his burning gaze focused only on me.
“I am truly sorry, Zuhra,” he said, and there was no part of me that could ignore his sincerity; not when I could hear it in his voice and see it in his eyes and feel it through his touch—through the connection that he’d been willing to create between us to save my life. The lingering vestiges of my anger withered to embers, doused by his earnestness.
“I … I am too,” I stammered.
“You have nothing to apologize for,” he protested, his fingers flexing against my back where his hand still lingered.
“Yes, I do.” My arms dangled uselessly at my side. Every nerve in my body seemed attuned to each tiny movement he made—especially his hand. “You … you’ve saved my life twice. You’ve done nothing but try to help me. And I’ve returned your … kindness”—a word that had never seemed so miserably inadequate before—“with … with…” I flung my hand up to indicate myself, but he caught it in his and shook his head.
“You have nothing to apologize for,” he repeated, and I flushed—relieved, embarrassed, and on fire. His touch ignited something in me that made me tremble. Could he feel it? Did he know what—
“What are you two doing?” an amused voice called out and I sprang back from Raidyn, as though caught doing something wrong—though I had no clue why. “I thought you were bringing her to train, not giving her dance lessons.”
All the heat Raidyn’s touch had brought out in me rushed straight to my neck and face when I looked past him to see Loukas sauntering our way, one dark brow lifted.
“That is what you were doing, right? Some sort of new, very awkward dancing?”
Raidyn rolled his eyes—a gesture so wildly incongruous with the intensity of only a moment earlier, it forced an involuntary giggle out of me. Both of Loukas’s eyebrows shot up at that.
I didn’t think my cheeks could have been any hotter, but I’d been wrong.
“I hope you’ve realized by now that Loukas rarely has any idea what he’s talking about.”
“Oh, hoo! He finally retaliates—and we all realize why he so rarely does!” Loukas shot back, but his green eyes danced with mischief.
“You two are…”
“Devilishly handsome?” Loukas supplied when I was unable to come up with anything that appropriately matched their antics. “W
ildly charming?”
“I was going to go with … alarmingly confusing?”
Loukas paused for a moment, as though considering. Then, with a shrug, “Ah, well, I’ll take it. For now. Once you get to know us better, you’ll revise your opinion. I’m sure of it.”
Raidyn just shook his head, his hands back in his pockets again. It struck me in that moment how strong he was—how beautiful and tall and powerful—and yet, he held himself in such a diminished way sometimes. It made me ache for some reason, a buried yet sharp pain, small but impossible to ignore. Was it his pain I felt, or just something imagined?
Loukas reached us at last, and slapped Raidyn on the back. “He’s fine at healing and riding gryphons and all that, but leave the dance lessons to me,” he said with a lopsided grin that was impossible not to return. “I’m a far superior dance partner.”
“I’ll try to remember that.”
“We should start her training” was all Raidyn said, with a small smile of his own.
“Now he wants to get down to business.” Loukas threw his hands up in the air. “As soon as I come to join in on the fun. Of course.”
Raidyn just shook his head. “Come on, Zuhra. The only way to get this one to close his mouth is to force it shut—something that I excel at.”
Loukas’s laughter washed over us as we turned for the training ring, and for the first time since I’d realized I was trapped in Visimperum for the unforeseen future, I felt a small root of possible happiness blossom within me.
THIRTY-THREE
INARA
“Have you started to hear it at all yet?”
Barloc’s question, though well intended, bristled. He asked me multiple times from morning until we retired for bed, and after four days of his intense scrutiny I was weary of it—and him. I knew he only wanted to assist me and our family, to help us try and get Zuhra back, but I was beginning to feel like one of his books that he studied at all hours of the day and night. When he wasn’t peering at me and asking if the roar had begun to manifest yet or not, he was deeply engrossed in one book or another. The citadel’s library had nearly been enough to bring tears to his eyes when we’d first taken him there.
“No,” I replied with a sigh, holding my frustration in check—or so I thought. Halvor, who sat in the chair next to mine, still glanced over at me, concerned.
“Soon, soon,” Barloc said, almost more to himself than me, it seemed. “I’m sure of it. Just another day or two, maybe.”
I nodded, partially to encourage him to get back to his books, and partially because he actually was right. Though I hadn’t begun to hear the roar yet, it was coming; the buzz of its impending arrival pulsed in my veins, making me jumpy and on edge. I could feel my power building within me, pushing for release, pressing at my mind, my lungs, my hands. Now that I’d experienced what it was like to truly use it, to tap into it to such a degree as to completely clear my mind, it was a wonder I’d never realized before just how badly it wanted out—how much it needed to be used. Trying to hold it in was like trying to hold my breath: easy at first, but growing progressively more difficult, more urgent, until not using my power was almost all I could focus on. If it grew much more insistent, I didn’t know how I would be able to keep from releasing at least a small portion of it, just for relief from the unbearable pressure inside me.
I jumped to my feet and announced, “I need to go for a walk,” feeling like I would claw my own skin off if I didn’t do something to distract myself from the urge to use my power on someone, something, anything.
Everyone in the room startled, even my mother, who sat by the window, her needlepoint lying unused in her lap, her face turned to the window—until that moment. Even she turned to look at me, but her eyes were bloodshot, her face gaunt; a mere ghost of who she was before.
Everything was broken into before and after. That one terrible night was the new focal point of our lives. Before, Mother had forced us all to eat together as if we were a grand family; after, Mother took all of her meals in her room, and Sami had confessed to me last night that every time she went to get her tray, it was almost always untouched. I’d gone to her room for breakfast, asking if I could join her to eat, but she’d turned me away, claiming she’d already eaten. Maybe next time, she’d said with a wan attempt at a smile that was more a contortion of her lips. I’d swallowed the hurt and chosen not to point out that I didn’t have much time left.
Before, she might have commanded me to stay. Forced me to work on needlepoint as she’d once made Zuhra do every day.
After, as I turned and moved toward the door, it was no surprise that she didn’t protest, but some small part of me still wished she would—that she would show at least a trace of the fire that she used to possess. How could one night have doused it so entirely, stripping her of all her strength and leaving her a broken husk that barely survived from day to day? If Zuhra and I had wondered why we weren’t enough to make her happy after our father left us, that was nothing compared to knowing that I, alone, was not enough to even induce her to want to live. Because, as near as I could tell, that was exactly what losing Zuhra had done to her—stolen her will to even try to survive. She’d retreated inside herself, slowly starving, wasting away from a lifetime of grief finally breaking open within her.
Hot, angry tears burned at my eyes as I stormed down the hallway, toward the massive entryway. The painted Paladin soaring on their mounts that had watched over us our whole lives followed my progress across the marbled floor with their lapis lazuli eyes.
“Inara,” a low voice called out from deeper within the citadel, a familiar, welcome voice, but I ignored him and yanked the door open, rushing out into the waiting embrace of the wind that whipped through the hedge and my fruit trees that I’d spent so many years healing, over and over again.
A healer, that’s what I was. Barloc had spent two hours one night explaining it to me: how some Paladin had extra gifts, beyond the most common ability to wield fire, taking the burning blue flames within—visible in our eyes—and using it as a weapon. But my gift was healing. He said I could probably learn to wield the fire too, if his research was right, but healing was my true strength. It was what had kept us alive all those years, my ability to heal the plants in my gardens no matter what the weather did—rain or snow or unabated sunshine—always coaxing vegetables and fruits to grow and harvest, year round. Tiny, paltry uses for my great power, as Barloc called it, never enough to clear my mind for more than a few minutes.
My great power—that I had been so ignorant about, that had made my mother hate me, that had brought destruction and nearly death to the citadel, and lost my sister to me … possibly forever.
She’s alive. She’s alive. She has to be alive.
One pounding step on the ground for each word of the refrain that had almost become a prayer to me; little puffs of dirt to accentuate each syllable of my only hope at redemption.
“Inara—” Halvor drew up alongside me, slightly out of breath, his cheeks tinged pink from running to catch me. “Are you … That is to say, I’m worried that you … are not, ah…” He lapsed into miserable silence. With a slow exhale, I blinked back the tears I’d refused to let fall and turned to him.
“No,” I admitted, my first honest answer in … a while. “I’m not all right.”
Halvor’s eyes roamed over me. The shadow that crossed his face had nothing to do with the thunderheads coalescing above us, racing across the sky with low, throaty growls to announce their impending arrival. “Is it Barloc’s questions? I can tell him to stop. He just gets so eager and he doesn’t always realize—”
“No,” I interrupted him. “Well, yes, it’s that, but it’s not only that. It’s … everything.” I turned back to the rows of planter boxes full of thriving plants, bursting with all sorts of vegetables, heavy and ripe and glistening with the first few drops of rain that began to fall, landing on their jeweled skins and my face and upturned hands. I hadn’t touched my plants in almost a
week, hadn’t so much as brushed a fruit with my fingertips. But the weather had been perfect, not too hot, not too cold, with a stray shower here and there to keep them watered, and they’d thrived, even without me.
“I never realized before just how much I needed to use this … this…”—I gestured at myself, from head to toe—“thing inside me. I didn’t know how hard it would be to hold back, now that I’ve experienced what it’s like to … to be … free.”
Halvor stood beside me, close enough for his arm to brush mine every time he inhaled, quiet but listening. He was so good at listening. He was the only one who truly did anymore. Barloc was too busy explaining—always eager to share his years of research with all of us. Sami tried, but she was distracted by Mother … and everything else. And who could blame her? It wasn’t just my world that had been turned upside down by before and after.
The villagers had given up trying to break through the hedge after the garrison had shown up and also been unable to break through. But the threat that lay beyond its protection was enough to keep us in the citadel, that and my promise not to use my power—and the hedge only responded to me, it seemed.
“I can feel it coming,” I admitted at last. “And … I’m scared.”
“Oh, Inara.” My name was a soft murmur of apology. “This is asking too much of you.”
“No, it isn’t,” I insisted. “I just didn’t realize how hard it would be. Something’s different now that I did … everything that night. It’s like … I was merely scratching the surface my whole life and I was so used to it, that made the feeling—the pain—of holding all that power locked inside bearable. It just … was. It’s what I was. But now … I’m not anymore. I know what it’s like to be free of it, to do what I was meant to do with it, and now … trying to hold back from doing it is … It hurts, Halvor. It actually hurts. It’s like trying to force something back into a place when there’s no space for it anymore, because now I’m in that space—the real me, this me—and there’s nowhere for all that power to go anymore, and it’s pulling at me and stretching me and it … it hurts,” I finally finished lamely, knowing I probably made no sense at all and sounded as weak as I secretly feared I might be.
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