“Why did you let him go?” Halvor accused, his face ashen.
“There are hundreds of Paladin on the other side of that gateway. The council will recognize him for what he is immediately—and he will be executed. Not even a jakla can absorb the might of a hundred Paladin at once.”
“Father—you have to heal her—now!” I jumped to my feet, to grab his hand and pull him to Inara.
“If she’s had her power ripped out … that is not something that can be healed.” My father turned to face Inara, and his hand tightened on mine. “Her only hope is if you stopped him in time, before he drained her entirely.” He stepped toward her and then knelt by her head, reaching out to stroke her cheek once, softly, his hand trembling. “Inara,” he whispered. “My little girl. My sweet little girl.” He gently pressed his hand to her chest, his power flowing down his arms, into his fingers and out into her body. There was a pause and then he glanced up at me and shook his head once, stricken.
I stood there, staring, cold with shock. There was nothing we could do? I didn’t believe it. I didn’t believe him. He didn’t know—he was wrong. If he couldn’t do it, then Raidyn could. He had to heal her. Someone had to save her.
“Adelric?”
The gasped name was followed by a thud. I looked up to see my mother at the doorway on her knees, staring at my father, her eyes wide and her face white.
“Cinnia.” When he uttered her name, it sounded like a prayer.
“Where were you—how are you—” Her voice was choked. She lifted shaking hands to her mouth to press them against her lips, holding back a sudden, violent sob that rent through her. But then her gaze dropped and her eyes widened even further. “Inara!” she cried, and that was finally what induced her to scramble to her feet and rush forward. “What happened? Inara! Adelric? I … I…”
My father crawled over to where she knelt at Inara’s side and took her in his arms, holding her so gently, so tenderly, it made my heart constrict.
But I didn’t have time to watch their reunion—Inara was almost gone, and I had to do something. Taking advantage of their distraction, I turned and ran for the gateway—and Raidyn.
“Zuhra—no!”
I was on the second stair, the third … I hit the landing and stretched forward—but instead of me going through the gateway, someone else barreled out of it, directly into me, knocking me backward. We tumbled down the stairs, a tangle of bodies and legs and arms. I landed on my back with another crack of my head on the stone floor, the Paladin on top of me. I stared up at him, the pain receding as my eyes met his familiar blue-fire ones.
“Zuhra?”
“Raidyn?”
“Raidyn?” His name was echoed from behind me, but my father sounded furious—not relieved.
Raidyn scrambled off of me, and jumped to his feet. “Sir, there is a jakla—he attacked your mother—I tried to stop him, but—”
Before he could say anything else, the gateway flared and Barloc burst through it again, running full speed down the stairs to leap over me. And right behind him were my grandfather and Loukas on foot. Then Sachiel, her long braid swinging behind her, one side of her shaved head bloody, rode through it on her gryphon, followed by Sharmaine on hers. Then Taavi, bursting through the doorway and immediately letting loose a screech of fury. Naiki followed right behind.
“Stop him!” someone shouted as I jumped to my feet, ignoring the pounding in my head.
Barloc’s entire body flashed blue, his skin lighting up from head to toe, then went back to normal, as he sprinted across the Hall of Miracles and out the door.
“Sachiel—go through the window!” My father shouted the command. “Cut him off—but be careful! Taavi and Naiki, go with them!”
The gryphons cawed again, a roar of sound that vibrated through the hall, and then they wheeled and headed toward the window—the broken window, followed by Sachiel and Sharmaine.
I didn’t understand fully what was happening, only that Barloc had to be stopped and the Paladin couldn’t use their power against him, or he’d merely absorb it. I glanced to the wall where a huge assortment of weapons hung.
But surely, cold, hard steel would work on anyone, even a jakla.
I rushed to the nearest weapon—a long handle with a chain attached to it and a ball covered in spikes at the end of the chain—and pulled it from the wall. The weight of it was a shock, but I hefted it back up and then took off after Barloc.
“Zuhra, are you out of your mind?” Raidyn’s shout in my language almost made me pause—but not quite.
“Heal my sister!” I yelled back as I ran after the man who had done this to her—the man who was going to pay for stealing her power.
FORTY-THREE
INARA
Pain.
Silence.
I’d never had both at the same time before.
The roar was gone, but so was the flicker deep within me. The one that had always been there.
There was only reaching, grasping darkness. Thick, thick darkness that clung and sucked and pulled, and I couldn’t break free. It was dragging me under.
Somewhere far away, as distant as thunder all the way across the mountains, was a murmur of voices … a stroke of a hand on my cheek … a trembling memory almost too weak to be recalled of faces I wished to see.
Something entered the darkness, a sudden light that snaked through it, searching, reaching … but there was nothing for it to grasp, nothing for it to cling to, no way for it to take hold of me and bring me back.
It searched, it reached—
And I slipped further into the deep.
FORTY-FOUR
ZUHRA
I was slower than he was, especially hefting the increasingly heavy weapon over my shoulder, but the hedge would stop him—the custovitan hedge would be my saving grace. I reached the stairs of the main entrance just in time to see him stretch out his hands and blast the doors open with an explosion of power that reverberated through the entire citadel, even sending me stumbling backward.
“Zuhra—don’t! He’ll kill you!”
Loukas’s shout did little to deter me, but my grandfather was suddenly there by my side, as Loukas rushed past us.
“Zuhra—Raidyn needs you. Right now,” he said, soft but insistent. Grief darkened his eyes and turned my blood to ice, scraping through my veins. “Your sister … she’s not—”
“He healed her. He was going to heal her,” I insisted, but my grandfather just shook his head mutely.
The metal ball crashed to the ground where I dropped it.
“Go to her. I will stop him. I will stop the one who hurt my Ederra,” he vowed, stooping to grab up the weapon I’d abandoned.
His words glanced off me as I turned, running as fast as I could back the way I’d come. Raidyn couldn’t have failed—he couldn’t have. Inara had to be alive. She had to be.
Every step felt like a hundred; every breath burned like fire in my lungs, like the Paladin power I’d never been able to find within myself. If I’d had any, I would have given it to her—I would have given it all to her, if it meant she would live.
I sprinted down the hallway, toward the doors of the Hall of Miracles that gaped open, like a dark wound torn through the heart of the citadel. More Paladin rushed past me but I barely even acknowledged their presence in my world—what it meant, what it would mean. All that mattered was Inara.
I burst into the room to see all four of them gathered around her body—my mother, my father, Halvor, and Raidyn. And Inara, lying on the ground, unmoving.
They all turned to look at me, all except Raidyn, who had one hand on her chest and one on her throat, his head bent toward her and his eyes closed. His whole body was shaking, and yet she was completely still.
I dropped to the ground beside him, almost blinded by tears.
“He’s trying.” My father’s voice shook, his words heavy with sorrow. “Because you asked him to, he’s trying … but I told you … this is not something he can
heal, Zuhra. And if he doesn’t stop soon, he will lose himself.”
I just shook my head, my tears spilling out onto my cheeks. “No,” I whispered thickly. “Inara, no…”
“You have to tell him to stop, Zuhra. Hurry, or we’ll lose him, too.”
I looked at Raidyn, at the beautiful face that I’d come to know so well, his eyes squeezed shut, all the veins in his body glowing brightly as he bent every ounce of power he had to do what I’d asked—to do the impossible. Even as I watched, his power flickered and my heart lurched into my throat.
I couldn’t lose him, too.
If Inara was beyond our reach … if I was never to see my sister again … I couldn’t lose Raidyn at the same moment.
I swallowed, looking at my sister’s lovely face one last time—at the brush of her lashes against her cheeks, her lips slightly parted, and I wished I’d seen her eyes open—that I’d seen her burning blue irises one last time. I bent over and pressed a kiss to her cold cheek and brokenly whispered, “I love you, Inara. I love you and … and I’m … I’m sorry…”
I felt my father’s hand on my back, a warm, reassuring pressure as I forced myself to sit back up and then turned to Raidyn. “You can stop,” I choked out. “Raid, you can stop.”
But he was beyond hearing.
I reached out and put my hand on top of his, opening my mouth to repeat myself—but before I could speak, something ignited in my veins, my hand clamped onto his, and then heat exploded out into my body. It was just like when I’d grabbed Inara’s hand on the door handle, when I’d felt her power surging through me, burning through my veins, before the rakasa had burst through the gateway and knocked us both free.
Raidyn’s power surged into me, through me, turning my veins to fire and binding me to him. Instead of pulling him free, somehow I’d been sucked into the abyss with him. Dimly, I heard voices calling to me, but they quickly faded, further and further, until it was just me and Raidyn … and Inara.
I could hear the slow, steady beat of his heart in my ears. I could feel his presence beside me—within me—within her. I recognized the touch of his soul against mine from when he’d healed me. I felt him recognize me, almost as if his power—his soul—sighed in relief. Deeper, more intimate than any caress of his fingers against the skin of my hip, this most sacred, innermost part of who he was intertwined with my soul, with the fire burning through my veins, soothing it, calling to it, wrapping it up in his power. Images flashed through my mind: a woman and a man, hugging one another while he watched; the man putting him in the saddle of a gryphon, one I’d never seen before; the woman ladling something into a bowl while Raidyn sat at a table watching the man sneak up behind her, to surprise her with a kiss on her neck; the woman sitting on his bed, singing softly to him, his room softened by the settling darkness of falling dusk; my grandmother putting her arm around him and the crushing sadness that felt as though it were suffocating him; Sharmaine laughing, running her hands through his hair; coming around a corner and finding Loukas and Sharmaine half-hidden by my grandmother’s flowers, kissing; flying high above Soluselis, nothing but the wind on his face and the sun above and Naiki below; flying again, but this time, with me in his arms, and wanting so badly to kiss me—
It was so fast, over in one beat of his heart, but every one of the memories imprinted onto my mind, as if I’d experienced them myself. And then, somehow, I felt him guiding both of us toward her—toward Inara. I felt the moment we reached her soul, together. The same thing happened again, but this time it was flashes of Inara we saw, together. The roar, the pain, but also the joy—moments with me in her garden, moments with Sami in the kitchen, reading a book together in her bed, a kiss with Halvor, even a conversation with our mother. In another beat of his heart, it was over, and he and I were pushing onward, further into the core of who she was, where she was.
And all we found was the barest flicker of life, huddled in a corner of so much darkness, bringing back the light felt insurmountable. Somehow I recognized that she was almost gone, that this tiny flame was all that was left of my sister before she left us—forever.
He stretched toward her, but she was out of reach, he couldn’t stretch that far.
So I did.
I wound myself through him, with him, combining our will and might into one, and together we pressed toward her, toward that last flickering ember that was Inara’s life force in this dark, cavernous space, where I realized her power had once resided. It hurt, oh, how it hurt, ripping, tearing, burning—but I refused to give up, refused to let her go, and then—
We reached her.
Raidyn and I, together, wrapped our essence, our very souls around hers and slowly, gently coaxed it forward. I felt him doing something, as if he were stitching her back together, filling this terrible void with something else, patching it almost, so it wasn’t entirely empty.
And, for some unfathomable reason, every stitch felt like someone stabbing me.
But I knew, somehow, that this was the only way to bring her back—to save my sister. And so I grasped onto him and I grasped onto her and he continued his work, reeling us backward out of this dark, terrible, empty place, stitch by stabbing stitch.
Until finally, finally, when I felt as though I would soon lose the ability to hold on to either of them any longer, he pulled even further back, fast, fast, fast, unspooling from her, withdrawing into his own body, so it was just me and him once more, and then with the strangest sensation, as though he’d run a finger over my cheek, except soul to soul, he unraveled himself from me, as well, and with a gasp of pain that flared like an explosion of fire through my body, I was slammed back into myself.
* * *
Trying to peel my eyes open took an inordinate amount of effort. When I finally managed to do it, I realized I was lying on my back, staring up at a sea of faces surrounding me.
“She’s awake,” my father breathed, and my mother reached out to brush my face with her fingers, her own face wet with tears. My mother was … crying?
“Zuhra?”
I gasped and tried to sit up, but my head swam, forcing me back to the ground.
“Go slow,” my father warned. “That was … quite the feat.”
And then she was there, kneeling at my side, well and whole and alert and lucid and alive. But her eyes … her eyes were a plain, dull blue.
No spark of Paladin power left.
“Inara,” I whispered.
And then I began to sob.
She bent over to pull me into her arms.
“I … I…”
“You saved me, Zuzu.” She squeezed me even tighter and I finally was able to force the strength into my arms to squeeze her back. “Just like you always have.”
“I don’t … I’m not sure…”
She released me enough to pull back. Halvor hovered behind her, his hand outstretched toward her, though not touching her, as though he still couldn’t believe it. Inara glanced to her left and I followed her gaze. Raidyn knelt a few feet away, his hands on his knees. He was pale and trembling, his hairline damp, and his eyes were dulled, only the faintest glow left as he watched me gravely.
“Thank you,” I choked out. “Thank you for healing her.”
Raidyn’s gaze never flickered. “I am not to thank. You are.”
I shook my head, halting and unsure. “I don’t understand…”
“Go ahead, Raidyn. Tell her what you told us,” my father prompted.
I looked back to him. When our eyes met, I remembered suddenly what I’d experienced—what I’d felt … what I’d seen. My entire body ached, but my heart most of all. The connection from when he’d healed me—the sanaulus—I think I understood, at last.
“Zuhra … what you just did…” His expression was unreadable when he said, “I wasn’t able to heal Inara by myself—it wasn’t until you touched my hand, until you joined your power with mine that we succeeded.”
“My … what?” A pulse went through me—a stab of want so
strong, I could barely breathe.
“Zuhra, you’re an enhancer.” The way he said it, breathing the word as if he could barely believe it, sent a thrill down my spine.
“Apparently it’s incredibly rare,” Inara added, “and it’s the only way Raidyn could have saved me—because your power enhanced his, allowing him to bring me back. I told you—you saved me. Again.”
An enhancer. Grandfather had been right after all. I did have power within me, I just hadn’t found it yet.
Grandfather.
My joy and relief dissipated. “Where is Grandfather—where is Barloc?”
Before anyone could answer me, a blast of light exploded out from the gateway. With a cry, I ducked—but the room had fallen silent. Nothing else happened.
When I uncovered my head and glanced up, the gateway had gone dark.
I immediately turned to Raidyn. He stared, slack-jawed.
The gateway was shut.
He was trapped here.
And he looked genuinely horrified.
Could Loukas have been wrong?
Loukas … he was here, too. Trapped here.
And Grandfather.
“Where is my father—Zuhra, where did he go?”
I snapped back to attention to find both of my parents on their feet, staring at me.
“He—he went after Barloc. He said something about making him pay for hurting Ederra—”
I barely finished the sentence before my father took off at a dead run, my mother right on his heels. Inara rushed after them, Halvor at her side, clutching her hand, leaving me and Raidyn. I scrambled to my feet, even though I still felt humiliatingly weak.
“Zuhra, wait—take it slow. You just drained yourself to heal your sister.” He lifted a hand, took a step toward me, but then paused … stopped … let his hand fall.
My heart fell with it.
“I’m all right,” I insisted. “I can’t just sit here. That’s my family out there.”
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