by R. A. Rock
Stars and Shadows, she was going to die. Well, not die, but she was going to be terribly injured. She would endure horrific pain. And she would not heal for a long, long time.
What in the name of Starfall should he do?
Finn wracked his brain for a solution, time seeming to slow down as Tessa fell toward the ground that would break her to pieces. She would hit going at a terrific speed and break every bone in her body. He had to save her.
But how?
In that instant of desperation, his mind cleared, and Finn felt himself open to the Starlight inside him. And the answer was obvious.
The Unity Blades.
Particularly, the blade that opened portals.
This was clearly an instance where the toll exacted would be worth it. He had to save Tessa. Finn drew the correct blade from the Otherworld sheath, gave a quick glance at the hilt to ensure the symbol on the knife was the right one, and held the blade curve down. He glanced up to make sure he was directly under Tessa. He was. Then he frowned.
Where to send her?
A second later, he envisioned the lake where they had rested earlier in the day. Perfect. He drew the cutting edge just over the ground, ripping a hole in reality and creating a portal opening with a circle about eight feet wide. Finn wasn’t about to have Tessa hit the edge.
When he looked through the portal, he could see the lake and hear the waves lapping on the shore as if his ears were filled with cotton. It would have to do. All of this took only a few seconds. A moment after he finished opening the portal, Tessa fell through the circle with a gasp of surprise when she hit the magic instead of the hard ground.
Finn sucked in a breath, closing his eyes in relief. He breathed in the scent of the geysers that smelled like a struck match. Tessa hadn’t hit the ground, and her bones hadn’t been shattered into a thousand pieces. The portal had worked. All she had to do was swim to shore, and he would meet her at the lake, and they could proceed. It seemed as though none of the other warriors were either brave enough or stupid enough to go into the geyser field after them, and Finn was certainly done with training for the day.
He glanced down into the portal to confirm that Tessa was swimming for shore before he used the blade to close the portal. He scowled at the blue water.
There was no sign of her.
With a muted curse, Finn spotted her in her winged form, which she must have managed to change to at the last minute. She was sinking down into the lake, about to drown. Again, she wouldn’t die, but it would be horribly unpleasant and would take her considerable time to heal. He had only made things worse trying to save her.
Shadows take me.
Finn jumped through the portal, feeling the zap of electricity as he fell through the opening. When had he come to care about this Captain of the Guard so much, he wondered, that he would jump through portals to save her?
Tessa fell through the air with a sinking feeling in her stomach, and the ground rushed up to meet her far too quickly. With every last desperate bit of energy she had left, she focused inward and channeled her magic into changing forms.
It was no good. She was too upset.
But no. This was her only chance.
Yes, she would survive this fall, but it would be excruciatingly painful. And she really had no interest in seeing how much agony she could endure for the next year to eighteen months that it would take her to heal.
Tessa closed her eyes, blocking out the ground that she was flying toward. She drew in a deep breath and pulled in her attention as she had been taught to do when she had first begun her training in the Dark Court.
She remembered what her father had told her time and again. “Tessa, you won’t always have peace in the circumstances around you—in fact most of the time, you won’t — but you can always have peace inside yourself. You must access a state of calm connection with the Starlight that shines within you. For that is where your power lies. Your power is within you.”
“My power is within me, my power is within me,” she muttered as she accelerated toward the ground. With immense focus and concentration that she didn’t know she possessed, she entered that state of calm connection to the Starlight within. After that, changing form was easy.
Tessa shifted to her tiny, winged form and flapped her wings. But instead of the wind in her face, she experienced a strange, shivery, buzzing feeling—magic. She opened her eyes and was surprised to see water for a fraction of a second before she hit it.
Shadows and Chasm, now that she was in this winged form, she could not be in the water. She would drown. She held her breath, knowing that she had maybe a minute before she would have an irresistible urge to breathe in.
Then she would drown. And she would stay drowned until her body was dragged from the water. Then she would heal, but meanwhile, she would be drowned, for Severance’s sake.
This day was going from bad, to worse, to absolutely awful.
Tessa thrashed a bit but then realized that she would use up her air faster if she did that. So, she held still and slowly drifted down into the water. The lake was blue and clear as glass. The sunlight filtered in, but as she drifted deeper into the water, it got darker and darker. There was a quiet peace here under the waves that calmed her for a moment.
Then she remembered she was going to drown and felt a spike of panic. She reached for the calm connection to Starlight again but couldn’t find it.
This was it then.
Her luck had run out.
Tessa began to see spots in front of her eyes, and she held on for as long as she could, knowing things would get really horrible once she breathed in water.
To her surprise, there was a huge disturbance in the water above her head, and she tilted her face back to see what was going on. There was a large body in the water. And as it swam down toward her, she realized it was Finn.
He spotted her and reached out, grabbing her tiny leg, and kicking as fast as he could, he dragged her rapidly to the surface, pulling her roughly out of the water and plopping her unceremoniously on the top of his head, while he inexplicably reached into his Otherworld sheath and drew out one blade. He reached up and whipped the blade over his head. And she saw that he was closing a portal.
That was what had happened—the buzz of magic. Finn had thought she was going to be splattered on the ground, and he had opened a portal to save her, not knowing that she would change into her tiny form at the last moment.
He put one hand to where she lay sprawled and gasping on his head, probably to make sure she was still there. Reassured, he struck out for shore, swimming strongly as Tessa breathed in sweet, sweet air and thanked every last star in the sky and Finn for the fact that she was still intact—no bones broken and not drowned.
When he reached the shore, he pulled himself out and lifted her gently off his head, laying her on the warm sand.
“Tessa?” he asked, suddenly seeming worried as she lay there, feeling almost as worn out as she had been after her ordeal in Perdira’s Mire. “Are you all right? Please speak to me.”
What was her life coming to that these terrible things were happening to her? When this was all over, she needed to take a serious look at herself. Maybe it was time for a change.
Tessa tried to speak, but it came out as a strangled croak. She swallowed, relaxed her throat, and tried again.
“I’m good,” she said, her tiny voice scratchy. “Alive. Thanks to you.”
His eyes were still worried, and she just couldn’t deal with his emotions as well as her own, so she closed her eyes and almost immediately drifted away.
When she opened them again, she was lying in an enormous bed under a comforter that seemed like it was going to suffocate her with its weight. She realized that it was because she was still in her tiny form. So she closed her eyes and relaxed, shifting effortlessly now that there wasn’t the stress of her imminent death to inhibit her ability to change form.
A candle burned on the table, and the window was dark. The sme
ll of stew wafted up through the floorboards from the kitchen that must lie below. Tessa heard soft murmuring and guessed that they were at an inn.
She turned her head and spotted Finn sitting in a chair next to the bed. His eyes had drooped down, but when his chin hit his chest, his head bobbed up again. When he saw her looking at him, he knelt beside the bed and took her hand.
“Stars alive, Tessa,” he exclaimed and bent his head over her hand. She felt a wetness on her skin that she identified as his tears, and she felt bewildered.
“Finn, what’s wrong? Are you—”
“You’ve been out for hours. I thought maybe you were going to be out for months, healing. And it would be all my fault.” He wiped at his eyes and sat back in the chair. “I was so worried. Thank the blessed Stars that you’re alive and… feeling well?”
Tessa nodded, and a weak, tired smile graced her face.
“I am well and will be better after a good night’s sleep. And it would not have been your fault, Finn. Anything can happen while training and often does. This is not the first time I’ve nearly been killed while learning a new weapon. Just ask the bow master in the Dark Court. I was out for days after that accident.”
Finn’s shoulders dropped an inch or two, and his face lost some of its guilt and desperation, but she knew he was still kicking himself. He needed to know that she didn’t blame him. She finally understood that everything happened for a reason and that there was a reason why today had played out the way it had. They only needed time for it to all become clear. She opened her mouth to reassure him again, but Finn spoke again, clearly unable to forgive himself or let it go.
“But Tessa, I never should have used the Canyon to train. I never should have ignored the man in the village with the brand. You could have been so badly hurt.”
“Nonsense,” she said, making an infinitesimal head shake. “I probably would have made the same decision myself if our roles had been reversed.”
He still didn’t seem comforted.
“Hey,” she said, lifting her hand toward him, palm up. He put his own in hers. “I am well. You saved me. I will live to fight another day.”
“Of course you will. You’ve survived as Captain of the Guard in the Dark Court for three hundred years—”
“Over three hundred,” Tessa corrected him, but he went on as though she hadn’t interrupted.
“You’re the strongest person I know. And the best fighter. Of course you’ll be all right. But what if—”
“Stop,” Tessa said, and though her voice was quiet, there was no missing the core of steel in it. Finn met her eyes, his face solemn.
“It was not your fault,” she said, emphasizing each word. And the ring of truth in the air made him go still. “I made the choice to train there. I could have refused. I chose to go into that field. And what happened to me there was a result of my choices. Not yours.”
Finn said nothing, his eyes riveted to Tessa’s.
“And though it’s nice of you to want to take responsibility for what happened to me, I determine my life. And I will allow no one to take that power away from me.”
As she said it, she realized that was what she had been doing for so long. Blaming others. Thinking that life wasn’t fair. But since she had woken up after nearly drowning, she felt a clarity that she had never known. And she understood that she was the only one who was responsible for her life. And that meant no more blaming others for what went wrong.
He was silent a long moment, a tiny frown creasing his forehead. “You really believe that,” he said finally, studying her face carefully.
“It’s the truth,” she said. “I finally understand. It is not a question of belief.”
“What about being sent on this quest? You weren’t happy about that. Don’t you blame the Dark Queen? Or me?”
“I was upset at first. But now I’m starting to see that the Stars had a purpose in sending me here. With you. Eventually, we’ll see the Stars’ plan, even though it’s unclear sometimes when it’s unfolding.”
“Are you saying that we should take one-hundred percent responsibility for our lives?”
“Yes.”
“For the good things and the bad things?”
Tessa thought about this. “Most people both thank the Stars for their good fortune and blame the Shadows for their bad. I think that yes, we have complete power over our own life and our own choices. But that also means taking responsibilities for the bad things that happen, too.”
They both thought about that.
Tessa continued. “I think that it doesn’t mean blaming ourselves for the bad things but understanding our responsibility in choosing how we react to what happens.”
Finn looked confused.
“I can’t quite explain it,” she said. “I just know that it’s true. I have to take responsibility for my life if I want to change it and make it better. That is clear.”
Finn crossed his arms over his chest, taking it all in.
Tessa remembered how she had made herself miserable for so long, fighting against her situation. But not anymore. It all made sense now.
“It is only by accepting completely and taking responsibility for my life that I’m free. All else is bondage, Finn. All else is misery. Trust me. I know.”
Chapter 18
Four days after the Canyon incident, Finn stopped at the edge of a village, looking around as if expecting trouble. Tessa halted, too, trying to see what he saw—trying to assess the danger. The forest was quiet, with only the odd bird tweeting once in a while. The air was warm, and everything seemed safe and nice. But she had learned from long experience that what seemed nice often wasn’t.
“What is it?” she whispered finally, unable to spot anything.
He pressed his lips together and gave a half shrug. “I don’t know exactly. There’s just something weird.”
“Where are we?”
“Balington. It’s known for its weavers.” He stared at the innocuous-looking little village before them. “They weave the cloth that’s used for the Dark Queen’s clothing. I thought we could get more provisions here. And some lunch.”
With a soft clink, he patted the small bag of coins that hung on his belt. It certainly wasn’t all of his money, Tessa knew, but it would be enough to buy them food and supplies to continue on their journey back to the Dark Court.
“Seems pretty harmless,” Tessa said, wondering if Finn was mistaken. “So, is everything all right?”
Finn seemed confused and wary at the same time, as if he couldn’t figure out the signals he was getting. He didn’t respond.
She pressed him. “Is there danger?”
“Not danger, I don’t think,” Finn said, glancing around. “But I feel…”
“What?”
“I don’t know. Foreboding, I suppose.”
Tessa raised both eyebrows at him. “Really?”
He frowned and shrugged, looking sulky. “I can’t explain it any other way.”
“Well, let’s go then. And we’ll see what sort of welcome we’ll receive in this little hamlet.”
“Yes,” Finn said. “Sure. Fine.”
Tessa gave him a look. They had been together for several weeks now, and she thought she could gauge his moods pretty well. He didn’t seem fine.
As they strolled into the town square, it appeared to be mostly deserted. But that was not unusual in the villages at this hour of the afternoon. Many people slept away the hottest hours of the day and awoke refreshed and ready for the cooler part of the evening.
Finn sent down the bucket into the well with a splash, and then they passed the dipper back and forth until their thirst was quenched by the cold, clear water. Every once in a while, a passerby gave Finn and Tessa a glance and then looked away. They seemed to be used to strangers in this village, likely because of the servants that came here on the queen’s business.
As they were busy with the well, a small girl approached them. She looked up at them with large brown eyes in
a face that was too thin and had some dirt on the cheek.
“Hello,” Finn said kindly, squatting down beside her. “Can I help you with something?”
The little waif nodded, still not saying anything.
“What do you need?” he asked.
Tessa eyed the girl with misgiving, as she remembered her experience with Perdira. But when she looked into that sweet, trusting face, her heart melted a little bit. Sure, Tessa was a bit jaded. But the world probably wasn’t as malevolent as she generally saw it. This little girl was evidence of that fact. She was probably an orphan. Maybe a beggar. Didn’t get enough to eat. Completely innocent and helpless.
The small girl leaned in, and Finn did too, as if to listen to what she had to say. And that was when she snipped the money bag from his belt and took off running at breakneck speed across the square and into another street.
Finn yelled and gave chase.
Tessa ran after him, cursing herself for how trusting she had become. These street urchins always had an ulterior motive. Always. She should have known better. Just because someone looked weak didn’t mean they were.
Finn was catching up to the thief as she ran down several streets in quick succession. Then the girl darted into a narrow alley, and they both dashed after her, running single file down the passage that was barely two feet across. Their footsteps were loud in the enclosed space. At the end, there was a wall—the side of a two-story building—and the little girl deftly climbed up, grabbing the rough bricks and climbing like a monkey. She disappeared over the balcony into the house beyond.
“Shadows take that little thief,” Finn said, reaching for the nearest handhold.
Tessa bent over and put her hands on her knees to catch her breath. “Maybe we should let her have the money. It’s not like it was all you had. And she probably needs it more than you do.”