We can’t. You do it. Shadow’s voice.
Shadow who had walked through her dreams and her nightmares.
Shadow who had almost killed her, the only one of the three who had the strategic sensibility.
Shadow, who was never, ever wrong.
Teller. Teller.
I can’t leave!
You don’t have to, stupid stupid girl.
Shadow—
Think. Be less stupid, or he will die, and you will—
Silence. The only thing Jewel could hear, now, was the beating of the heart she had pulled from her chest.
* * *
• • •
She was seer-born. The talent had been part of her life for as long as she could remember. It had saved her life—her life—dozens of times. Possibly more. She had gone to the Oracle, had taken the Oracle’s opaque, confusing, and terrifying test, in order to find the White Lady and save her city from the beings that were now destroying it.
And that had been true, on the surface of things. It had been true on a deeper level as well. But it had not been the whole of the truth.
Her talent, her power, had saved her life, yes. But it had not saved the lives of her den. Yes, she had found Finch, found Teller, because of the power. But she had had no control over it. She had had no warning when Ellerson and Carver disappeared into a closet. And if she passed the Oracle’s test, she would have that power. She would have the control to direct her vision. She would be able to see the things that threatened her den, her kin, at her own command.
It wasn’t about empires. It wasn’t about gods. It wasn’t about the firstborn or the Sleepers or the White Lady, except indirectly. It was about family. Her family. Her chosen kin. She had not wanted to fail them again.
But because she was seer-born, she had a singular moment of clarity, a moment of perfect understanding. Shadow was right.
She could do this.
But she could not do it and remain The Terafin. She could not do it and remain Jewel Markess. She could not live as she had lived. She had recreated the entirety of her personal rooms, dragging them into some part of the hidden wilderness that would, after today, no longer be hidden.
She had made one mistake in a dream, and an entire family had disappeared from a run-down apartment in the twenty-fifth holding. One mistake—while asleep. She had not made those mistakes while waking, while wakeful. She would never make those mistakes while awake. And if she did this, if she made this choice, she might never be awake again.
“No,” Rath said, as if he could hear it all, his voice the only intrusion in the terrible, gathering silence. “Not as you are now. There was a reason—I was told—that the Sen were not rulers of the cities they had created—cities that could stand against the very gods. Jewel, I will be here. Where you cannot wake yourself, I will wake you. It is the reason, in the end, that I was bound. It was the reason I was offered the ring. I chose the moment of my death, and the demons who were the cause of it did not retrieve the information they might have retrieved—but the ring was a ring of binding, an oath ring.
“You will not be awake again—not while the wilderness is the whole of our world. But I will guard your sleep, and I will wake you when it is necessary.”
“You don’t understand what’s necessary. You don’t care about the nameless people no one remembers. You don’t care about the strangers, the—”
“You do. You always have. And it will be your city, you who were trained, and raised, by my sister. I will remain here, Jewel. When you leave, I will accompany you across the bridge, to the Halls of Judgment where Mandaros waits. But choose, or you will have no choice.”
Jewel bit her lip.
Nodded.
She had not taken the Oracle’s test, in the end, for any of the reasons she believed she had—but conversely, had taken it for all of those reasons as well. Because it was only in this fashion that she could be, as Avandar and Meralonne had called her, Sen.
She had always been afraid of the fragility of the crystal, because she had always assumed that it was the fragility of her own heart: the pain of loss, the fear of it, the shadows of death and war reaching, always reaching. But no. No.
It was not fragile. Even as she began to apply pressure from both hands, both palms, even as she chose to crush it, to break it, she understood that.
It was simply the expression of everything she could possibly become or be, all at once. It was, in its entirety, Jewel Markess ATerafin. All of them. All of the possible pasts that could lead to this moment, and all of the possible futures that led from it. They were contained, entrapped, folded into a space that she could conceive of and hold in two hands.
And in breaking the crystal, she freed them all.
Chapter Twenty-Two
TELLER HUDDLED PROTECTIVELY AROUND his cat as the last of his two defenders fell. He could see the swords that had slowly carved their way through those guardians—a familiar blue glow, edged and perfect. He was not brave, had never been brave. But he had tried very hard to be kind. To be polite. To observe and to understand the people around him—and to accept them. All of them.
He had learned wisdom, over the years, but it was at heart the wisdom of the powerless. And he had not, in the past year, been powerless by any definition of the word his younger self could understand.
All that he had built for himself over the past decade had become, in the short space of one night, irrelevant. Although he did not huddle over the corpse of his mother, attempting against all reason to make her wake up, he felt that that moment and this one had a bitter continuity.
It was the snow and the cold that would have killed him on the day Jay had come running across the holdings, the rest of the den in pursuit, to save him. In the wilderness, it was winter, as it had been on that day. And this winter would kill him. His eyes were shut as he waited, and the waiting extended the seconds, the minutes, of fear; it was not the cold alone that caused him to shiver.
But he looked up as he felt the wind change. The breeze was warm, and there had been no warmth in the manse for some time. To his great surprise, the forest guardians—both of them—stood before him once again; he could see the knots and the patterns of grain that composed their flesh. The clothing they had worn had been destroyed by sword and magic, but they looked untouched, unmarked.
His legs were tingling as he forced himself to his feet. The cat came with him, but movement had become much simpler, because there was no snow. In a widening circle that seemed to have started at the point of his feet, the snow vanished. It didn’t melt; it simply ceased to exist. The halls that he had known for the duration of his life in the Terafin manse did not precisely return, although he could see the slate floors beneath his feet, shorn of the roots that forest spirits had planted. There was carpet as well, in Terafin colors, and the walls had begun to adopt their former adornments. As if in a dream, he watched paintings materialize between the supporting beams that held the roof above his head. The roof and a second story.
But the supporting beams were not wood or stone or whatever they had once been; they were trees. And the arches that formed doorways were trees as well. Ellariannatte.
“Jay,” he whispered.
One of the forest guards said, “Yes.”
The Arianni had frozen, as if they had swallowed the winter; they were too pale, too colorless, for the world that now enveloped them. For one long moment, they stared at the forest guard, and then their swords vanished.
“Don’t hurt them,” Teller whispered.
“Our Lord is not pleased,” the tree spirit replied. “They attempted to kill you.”
“I am aware of that.” He bent and set the cat down, and the cat took another spiteful swipe at his already abraded hands before flouncing off. “But they will not try again.”
The Wild Hunt stared between the two guards, and Teller met t
heir silvered eyes and saw confusion. As if, he thought, they were waking.
“These lands,” Teller continued, “are the domain of The Terafin. Have you business with her?” As if they were simple political visitors, and his duty was to determine whether or not they were to be granted The Terafin’s time. And that had been his duty, as right-kin.
“Teller,” Jay said. She stood between two trees that formed an arch at the end of the hall. “They are not guests.”
Teller winced. The forest guards were right—she was angry. He lifted his hands in den-sign, saw her expression at the cuts that had changed their color significantly, and grimaced. Not them. Cat.
This did not improve her mood. He thought very little would, but didn’t care because her presence had significantly improved his. The forest guard did not part to allow him to go to her side, or he would have been there already. Sadly, the unarmed Arianni remained between the guard and Jay.
Something was wrong; it took him a moment to understand what it was.
Neither the tree spirits nor the Wild Hunt had reacted to Jay’s presence at all.
Don’t kill them, he signed.
Her lips compressed into a thin line, and he winced. He had not seen her this angry since the time—since the time that Haerrad had arranged to have his limbs broken. To the Arianni, he said, “Are you here on behalf of your Lord?” Before they could answer, he added, “We expect the White Lady’s arrival shortly, and as you must imagine, we are woefully unprepared. If you will, you might find respite in the forest. I have been informed that you will be aware of the moment of her arrival.”
If the rest of his words had been almost incomprehensible to them, these last words were not. A murmur of sound rose, a different breeze. They did not forget Teller, not precisely, but turned to one another. He could not understand their words; they were soft. But soft or no, they carried something that seemed—to Teller—to be a strange mixture of fear and elation.
“You know they don’t deserve this, right?” Jay said.
“If we got what we deserved half the time, we would never have made it this far.” His lips quirked in a smile, he added, “I’m not sure I did anything good enough in this life to deserve you. Thank you.”
She had never been comfortable with gratitude.
He shook his head. “This is the second time you’ve run through the winter to find me.”
“I’d really appreciate it if you never make me do it again. After this is all over, you and I are going to have a discussion about the importance of household pets in an emergency.”
He winced but didn’t argue.
“Now, go find Finch. I think she’s hysterical.”
Teller looked openly skeptical, and the forest guard did not move.
“She thinks you’re dead.”
That would probably do it. He stepped forward, into the rigid backs of the arborii. “We have been asked to escort our guests to the forest proper,” he told the trees. “And I’ve been tasked with finding Finch.”
“She is with the eldest,” one of the trees said, except eldest wasn’t the word he used. It was longer and deeper, and Teller heard it at the same time as he heard the familiar, spoken word.
“The fox?”
This silence was different. “. . . No,” was the hesitant answer.
To the Arianni, Teller offered a Weston bow. It would have been flawless had his clothing not been covered in splinters. “You are not required to accept the offered hospitality,” he told them.
But they had turned, again, to the forest guard, and when they spoke, they spoke something that echoed the word that was not quite eldest, surprise in their tone. Surprise and something else.
“Yes, even so.”
They then bowed to Teller, the gesture almost reverent. “We will accept whatever hospitality you now offer, and we will attempt no further harm of any living being in your Lord’s forest that does not attempt to kill us.”
This seemed reasonable to Teller, but it clearly surprised the forest guard. As they began to move, Teller asked them why.
“There are many, many ways in which the powerful might be offended,” one finally said. “And attempts to kill or destroy are only one, and not, in the end, the most significant when it comes to war in the wilderness.”
* * *
• • •
When Jay walked into the clearing around the forest elder, Finch rose. Her skirts were damp at the knees, but the skirts didn’t matter. For a moment, nothing else did. She ran across the short distance—three yards, no more—and enfolded Jewel in a hug that demanded that hug be returned.
“I’m sorry,” Jay said. “I’m sorry.”
Finch shook her head. “You’re back.”
“I’m back.”
“For good?”
“For good. Teller is on his way here,” she added. Finch pulled back. Jay was wearing the traveling clothes she’d worn on her pilgrimage to the Oracle. That clothing, however, was so clean it might never have been worn. “I kept my promise,” she whispered.
Finch, attuned to Jay, said, “Yes. You became Terafin.”
“I want you to take the House.”
Finch stilled, understanding at last the reason for the apology. “If you’re back—”
“I’m back, but there’s too much of me. There’s too much. I am having a hundred conversations right now, while I talk to you. I am talking to Teller. I am talking to Angel. I’m talking to Arann, and to a little girl who somehow managed to survive the collapse of half her house. I’m talking to Farmer Hanson. Helen didn’t make it.” She exhaled. “Taverson was happy to see me. I’m sure Duvari has very, very mixed feelings. Jester wants Birgide to stay with the den.”
“I can’t take the House,” Finch said quietly.
“You can—”
“I can’t. You’re not dead. And no one—no one—will contest your rule of the House now.”
Jay shook her head. “No one but me. I can’t rule the House. I can’t attend the Council of the Ten. I will not be welcome in Avantari.”
Finch’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve saved this city.”
“Yes. But it isn’t the city it once was. It’s changed—and Finch, it will keep changing if I walk its streets. What happened in the basement in Avantari is nothing compared to what will happen if I—” She shook her head. “I want you to take the House.”
* * *
• • •
“Haval.”
“Terafin.” Haval glanced in the direction of the woman he had chosen to advise, his hands loosely clasped behind his back. She was, to his eye, younger, and her eyes were bright. Too bright, for all that they remained brown. There was a warmth to them that implied tears.
“Councillor.”
He closed his eyes, feeling his age. No, he thought, not his age. His experience, the difference between the life he had led and the life Jewel had led. He frowned as he looked past The Terafin.
Her smile deepened. “You can see him.”
He offered her no answering smile; his face had frozen for one long second, and it was not a mask.
But Jewel’s smile did not falter. “It’s not me. I didn’t bind him.” As if she understood the whole of his reaction.
“Ararath.”
“Yes, old friend. We have come full circle. I left her, in the end, in your hands for a time. I absolve you of that responsibility.”
Haval shook his head.
“You cannot advise her now. And Hannerle is waiting.”
Haval closed his eyes; his hands tightened briefly.
“She’s not,” Jewel added, “very happy, but she’s waiting. I think she’s terrifying the arborii.”
“Terafin—”
Jewel lifted a hand as if to ward off that word, that title. But she did not say this, did not disavow it. Instead, she said,
“I do not release you, no matter what Rath says. He didn’t ask for my opinion.”
“And what need have you of a Councillor now?”
“Not me,” she replied. Some of the brightness faded from her eyes, her expression. “Haval—”
He lifted a hand. “No, Jewel. There are no more tests. Ah, perhaps that is inaccurate. There will be no further tests from me.” Throughout the city, the stone buildings that the Sleepers had commanded from the earth continued their rise—but they were different buildings now, in shape, in appearance. Among those buildings, the trees had also shifted, spreading across the city between these new houses of stone. The mountain in the bay had vanished.
But the citadel that had heralded the waking of those Sleepers had not.
He turned from his brief consideration of the city that she was building and looked toward the height of those towering walls. There Jewel stood, arms half lifted, palms empty and turned toward the city as if to gather the whole of it—every detail, every nuance—into herself. He then turned back to the girl who stood before him.
“I . . . can’t be Terafin,” Jewel told him.
He nodded.
“Did you know, Haval? Did you know that this was what I must become?”
“No. Not precisely. But I understood what the cats—your cats—feared, and I understood what you yourself were so afraid of that you could not even examine it.” He exhaled. “You will have me safeguard and advise your regent.”
“If it’s not you,” she replied, “It’ll be Jarven.”
“Young Finch is not that foolish. Nor is she that sentimental.”
Jewel nodded. “She was always a better choice than I was.”
“Perhaps. But you were seer-born, and she was not. In return for this service, what am I offered?”
“Some protection from Jarven,” Jewel replied, with unexpected seriousness.
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