Chapter 31
When I woke, it was to soft darkness. I felt a light breeze against my skin. The bitter scent of medicine stung my nose. I tried to move my body, but I couldn’t feel it.
Panic drummed through me. Logic suggested that the scent of medicine meant I was being treated by a healer, that I couldn’t feel my body because I’d been given poppy’s tears to numb the pain.
But my own tears came anyway, slipping silently down my cheeks.
My body was my greatest tool; not being able to move it or assess its damage made me feel like I was back in that writhing woodland, fleeing danger that I couldn’t stop to fight.
Instead I had to run. Running, running, I had to keep running.
“Sleep,” came a small voice, followed by a slight press of warmth against my chest. When I glanced down, I saw a soft light shining at the hem of my quilt.
It reminded me of fire, but it didn’t burn.
A memory tickled the edge of my mind, but the poppy’s tears must have been potent, for I couldn’t grasp it. A heaviness pulled my eyelids closed.
I slept.
***
The next time I woke, pale morning light greeted me. The room was still quiet, but beyond its walls I could hear the soft bustle of activity: people talking in low voices, bodies moving and shifting. Footsteps. A dull clink of glass that evoked an image of the tidy jars in Nanette’s infirmary.
Thinking of Rosewarren made my panic return. How many days had it been since I’d left with Gareth for Falkeron? Too many. I had lost count. The Warden, I knew, must have been out of her mind with worry. She would be furious. The thought turned me cold.
Brigid. Cira. Nesset. Freyda. The littles. Names floated up from the abyss of my drugged mind like ashes disturbed by the wind.
Talan. Ryder.
Gemma. Farrin.
Wardwell.
Briarcourt.
Gareth.
My breath caught in the back of my throat.
I imagined the warmth of his touch, his smooth skin, the silky waves of his messy golden hair.
I remembered how it felt to be held by him: like the snug circle of his arms around my body marked the edge of all things, and within that sacred place there was only goodness.
When I recalled the brush of his lips against my thighs, the sturdy anchor of his forehead pressed to mine, my heart clenched, and for the first time in what felt like an age, the lines of my body began coming back into focus.
“Do not cry,” said the small voice from before. “You will heal, and your power will return. You used so much of it. A little more, and there would have been nothing left.”
Something about the odd, halting way the voice spoke struck a chord in my chest. I looked around, elated that I could now move my head, and found a tiny creature made of light perched at the foot of my bed.
Its brilliant corona masked its form, but my keen sentinel eyes nevertheless found recognizable shapes within its glow: a trembling wing, a bare leg.
All at once I vividly remembered our exchange in the woodland. She hadn’t known the name then, but maybe something in her mind had shifted since then.
“Yvaine?” I asked carefully. My mind felt sharper, calmer; it was easier to speak.
The small voice hummed. “Again, this name I know and yet do not.”
A pinch of worry twisted inside me. Either this wasn’t Ankaret but a creature pretending to be her, or this was Ankaret and she remembered nothing of her previous life as Queen Yvaine Ballantere of Edyn.
“Tell me who you are, then,” I said.
“Yvaine,” the creature murmured, as if she hadn’t heard me. “Yvaine, Yvaine. I do know this name. Every time she says it, the shape of it becomes stronger.”
Then she looked up at me. Two pinpricks of bright blue light marked her eyes.
“Yvaine,” she said again, a note of astonishment in her voice. “That was once my name. She was queen. She lived here. She was I, and I was she. There were gardens, and so many lost days. One eye of violet and one of gold. She remembers.”
As the creature spoke, her light grew stronger, her shape larger and better defined. A face crystallized amidst the shimmering white gold, and two legs with feet of flame brought her quickly to my side.
“Farrin,” she said, her voice now thick with longing. “Where is Farrin?”
I blinked back tears, trying to hold myself together. “You are Ankaret. You died.”
“She died, and now she lives,” she said with an irritated flick of her fiery wings. “She understands now. Pieces come back, and then they fly away, but I am catching more and more of them. My hands are strong.”
“How is this possible?” I whispered. “Your last words to Farrin were come and find me. But we didn’t. We tried, and we couldn’t. Farrin has been searching for weeks and weeks.”
“When you ran, your power raced across the world in search of salvation and awakened me. I found you at the brink of death and pulled you back into the world of the living.” She said all of this quickly, as if it was nothing, as if I should have known it already, then placed her two small hot hands on my arm. “Where is Farrin? Please tell me.”
Trying to wrap my mind around everything she’d said was like chasing the memory of a dream. “I awakened you with my power? But how? I didn’t know such a thing was possible.”
“Possible, yes. Difficult, yes. Your power was desperate. It touched the living world with one hand and death with the other. The power of a man and the power of a goddess. Red and gold. Human and not.”
Inside her crown of flames, her face softened—and what a face it was. White hair lined with fire, a delicate chin, eyes like blue lightning.
When she next spoke, her voice was gentler, more human. “There is still so much inside you that remains untouched. So much that you do not understand. But you will. And she will grow stronger, and her words more upright, easier to hold. She promises.”
I felt myself slipping back into unconsciousness.
My joints ached, and a dull pain was blooming behind my eyes, but before I let myself fade, I managed to say, “Farrin is in Vauzanne with the others. I ran ahead to keep Neave safe. They’ll be here as soon as they can.
Neave…” Her name plucked a taut string in my mind.
I tried to sit up and failed. “Where is Neave?”
Sleep pulled me under before Ankaret could answer.
***
When I woke a third time, I could hardly think for the pain.
I understood that I was on my stomach, that something cool and smooth was being administered to my back. But my skin was on fire, and the cool thing was doing very little to diminish the burn. Balm, my mind offered. Medicine.
I tried to say Ankaret’s name but couldn’t form the word, and when I searched for her, all I could see was a red cloud of pain. I could barely lift my head. Someone with a kind voice told me I would be all right, that it wouldn’t hurt for much longer. You heal quickly, my lady.
That was true. I did. I could endure this. I’d endured worse, I told myself.
But I knew very well that was a lie. A tear slipped down my nose. A memory surfaced—Gareth, sipping wine beside me at Briarcourt. Our home, he had said. I’m sorry. It was only a daydream. I fell asleep thinking of his face.
***
For days I drifted in and out of the world. When the healers came to change my bandages and administer medicine, Ankaret hid somewhere in the room, or else flitted out the window onto the roof, but only during the day, when the sun was bright enough to hide her fire.
But once my nurses left, Ankaret stayed with me. We spoke very little; I didn’t have the strength for it. But the simple fact of her presence was a comfort. She was warm and patient, content to sit for hours beside me. And every time I woke, she was a little larger, a little more defined.
One day, nearly two weeks into my recovery, I opened my eyes to see a young woman pacing the room.
She was small and pale, thin as a reed, but her jaw was square with determination, and she held her fists clenched at her sides.
As she turned briskly for another circuit, her long white hair came into view, and fire snapped at her heels.
A chill raced down my arms. I knew that fire and that hair.
“Ankaret?” I whispered.
“She has— I have been practicing,” she said at once, fiercely. “It requires much concentration, and it is both tiring and tiresome. But it will be easier for everyone if I appear as Yvaine as often as I can. Ankaret stalking the halls would frighten the advisors.”
“And we can’t have that.”
She smiled grimly. “You are feeling better. Good.”
“Am I?” I pushed myself up onto my elbows, wincing. “I suppose we could call it that, if we’re being generous.”
Ankaret paused to look at me. “Can you walk?”
“I think so,” I replied, gingerly touching my toes to the floor.
I hesitated, then slowly started putting weight on my feet.
My joints ached in protest, and by the time I stood fully upright, a light sheen of sweat had broken out on my forehead.
But I still managed to take a few halting steps, and with each one I felt a bit stronger.
I reached the table at the foot of my bed, leaned heavily on it, and turned back to Ankaret with a triumphant grin. But she wasn’t looking at me; she was staring at the closed door, worrying her hands together.
“They’re coming,” she said quietly. “They’re here. Forgive me, I cannot show myself yet. Later I will do it. Later, when I can bear it.”
“What? Who’s coming?”
She glanced at me with a small smile. “Your loves, Mara.”
My chest clenched around my heart. For a moment I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. Then one of the healers burst in—Welma, a robust woman with sharp eyes and strong hands. She was my favorite out of all of them, and as she hurried toward me, she was beaming.
“Come, my lady,” she said, gently taking my arm. “Your sisters have arrived. You can lean on me. One step at a time, and then straight back to bed as soon as I say so.”
I glanced over my shoulder, but Ankaret was gone, and Welma showed no signs of having seen her. Still, I felt fluttery with nerves as we left the room. My sisters had arrived, and thank the gods for that, but what about the others?
“Gareth.” His name escaped my lips on a single shaky breath.
There he was—there they all were, all five of them. They looked travel-worn and exhausted, and they wore borrowed clothes stained with mud and salt, but they were alive.
They turned to look at me, as did the dozen of others in the room—advisors from the royal council, healers, palace staff—and for a moment I feared my knees would give out, even with Welma holding me up.
But then Gareth was striding toward me, and everyone between us moved to make way for him.
He was filthy, his hair was horribly mussed, as if he’d been raking his hands through it for hours, and his eyes were bright and a little wild, and he still didn’t have any glasses—and he was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
He came to me and cradled my face in his hands. Welma scooted away with an irritated huff.
“Mara,” he said, his voice breaking. He smoothed his thumbs over my cheeks, and then he let out a shuddering breath and pulled me to him so gently that I wanted to cry.
Instead I pressed my face into his collar and melted into him, my throat burning with trapped tears.
He smelled like sweat, the sea, warm skin. He smelled like him.
Slowly he wrapped his arms around me and buried his face in my hair. He drew in a breath that sounded like pain.
“Don’t ever do that to me again,” he said. “Do you hear me?”
Somehow I managed to find my voice. “You mean running far away from you into certain danger to save the world?”
I felt his smile against my cheek. “Yes. That. I’m afraid I can’t support such a thing. My heart can’t bear it.”
Then he brought one of his hands up to cup the back of my head. The soft press of his fingers against my scalp made me feel alive again. I clutched the front of his jacket and pulled him as close to me as I could.
“Mara, Mara,” he said quietly, roughly, brushing his lips against my temple. “Please, darling. I’m begging you. Never again. Not without me.”
I pressed a kiss to the triangle of skin above his ragged collar. “Not without you,” I whispered back. “Never again.”