Chapter 8
LYRA
By the time Vareena made tea, I had unpacked exactly three things.
Ferin’s wooden star sat on the desk beside my bed.
Irelia’s sun charm remained around my neck because taking it off felt impossible.
Maia’s cloak hung from the peg near the door beside one of Vareena’s belts, looking so ordinary there that I kept glancing at it and expecting Maia to come back for it.
Everything else stayed inside my bag. Clothing, coin, the few things I had taken from the cottage before leaving.
I couldn’t make myself put any of it into the empty wardrobe.
Unpacking felt too much like admitting I lived here now.
Rain had started sometime after Calis left.
It tapped softly against the window, streaking the glass until the golden lights in the courtyard beyond blurred into long, wavering lines.
Vareena moved around the room as though she had forgotten I was watching, tying her damp braid higher at the back of her head, gathering the books she had apparently been using to bury half my bed, and setting a small kettle over the brass warming plate on her desk.
She touched two fingers to the plate and a faint glow appeared beneath it.
Light. Gold, like Calis’s. I stared before I could stop myself.
Vareena noticed. “Sorry.”
“What?”
“The Light.” She pulled her hand away. “I should’ve asked.”
I frowned. “Why?”
Her eyes flicked briefly to my throat. “I don’t know what happened to you.”
That was such a simple answer that I didn’t know what to do with it. She wasn’t apologizing for having magic. She was apologizing because she didn’t know whether watching someone use it might make me want to crawl out of my own skin. I looked at the warming plate. “It’s fine.”
“All right.”
She touched it again. The glow returned. No careful look to make sure I was coping. No apology a second time. I liked that too.
Steam began curling from the kettle a few minutes later, carrying chamomile and mint through the room.
My chest tightened before I understood why.
Maia used mint when my stomach hurt. Chamomile when I couldn’t sleep. When I was little, she mixed too much honey into both because I complained they tasted like boiled grass, and when I got older she stopped because apparently adulthood meant suffering through bitter tea without assistance.
Vareena reached for a second cup. “Want some tea?”
“Yes.”
The word came out rough.
She glanced at me but only poured. “Chamomile and mint. It’s all I have unless you want something that tastes like burnt bark.”
“This is fine.”
She handed me the cup, then returned to her bed with her own.
I sat on mine with my back against the wall and held the ceramic between both palms. The warmth sank into the raw skin there.
For a while neither of us spoke. Vareena tried to read.
I tried to drink. The rain filled everything we didn’t say.
My gaze kept drifting to Maia’s cloak.
Vareena followed it eventually. “Do you want it closer?”
“No.” A pause. “Maybe.”
She set her book aside, got up, and lifted the cloak from the peg. “Here?” I nodded. She laid it carefully across the end of my bed, not folded perfectly, not handled like a relic. Just close enough that I could reach it.
“Thank you.”
“Mm.” She went back to her book.
I stared at the page she was pretending to read. She had been on the same one since she sat down.
“You can ask.”
Her eyes rose. “Ask what?”
“Whatever you keep deciding not to ask.”
“I’m not deciding anything.”
“You’ve read the same page for ten minutes.”
She looked down at the book. Then back at me. “Maybe it’s a very difficult page.”
I almost smiled. “Is it?”
“No.” The answer came so flatly that a breath of laughter escaped me. More air than sound. It hurt enough that the amusement disappeared immediately.
Vareena noticed but didn’t comment. She closed the book over one finger. “I was going to ask where Edenlo is.”
I looked into my tea. “West.”
“That narrows it down.”
“Past the Veil.”
Her gaze remained steady, “The Hollowlands.” I nodded. “I’ve never met anyone from there.”
“I gathered that from the look on her face.”
Vareena’s mouth twisted. “Was I staring that badly?”
“Everyone stares badly.” I took a small drink. The tea had too much mint. Maia would have complained. “It’s north of the Waking River. There are hills before the forest starts getting thick. Edenlo sits in the valley between them.”
Vareena leaned back against the wall. “I’ve seen the river on maps.”
“Then you know more about where I grew up than most people in Edenlo knew about where you grew up.”
“That sounds unlikely.”
“It isn’t.”
She waited, perhaps expecting more.
I looked toward the rain. “Most people there had never crossed the Veil. Some had never gone farther than the next two villages.”
“What did they think was over here?”
I laughed once, quietly. “Depends who you asked.”
Vareena smiled. “That bad?”
“Nara used to tell children Shadow wielders could smell lies.”
Her brows rose.
“Ferin said Fire wielders settled arguments by burning their names into one another’s skin.”
“That one sounds exhausting.”
“And someone once told me Earth wielders sleep underground.” Vareena stared at me. “I was eight.”
“That does not make it better.”
“It wasn’t my theory.” She took a drink to hide a smile. For a second it was easy.
Then I remembered who would have loved this conversation.
The room changed without changing at all.
Irelia would have asked whether Shadow wielders really could smell lies and then spent the next week lying to every one she met just to test it. She would have stolen one of Vareena’s ribbons before breakfast. She would have stood at the window until someone threatened to drag her away from it.
My fingers closed harder around the cup.
Vareena looked at me, then away. That small mercy made it worse. “Irelia would have hated your ribbons.” The words came before I could stop them.
Vareena glanced at the bedpost. “All of them?”
“At least the gold one.”
“That’s my favorite.”
“She would have hated it more, then.”
Vareena was quiet for a beat. “Who’s Irelia?”
I stared at the steam rising from the cup. I could have lied. Someone from home. A friend. No one. Instead I said, “My best friend.”
“Is she still in Edenlo?”
My throat closed. Yes. No. Buried beneath the Mothertree. “No.”
Understanding dawned slowly across Vareena’s face, “Oh.” The word hung there. She looked instantly uncomfortable with it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“Don’t.” She stopped. She didn’t say another word. She did not across the space between our beds. There was no telling me everything happened for a reason. No saying Irelia was at peace or somewhere better or that grief softened with time.
She simply stopped.
I looked down at the little sun charm against my chest and ran my thumb across the carved wood. “She died the night my magic manifested.” Vareena didn’t move. “My mother did too.”
Her eyes dropped to her cup.
“And Auntie Nara. Thirty-two people altogether.” The number sounded as ugly here as it had in the Hall.
Vareena swallowed. “Gods.” I looked at her. She winced. “That was useless.”
“It was better than most things people have said.”
“I can try something worse if that helps.”
A tiny laugh escaped me. Real this time. It lasted less than a second. Guilt crushed it immediately. Irelia was dead and I had laughed.
The thought was irrational. I knew it was irrational. That didn’t stop it from feeling like betrayal.
Vareena watched my face change. She set her cup down. “I was about to complain about the western stairwell.”
I blinked. “What?”
“It’s awful. There are six flights where there should be three, and someone apparently decided stairs become more educational if they narrow halfway up.”
I stared at her.
She shrugged. “But now it feels inappropriate.” My chest loosened by a fraction. “You can still complain.”
“Can I?”
“I doubt Irelia would care.”
“Did she like complaining?”
“She liked being right.”
“Those are different things.”
“Not to her.” Vareena smiled. I did too before I could stop myself. This one hurt less.
The rain picked up, hitting the window harder. Vareena reached toward the warming plate and reheated her tea, then hesitated before touching mine. “Do you want—”
“Yes.”
She held two fingers near the cup. Gold Light warmed the ceramic without touching my skin.
“What was Edenlo actually like?” she asked.
I thought about it. Not the fire. Before. “Small.”
“That I gathered.”
“Nosy.”
“Most small places are.”
“Everyone knew when someone was sick before the person did. Nara could tell whether I had eaten breakfast by looking at my face. Ferin knew exactly which children stole his carved charms but pretended he didn’t because he liked complaining about it.”
Vareena settled more comfortably against the wall.
“There was a fountain in the square that only worked when it felt like it. Elder Rina insisted every year that we should replace it, and every year someone fixed it badly enough to survive another season.” I looked toward the rain-streaked window.
“There were fields outside the village. Lavender. Yarrow. Sage. The pines started beyond them.”
Maia kneeling beside a patch of yarrow. Feel this. Wet sage in my hand. Birds gone silent. I stopped breathing for a second.
Vareena’s voice came carefully. “Lyra?”
I stared at the window. The rain had become ash. Not really. I knew that. But I could smell smoke again. I could hear the fire tower cracking. Nara screaming. Irelia’s body in the road.
I put the cup down before I dropped it. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes. “I don’t know.”
Vareena was quiet. My breathing had gone shallow. I tried to slow it without making it obvious and failed.
One.
Two.
Three.
Maia had taught me to count when panic made everything inside me too loud.
One.
Two.
Three.
The room came back slowly.
Rain. Warm stone. Vareena’s books. Maia’s cloak at the end of my bed. No fire. No screaming.
I lowered my hands.
Vareena hadn’t moved from her bed. “Do you want me to get someone?”
“No.”
“Calis?”
“No.” That came out sharper.
Vareena nodded immediately. “Okay.”
I wiped beneath my eyes with my sleeve even though nothing had fallen yet.
“She isn’t…” I stopped.
“Isn’t what?”
“My friend.”
Vareena looked mildly horrified. “Calis?”
I almost laughed again. “No.”
“Good.” The answer came so quickly that I looked at her. “She’s an excellent instructor,” Vareena added.
“That sounded defensive.”
“It was.”
“Of her?”
“Of myself. She would somehow know if I insulted her.” I looked toward the door as if Calis might appear. Vareena lowered her voice. “I’m fairly certain she can sense disrespect through stone.”
“That wasn’t in any of the Hollowlands stories.”
“Add it.”
I shook my head, and for a few seconds the heaviness receded enough to breathe around.
Then Vareena’s gaze moved to Maia’s cloak.
“Was it hers?”
I nodded.
“Your mother’s.”
“Yes.”
Another pause. “Do you want to tell me about her?”
I thought I didn’t.
Then I did. “She was a healer.” Vareena waited.
“She knew everything that grew within miles of Edenlo. Or acted like she did. She could tell a plant was sick before I could even see anything wrong with it. She tied herb bundles too tightly and complained when I didn’t.
She hated waste. She hated when I went into the forest alone.
” My throat tightened. “She found me there.”
Vareena frowned slightly.
“When I was a baby.”
Understanding came more slowly this time. “She adopted you?”
“I suppose.”
“You never called it that?”
“No. She was just Maia.” The word almost broke me.
Vareena looked at the floor. “My mother died when I was young.” I looked up. She rubbed one thumb over the rim of her cup. “Not like yours. It wasn’t…” She stopped, shook her head. “I don’t know why I said that.”
“It’s fine.”
“No, it sounded like I was comparing.”
“You weren’t.”
“I kind of was.”
Despite myself, I smiled faintly.
She blew out a breath. “I’m bad at this.”
“At what?”
“Knowing what to say.”
“People who think they know what to say are worse.” That earned the smallest smile.
Vareena didn’t tell me more about her mother and I didn’t ask.
Maybe that was the first thing we understood about each other.
Some things were offered. Some weren’t. You didn’t pry simply because silence made you curious.
The rain softened after a while. My tea went cold again and neither of us bothered reheating it. Vareena returned to her book. I eventually opened my bag and moved exactly one dress into the wardrobe before deciding that was enough progress for one night.
When I turned back, Vareena had already stretched beneath her blankets.
“First bell is cruel,” she warned, eyes closed.
“How cruel?”
“You’ll know when it happens.”
“That sounds threatening.”
“It is.”
I lay down without extinguishing the lamp.
Vareena opened one eye. “Do you want that left on?”
I looked toward the light. The shadows stayed where they belonged. “Yes.”
She closed her eye again. “Then leave it.”
Minutes passed. Maybe an hour. Vareena’s breathing eventually deepened on the other side of the room. I stayed awake.
Rain moved softly down the window. Maia’s cloak lay within reach. Irelia’s sun charm rested over my heart. Ferin’s wooden star sat on the desk where moonlight caught one rough edge.
For the first time since leaving Edenlo, there was another person sleeping close enough that I could hear them breathe.
She was a stranger.
That should have made it worse.
Instead, when I finally closed my eyes, the room felt slightly less empty.