2. Cognitive Psychology
“No!”
Heavy quilts fell away as I sprung upright in bed, and pain lanced my side. I cried out against the fire in my broken ribs and then collapsed back against my mattress.
The door slammed open, and a flurry of orange flames lit the pelt-lined walls in shades of amber.
The bed buckled as it took the weight of the cloaked figure that leapt to stand over me.
The glowing orange scythes in his hands crackled with Skalmagick and sent shadows up his cowled face, from which his orange irises glowed down at me.
“What’s wrong?” Ciarán scanned the windowless room for signs of danger. I tried to kick him off the bed, but my legs got tangled in my quilts.
“Get off!” Agony spasmed through my ribs, and I curled in on myself.
“Blue?” Ciarán’s scythes dissipated, leaving us in the dark. He dropped to my quilts to hover his hands over my side.
“Don’t you ever sleep?” I hissed at him through gritted teeth. “Or are you too busy lurking at my door?”
“You know me, my Lady. I’m never far if I can help it,” Ciarán murmured. “Is it your injuries again? Are they bothering you?”
“It’s nothing.” I faltered, wondering if I could trust Ciarán. He was one of the last people I wanted to confide in, but Liam?
He would’ve known the exact right thing to say to loosen the knot in my ulcer-ridden stomach. He would’ve climbed into bed and held me until I fell back asleep so I could wake up well-rested and ready to do whatever it took to save my grandmother.
And Liam was Ciarán, whether I’d fully accepted that reality yet or not.
I sighed in defeat. “I saw my grandma. She—”
“Sorcha!” Ciarán slid off my bed and whisked back into the darkened hall.
“It’s fine!” I pressed the heels of my hands back over my eyes.
Ciarán called for Sorcha again, loud enough to wake the entire hovel, and I pulled my quilt up over my head. It was the middle of the day. There was no need to get all of the nocturnal inhabitants of our hideout up before the sun set for the night.
“Is it her ulcers?” The quilt whipped away almost as quickly as I’d disappeared under it.
Sorcha stood overhead, the orange flame in her hand casting a halo of light through her frizzy gray curls.
Orange irises glowing against black sclera, just like Ciarán’s, glared down her wrinkled nose at me.
The old woman had spent so much time the last week fussing over my injuries that I was starting to forget what she’d looked like back home in Keel Watch Harbor.
There she’d been Sarah, town gossip and local harpy. Here she was Sorcha, Magick healer and—well. Local harpy.
“My ulcers are fine.” I tried to pull the quilt back over my face, but Sorcha swatted at my hands.
“She saw Lady Saergrim,” Ciarán said from the corner of the room to where he’d retreated.
“I told you to call her Gams,” I snapped.
“And I told you, I’m not calling the Frozen God ‘Gams’.” His orange eyes glowed at me from the shadows of his corner.
“You saw Ethel?” Sorcha snorted. “Did you tell her that her damn cat peed on my pillow?”
Jonquil meowed where she was nestled at the foot of my bed, as if she knew Sorcha was talking about her.
“Wren saw Ethel?” A second old woman bustled into my room. Gladys—or rather, Aoife—had been Sarah’s more pleasant counterpart in Keel Watch Harbor, but that didn’t mean I wanted more people surrounding my bedside. “Should I summon Eliza? She’ll want to know.”
“No!” I asserted. The last thing I needed, other than all these people crowding me, was my mother. “It’s fine. Gams is okay. Thank you, Aoife.”
“Obviously not if she’s wasting Magick to summon you,” Sorcha tutted. “What did she want?”
I forced myself to sit up despite my injuries. There was something embarrassing about being the only person lying down in a busy room.
“She was warning me.” I balled the folds of my quilt in my fists and refused to look anyone in the face, instead watching Jonquil where she was curled up by my feet. “If we don’t reseal the Rift, the volcanoes in the mountains will erupt and seal it for us.”
A heavy silence fell over the women as they stewed in my words.
“When?” Aoife finally asked.
“About a month from now, give or take depending on ‘other factors’, but she didn’t say what those were. The mountains are already waking up. It isn’t safe here. She wants us to evacuate.”
This gave us less time to prepare. Less time to figure out how we’d get past two armies and the storm, all while fleeing south.
“That was it?” Sorcha sniffed. “That was all she wanted?”
“Is the threat of a volcano doomsday not enough for you?” Aoife snapped.
“It’s not that it’s not enough,” Sorcha said. “I’m just tired of Ethel making everything about her.”
“She’s the Frozen God. Everything is about her.” Aoife shook her head. “And just because her cat peed on your pillow doesn’t mean we let her sacrifice herself.”
“And what’s the alternative?” Sorcha snorted. “We sacrifice ourselves trying to make it through her storm?”
“We find a Lyrian,” I remembered, a plan rapidly forming in my head. “Gams said a Lyrian would be able to help us get back to Keldori without going through the storm and the Rift, and we can reseal Gams from the other side.”
That wasn’t quite what she’d said. She’d been very clear to flee south and let the volcanoes do their work, but if a Lyrian could reunite me with my mother in Keldori, why couldn’t a Lyrian help us get to Keldori to reseal Gams?
The others, they didn’t need to know that wasn’t Gams’s exact directive.
I was a Saergrim, too, after all. I had authority.
“A Lyrian?” Sorcha repeated. “Very convenient when you consider they all live in an unfindable city.”
“It’s not that unfindable. Orla, Fana, and I, we’ve been there.”
“We’ll talk about it when everyone’s awake,” Aoife said evenly. “I think it’s more important to realize that Ethel calling Wren proves a Nightmare can be summoned from within the same realm. They’re both on this side of the Rift, yet Ethel was able to summon her.”
“So?” Sorcha said.
“So, it leaves Wren vulnerable to anyone else in Skalterra who knows her name.”
Sorcha’s head swiveled so fast in my direction, I thought her neck might snap.
“Who all knows your full name?” Sorcha demanded.
“Ferrin,” I admitted. No big deal. Just the guy who tried to kill me and wanted to punch a hole between two realities.
“And he’s a nocturmancer,” Sorcha sighed. “A damn good one if he was able to project himself into Keldori. Who else?”
“Tiernan Eldguard,” I said.
“Fana’s Riftkeeper? He’s with Ferrin now, isn’t he?”
“Probably. His sister is Ferrin’s right hand woman.” We’d told her all about the companions we’d traveled with across Skalterra, unknowingly helping Ferrin deliver Fana to what would’ve been her death had I not released my grandmother from her glacier prison myself.
“That’s two, then. Three if you count the sister because she’s sure to know your name by now too,” Sorcha growled.
“Tiernan’s not a nocturmancer, and I don’t think his sister Caitria is either,” I continued. “But, the Baron. She might know. I told my name to her bodyguard, though there’s a chance he hasn’t shared it.”
Sorcha and Aoife both groaned.
“Tamora Alarbus knows your name?” Sorcha hissed.
“I said she might!”
“Idiot girl. It’s no wonder that school you liked waitlisted you. What reason could you possibly have for giving your name to the Baron’s bodyguard?”
“I was trying to get back to Skalterra! I wouldn’t have needed to share it if anyone in Keel Watch Harbor had been even a little bit honest about who you all were!”
Aoife shrugged. “She makes a good point.”
“It doesn’t matter how good her point is!” Sorcha exclaimed. “There’s still a chance that both leaders of the armies in our way know her name. They’re both nocturmancers. Either one of them might call her and make her their Nightmare.”
“Wren,” Aoife turned to me with an encouraging smile, “have you heard any voices call your name in the last week?”
“No?” I didn’t mean to look to Ciarán for reassurance.
“I’ve been keeping watch over her head,” he promised. I waited for him to smirk, but he met me with a gentle frown that reminded me too much of Liam.
“Yet Ethel was able to call her.” Sorcha’s wrinkles deepened as she narrowed her eyes.
“The Saergrim is the one Magician I have no power over,” Ciarán explained.
Sorcha hummed to herself for a moment, thinking, and then made for the door.
“If you insist you’ve got Wren’s wandering consciousness under control, then it’s best we all get some sleep.
We’ve got a lot to do in the—” Sorcha cut off in a yelp and stumbled back from the door with her hand clutching at her gown over her heart.
“By the Frozen God, girl! Are you trying to kill me?”
“Sorry!” A face materialized in the gloom of the hallway as Orla stepped closer to my door. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. Wren, are you okay?”
My chest relaxed at the sight of Orla. She hugged herself with long, thin arms, and her short hair stuck up one side. She glanced around my room with apprehension, but there was something reassuring about her demeanor. I wasn’t the only one out their depth here.
“You should be sleeping,” I said as gently as I could.
“I heard you mention my uncle.”
The old women shared a look.
“It’s nothing—” Aoife started.
“Oh, sure,” Sorcha cut her off. “Ferrin Quillguard could summon the Saergrim’s granddaughter on a whim, extract information from her, feed her to a rotsbane. Anything really! But yes. It’s nothing.”
“No, he—” The rest of the sentence died on Orla’s lips, but I knew what she’d been about to say.
He wouldn’t.
But he would.
He’d killed Orla’s mother—his own sister. He’d been ready to kill Orla, too, but Orla still couldn’t reconcile the monster her uncle was with the man who’d loved her like a daughter.
“He can’t,” Ciarán murmured. Orla gave him a wary look. “I won’t let him.”
The tension in her brow loosened as I felt mine furrow.
“What about you all?” I asked. “He knows your names. Why doesn’t he summon any of us and feed us all to rotsbane?”