Chapter Twenty-five
THEA
S omeone cleared their throat from the entrance of the tent. Thea sat bolt upright from where she’d been half dozing, wondering if Wilder had changed his mind —
‘I’d knock,’ came Anya’s voice, ‘but canvas doesn’t really allow for it…’
Trying to quell her disappointment, Thea palmed the sleep from her eyes. ‘Come in.’
The fabric shifted and Anya ducked inside, looking around, her gait slightly awkward. Her wings weren’t visible, and as she spoke with a note of self-consciousness, she looked more like Wren than Thea had realised. ‘Wasn’t sure you’d be alone… You’ve got that Warsword in pieces.’
‘He’s not here,’ Thea said, watching as Anya paced across the width of the tent, running her hand over her shaved head, as restless as a storm out to sea.
Thea herself didn’t know what to do with her hands, didn’t know what to say. This stranger before her was her sister , bound to her by blood, and yet… she knew nothing about her beyond her shadows and wings.
Luckily, Anya spoke first. ‘I’m sorry I walked off before.’ She paused her pacing, only to trace a circle in the dirt with the tip of her boot. She looked as uncomfortable as Thea felt. What was the protocol for talking to a long-lost sister who’d been deemed an enemy for the better part of a year?
‘It’s alright,’ Thea ventured. ‘I can’t imagine it was easy, watching all that again…’
Anya shrugged casually, still toeing the dirt. ‘No worse than the nightmares I have every night.’
‘I’m sorry you went through that. That you go through it still.’
Anya dipped her head. ‘Thank you.’
Thea gestured to the table and chairs. ‘Do you want to sit?’ Wren would have offered the moment Anya had walked in.
Anya hesitated, those sharp features softened with uncertainty for the first time.
Thea dropped into a seat without ceremony. ‘Third time’s the charm,’ she tried to joke.
Her shadow-touched sister gave a sheepish half-smile at that and sat down in the chair beside her. She rummaged through her pockets and produced a lump of something wrapped in cloth.
‘Thought you might need something to eat,’ she said. ‘It’s just bread. There’ll be porridge in the morning.’
‘Thanks.’ Thea’s fingers touched Anya’s as she accepted the food, and a burst of electric current made her jump.
‘Sorry,’ Anya muttered. ‘I usually have it well under control, but… it’s been an emotional day.’
‘It used to be like that for me too,’ Thea admitted, unwrapping the bread and holding back a moan as she took a bite. It was fresh sourdough, still warm.
‘Not anymore, huh?’
‘Not anymore.’
Anya nodded to herself and leant back in her chair, unsheathing a dagger from her boot and twirling it between her fingers. ‘So you don’t remember me at all, do you?’ she asked, voice soft, attention fixed on the blade.
Thea grimaced. ‘Not clearly… but there are little things.’
Anya glanced up.
‘Some things came to me when Wilder and I visited Delmira over a year ago. There were flowers… I remember braiding necklaces with someone… At first I thought it was Wren, but she would have been too young. It was you, wasn’t it?’
Anya nodded. ‘Our mother taught me. I used to make them for everyone. I did nothing else for two summers.’
‘I don’t remember her either,’ Thea said. ‘Or him – our father.’
‘I feared that for the longest time – forgetting them,’ Anya told her.
‘Especially without you and Wren. Every now and then, there will come a day where I realise I don’t remember the exact sound of Mama’s laugh, or the way the sunlight caught in Pa’s hair.
But I remember the important things. That they were good and kind rulers. That they were good and kind parents.’
‘We were told they were tyrants.’
Anya shook her head. ‘There wasn’t a bone like that in either of their bodies.’
‘They left us on Thezmarr’s doorstep…’
‘To protect us.’
‘They could have —’ Thea cut herself off as she caught Anya studying her, head tilted. ‘What?’
Anya hummed. ‘It makes sense now.’
‘What does?’
‘That you so readily believed your Warsword had abandoned you too.’
Thea opened and closed her mouth, her skin suddenly tingling with discomfort. ‘I never thought about —’
But Anya dimissed her with a wave. ‘They were good people. You need to know that. Too trusting, but good.’
‘Like you.’ Thea pictured the little girl swept up in the corruption of Thezmarr.
‘A lesson I needed to learn only once,’ Anya said grimly.
Thea passed her the other half of the bread, noting that Anya herself looked a little on the thin side. Her sister took it without a word.
‘What happened after the cave-in on the Broken Isles?’ Thea asked.
Anya chewed on the bread thoughtfully. ‘There was a creature there… Something like me. It kept me alive for a time. A new shadow-touched person is like a newborn foal. Clumsy. Clueless.’
‘You were, what? Six? In the visions you look —’
‘Tall?’ Anya offered. ‘I was for my age. But no, I was younger. You and I were only born ten months apart.’
Thea stared, thinking back to the thick tome she’d found in Wilder’s cabin, A Study of Royal Lineage Throughout the Midrealms . No heirs had been listed in the Delmirian line, let alone the name days of the royal offspring. ‘How do you know that? There were no records of our birth.’
‘Not on the mainland. But when I was in Naarva —’
‘You found archives?’
‘Not quite… I found letters. Personal letters from our mother to Queen Yolena. They were friends.’
‘But Delmira had already fallen before we were born.’
Anya shrugged. ‘It seems they stayed in touch, even while our parents were in hiding.’
‘Did you keep these letters?’
‘I did. They’re in my quarters at the University of Naarva. I’d like to show them to you someday. And Wren.’
‘I’d like that… I’m sure she would too.’
The gratified glint in her sister’s eyes brought a wave of heaviness down on Thea.
‘You were so young…’ she said quietly.
Anya gave a grim smile. ‘I survived.’
‘How?’ Thea pressed.
‘Naarva was shrouded in darkness, but there were a few places of refuge, underground. Some people were shadow-touched like me. Others were civilians who had fled the fighting… I learnt quickly to control my abilities, so it wasn’t immediately obvious what I was.
I kept my shadows to myself. The people of a fallen kingdom don’t take kindly to the likes of me – not then, anyway. ’
‘And you were alone?’
‘For a while.’
‘I saw you,’ Thea said carefully. ‘In a vision. You cut your hair with a dagger… and then you walked out into a field. There were shadow-touched there. In pain. Being tortured…’ She didn’t mean it as a question, but she heard the inflection in her voice.
Anya did too. ‘That was one of Artos’ camps.
We’d defeated a host of shadow wraiths. The people you think were being tortured were shadow-touched, transitioning for the first time.
You watched the same thing happen to me in that cave.
There was nothing to be done. They had to feel it.
Accept it.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I didn’t hurt them. ’
Thea flushed. ‘I know that now.’
‘Do you?’ Anya pressed, piercing her with what she now knew to be their mother’s eyes.
‘Yes,’ Thea told her, lifting her chin. ‘So while Wren and I were tucked away safe and sound at Themzarr, you were…’
‘Rallying the shadow-touched, tracking the tears in the Veil, hunting monsters… There were more and more of them, and not just wraiths. I had a small force loyal to me when we heard the rumour about a colony. After a time, I met Dratos…’ Anya heaved a sigh.
‘I wish I could have been with you, fighting by your side,’ Thea said.
A sad smile graced her sister’s lips. ‘I’m glad you weren’t.
I’m grateful that you were safe at the fortress.
It helped, knowing you and Wren weren’t in the same kind of danger, though I know your time there was less than perfect…
I came back once, you know – back to Thezmarr.
I was so desperate to see you and Wren. Dratos didn’t want me to go, said it was too big a risk, but… I had to.’
‘When was this?’
‘I’m not sure… We weren’t quite teenagers yet,’ Anya told her.
‘Audra and Farissa had everyone out playing on the Plains of Orax. Wren was practically glued to Farissa’s side, but you…
you had broken off from the group and were wandering on your own, a stick in hand.
I think you were pretending it was a sword,’ Anya said with a note of fondness.
‘I used storm magic to get your attention, to coax you into the woods. You followed those little bolts of lightning so confidently, I was sure everything would be the same as it always had been. But when you were only a few feet away, I realised… the world I could offer was fraught with nothing but danger and darkness. Thezmarr was safe. Thezmarr, with its Guardians and Warswords, was light… You and Wren deserved that, not the half-life I led in the shadows, hunted and hated.’
‘So you didn’t show yourself? You didn’t speak to me?’
Anya shook her head. ‘I left. It was the last time I saw Thezmarr.’
‘And us.’
‘And you,’ Anya agreed.
‘I don’t remember it – following storm magic into the Bloodwoods.’
‘I wouldn’t expect you to. I don’t think you even knew what you were following. It was subtle, not like the display you put on in Notos.’
The mention of Tver’s capital made Thea’s blood run cold, the brutal battle seared into her mind. ‘Why did you try to take Wren?’
‘I wanted to take you both. To get you out of their clutches and explain everything.’
‘Funny way to go about it.’
‘I’ll admit, I could have thought it through in a bit more detail.’
‘No shit,’ Thea scoffed.
‘But then Dratos went and got himself shot with an arrow, courtesy of your friend, I believe? And I knew if I took Wren without you, you’d never forgive me.’
‘You’ve got your work cut out for you with Wren as it is.’
‘Any advice?’ Anya quipped.
Thea gave a laugh. ‘Get her a massive bag of weird plants and potions.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Anytime.’
And in that brief exchange, Thea’s heart ached for what might have been. Ached with loss for the years that Artos had stolen from her and her family, and with fury for what had been done to her sister.
Anya’s pained expression mirrored her own.
‘I’m sorry.’ Thea’s words came out as a whisper. ‘I’m sorry for how it all happened. And I’m sorry we weren’t there for you.’
‘You’re here now,’ Anya replied.
‘And Wren —’
‘Will find us again.’ Anya smiled then. ‘Just as the fates intended.’
‘You believe that?’
‘I do.’ Anya got to her feet, dusting the breadcrumbs from her lap. ‘We don’t know each other well… But I’d like to.’
‘Me too,’ Thea said.
Anya offered her hand. ‘We storm wielders have to stick together.’
Thea shook her sister’s hand, her palm as rough and calloused as Thea’s own. ‘I’m not a storm wielder anymore.’
Letting go, Anya simply raised a brow and lifted the tent flap, readying to leave. ‘Aren’t you?’