Chapter 45
Forty-Five
Another Piece of the Puzzle
By the time I reached Mila’s cabin again, the sun was starting to rise, and Nassir was wide awake.
He sat on the floor in front of the fire, meditating. I startled him when I came in.
“Sorry, how long have you been up? Do you need anything?” I asked.
“I just got up,” he said. “Don’t worry about me. See? I found the wood.”
Indeed, he had knocked over a portion of the wood I had brought in and set next to the fireplace. He seemed to have gotten some of it in the fire too, and the flames that had burned low overnight were now full of life and dancing on the logs.
I smiled at how quickly he’d adapted to the new surroundings, then I tugged the stone from my boot. “Nassir, I’m going to hand you something. Do you think you could tell me if you’ve encountered it before?”
“Hmm, let’s find out.” He reached out and let me place the stone in his palm, then he went rigid.
I was afraid something had happened to him. His face was in shock, and he didn’t move for several heartbeats. I knelt beside him and whispered, “Nassir?”
He didn’t react. I sat back on my heels and bit my lower lip, wondering what my next move should be, when suddenly he gasped and fell backward.
“Nassir!” I rushed to help him back to a sitting position, then I grabbed a cup and filled it from a bucket of water I had gathered the previous night. “Here, drink something.”
He nodded, still catching his breath, and held out a hand for me to help him find the cup. He drained it in a moment and turned his head toward me. “Visions from Lark.”
“Yes!” I exclaimed. “I saw them too. I found it in the place where I was left as a baby,” I explained. “I wonder why I didn’t see it before.”
He sighed and tapped his chin, a habit I had started to notice since we’d come into the light where I could see him. He sighed and crossed his arms. “I’m wondering if you weren’t meant to see it as a small child. Perhaps this was meant for you once you came into your powers.”
“That would make sense,” I said. “That was quite a risk, though. How did she know I would come back this way when it was time? I could have moved far away from these mountains. I could have never wanted to see this place again.”
“That I don’t know,” Nassir said. “But rather than dwell on what did not happen, why don’t we look at what did. What is it you plan to do with this information?”
“First, I need to rescue Schula,” I said, and Nassir nodded. “Then, I want to get far away from here. I think . . . I’m not sure, but I think my father could be that person in the cloak. Or at least he was Lark’s lover.”
“I think you’re right. She mentioned to me only once that she had a love, but she didn’t tell me more than that,” Nassir said.
“There has to be a reason she wouldn’t have told you about him,” I wondered out loud.
“I think I know who, or at least what, was under that cape,” Nassir said.
“And I’m not sure what that would mean for you, but you don’t smell like a fae, or a dryad, or a sprite, or any number of other things I’m familiar with in the Wyldes.
It’s very hard to place with the witch blood mixed in there, but now I’m more and more sure of what your other half could be. ”
I sucked in a breath, my heart pounding. Finally, the last piece of the puzzle. “Who is the one in the cloak?” I asked.
“In the vision, they speak of it as a place, but I know it as something else,” Nassir said. “Eidelhein is the elvish word for ‘last stand.’ The last cry of the elven king before he was killed in the War of the Wyldes.”
The elves.
I remembered Cosimo’s lessons. A memory flashed across my mind of my fingers brushing the great mural in the Autumn library The one depicting a group of exiled elves.
Cosimo’s voice still rang in my ears. The elves were nearly decimated.
Heh, now there was a faction that left cursing our names.
They were banished, and our kind doesn’t live well outside the magic of the Wyldes.
I think they numbered only five males anyway, so even if they live there remain only five.
It felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. Eidelhein. Last stand.
“Nassir.” I swallowed. “Can the elves have children with any other races? The fae? Or . . . or humans?”
“Before today, I would have told you no,” he said softly. “Now, I’m not as sure.”
We sat in silence while I mulled over the implications.
“I think I need to take a walk,” I said. “I won’t be gone long. I’ll go find us some more food.”
“Take all the time you need, little one,” Nassir said. “I will continue my meditation.”
I nodded and stood on shaky legs. The more questions I answered, the more new ones arose. I left the cabin, closing the door behind me, and walked toward a patch of trees where I could sometimes find late-season walnuts. It was a mindless path for my feet to take, and I let my mind wander.
I reached up and felt the curve of my ears.
They’d grown longer than I’d expected, but I hadn’t had much time to dwell on it since Asher had captured me quickly after that.
Were they different than Thain’s? Eberon’s?
Schula’s? I still hid them under my mass of hair, so I doubted Thain had had a good look at them during our wild escape from the Winter Lands.
I pictured Thain and Nassir, the two fae I’d most recently looked at, their ears swept back in a curve. Tracing my fingers along my newly formed ears, I realized they were perfectly straight, and at a higher angle, as if to point to the crown of my head instead of curling back.
I briefly wondered what my fae friends would think of me. Half witch, half elf, if that was truly what I was. Though it was starting to make sense. I gave a humorless laugh, my breath clouding in the crisp air before me.
Half enemy, half mistrusted neighbor. Wonderful. They had no reason to stay with me now. Even if they did, there was no way I could stay with them in the Wyldes.
I sighed as I came up to the walnut grove and began kicking the leaves on the ground, searching for whatever nuts the squirrels hadn’t gotten to already.
I gave up after a while, guessing they had been eaten or hidden already, and sat down under a large tree.
I picked up a leaf and played with it for a minute before calling up my fire and burning it.
It went up in an instant, leaving plenty of smoke in its wake since the leaves were damp.
I sat there for a while, burning up leaves one by one.
I knew at some point I had to go back, but I wasn’t sure what to say. Or do, for that matter.
I stood up and brushed the fallen leaves and dirt off my pants then began to walk back to Mila’s place.
The trail didn’t seem long enough for what I wanted to ask at the other end.
I hadn’t known Nassir long, but already I felt close to him.
Would he come with me? His knowledge would be valuable for finding this place.
I sighed as the cabin came into view. I kicked a pebble in the path and headed toward the door. Then, on the light winter breeze, I caught a familiar scent.
Thain was back.
My heart skipped a beat, eager to see him, and then sank when I realized I had some new truths to tell him. I squared my shoulders and grimaced as I pulled open the door.
“I am sorry, Wren. I told him everything,” Nassir said. “He touched the stone with the witching magic and had questions.”
Thain was quiet as he stared with that stony expression of his.
“Thain,” I began, but I didn’t know how to finish. I reached up to touch my ears under my hair, and he stood slowly to stand in front of me. His hand, much the same way it had on the day we met, moved the hair out of the way so he could see my ears.
“This changes nothing,” he said.
I gasped. “Thain,” I choked out.
“This changes nothing. You are you, we will figure it out.”
“How?” I managed.
“I don’t want you to worry about this right now,” he said. “Right now, we finish our plans for Schula. Here, I brought you something.”
He turned to the table for a moment and grabbed a bag I hadn’t noticed before.
He pulled out a black tunic in the style Schula and I had taken to wearing when we trained.
I was beyond caring about changing in front of anyone since I had been paraded through the Winter Court in a breast band and torn pants.
I happily threw Thain’s borrowed shirt on the table and pulled the tunic over my head.
“There are fresh clothes for you and Nassir in there, and cloaks, and a set of Winter Court servant uniforms,” Thain said. “Courtesy of Eberon, who sends his regards.”
I bit the inside of my cheek, and I knew the worry had slipped onto my expression when Thain interrupted my thoughts. “Eberon will not hate you. Schula will not hate you. We need to go over the plan, and that is all we need to worry about for now. All right?”
Nassir reached over and squeezed my hand.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s hear the plan.”